Mr. Wallace and Reichenbach's Odyle

Abstract

As Mr. Wallace has attempted (presumably with Mr. Crookes's editorial concurrence) to rehabilitate, in the July number of the Quarterly Journal of Science, the Odyle-doctrine of Baron Reichenbach, I think it well to state that I yesterday availed myself of an opportunity of personally asking my friend Prof. Hoffmann, of Berlin, whether that doctrine any longer finds support among scientific men in Germany. His reply was a most emphatic negative; the doctrine, he said, being one which no man of science with whom he is acquainted would think worthy of the slightest attention. Yet in Mr. Wallace's judgment (query in Mr. Crookes's also?) the unanimous verdict of the scientific world of Germany, to say nothing of England, is a prejudiced one; only Mr. W. and his spiritualistic allies appreciating correctly the real force of the evidence originally advanced by Reichenbach, and confirmed by those trustworthy (?) authorities, Drs. Ashburner and Gregory.