Studies in Psychical Research

Abstract

MR. FRANK PODMORE'S “Studies in Psychical Research” is at once a critically sifted account, of facts and the story of a movement. The facts, or alleged facts, concern spiritualism, poltergeists, thought-transfcence, telepathic hallucinations, ghosts, haunted houses, premonitions, previsions, secondary consciousness, impersonation, obsession, clairvoyance. The movement is the persistent transfer of the facts from the region of myth to the region of verified science. This movement is typified by the work of the Psychical Research Society, which, as Mr. Podmore in his opening chapter shows, was founded by competent persons for the special purpose of ascertaining whether the popular belief in certain phenomena had any basis in scientific evidence. Some ten years ago “Phantasms of the Living” set men thinking on these topics. The theories, as much as the facts there adduced, have stimulated reflection at every hand. Mr. Podmore now aims at placing in a simple form the critical result of twenty years' labour. He is lucid, exact and critical. He pushes no hypothesis except so far as the evidence seems to justify it. Even his favourite “telepathy” is offered as a “working hypothesis” chiefly because it is the smallest “draught upon the unknown.”

Studies in Psychical Research.

By Frank Podmore, author of “Apparitions and Thought-Transference.” Pp. xi + 458. (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, and Co., 1897.)