TELEPATHY AND ECTOPLASM. [To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,
In his review of Dr. Osty's Supernatural Science in your
issue of January 5th, Mr. Strauss asserts that telepathy and the exudation of " plastic material " from the human body are proved phenomena. As for telepathy, Sir Ray Lankester says that it is " a pretentious fiction . . . a boldly invented word for a supposed phenomenon which has never been demonstrated." What is assumed to be due to it is explained by coincidences. As Francis Bacon says in his essay on " Dreams and Predictions " : " First men marke when they hit and never marke when they miss."
Concerning the plastic stuff, which spiritualists call " Ecto-
plasm," and which Sir- Conan Doyle says has given birth to a new science - to be dubbed " plasmology," it suffices to say that Dr. Fournier d'Albe, a sympathetic examiner, was satisfied that the woman from whose body " psychic rods " were exuded was- a fraud. The "rods " were • compounds of viscous material. It must, in fairness to the Doctor, be added-that his attitude is one of suspense about the ectoplasm produced by a Paris medium, Eva Carriere.
Mr. Strauss is not illuminative in his remarks on " man's powers of supernormal cognition," but if his belief in the existence of these rests on the so-called evidence on which belief in telepathy and ectoplasm is founded, we have another example of the invocation of an unknown cause to explain
the non-existent.—I am, Sir, &c., EDWARD CLODD. Aldeburgh.
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