The Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, just issued,
are of unusual interest. To begin with, the volume contains the full text of Mr. Balfour's address. It is very unsensational, but contains a great deal which is most suggestive. He points out that the facts which the Society has come across are unquestionably "odd" facts—that is, facts out of harmony with the accepted theories of the material world—facts which will not fit in with the views of the ordinary man of science. The destruction of the world by collision with a star would be " a dramatically extra- ordinary" event ; but the making a person who has his back to you look up merely by an effort of will is a "scientifically extraordinary" event,—i.e., an event which science must either deny or treat as a mystery. Yet this simple form of telepathy is practically an admitted fact. How is it to bi reconciled with the rest of our knowledge P The Proceedings also contain the "Report on the Census of Hallucinations," drawn up and signed by a committee, of which Professor and Mrs. Sidgwick, Mr. Podmore, Miss Johnson, and Mr. F. Myers were members. The report is as full of stories of appari- tions and wraiths as a Christmas number ; but this is not its chief interest. That is rather to be found in the fact that the committee declare that their investigations cor- roborate, "on a much wider basis," the conclusions already drawn by Mr. Gurney from his census in 1885. " Between deaths and apparitions of the dying person a connection exists which is not due to chance alone. This we hold to be a proved fact."
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