APOLLONIUS OR THE PRESENT AND FUTURE OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH APOLLONIUS OR The Present and Future of Psychical Research BY E. N. BENNETT, M.A. _Late Fellow of Hertford College, Oxford_ Κέρδος ἄν εἴη μήτε πιστεύειν μήτε ἀπιστεῖν πᾶσιν _Phil. Vit. Apoll. II, 45_ NEW YORK E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 681 FIFTH AVENUE APOLLONIUS, COPYRIGHT, 1927, BY E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. :: :: PRINTED IN U. S. A. APOLLONIUS OR THE PRESENT AND FUTURE OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH Psychical research has in the last twenty-five years lived down the obloquy and suspicion which surrounded its earlier days, and secured an assured position as a recognized branch of scientific study. In nearly every European country and in the United States of America men of acknowledged eminence in their professions――philosophers, scientists, doctors, literary men――have devoted themselves to the earnest study of those obscure and baffling phenomena which form the subject matter of psychical research, though this field of scientific endeavour holds at present few allurements in the shape of personal advantage or reward, no appreciable endowments exist to facilitate such research, no professorial chairs are reserved for its devotees. The patient and unselfish toil of those men, who have given to psychical research years which otherwise might have brought them rich material gains, is based on their deep and abiding interest in the subject, and their frank endorsement of Schopenhauer’s words: “The phenomena under discussion are, at least from a philosophical standpoint, of all the facts presented to us by the whole of experience without comparison the most important; it is therefore the duty of every educated man to make himself thoroughly acquainted with them.”