While this interest may be combined with the occult interest, the two are not really congenial and are in essence antagonistic. We are all rational only in spots; and many a "psychical researcher" pursues some of his investigations under the guidance of a scientifically psychological interest, while in other directions the occult interest takes the helm. The analysis of the contrast between the two may be helpful in realizing more fully the divergences of Psychology and Psychical Research. The "psychical researcher" wishes to prove or to disprove something; with regard to this or that phenomenon he wishes to know "what there is in it," and is accordingly attracted to phenomena which seem to have something mysterious in them. As soon as he succeeds in finding a consistent and commonplace explanation for a group of phenomena, his main curiosity is satisfied, and he takes to pastures new. When once he has shown that theosophic marvels are the result of trickery and collusion, then the physical appearances of Theosophy have been _explained_. It has been demonstrated that there is "nothing in them," that is, nothing transcendental. The verdict is given, and the court passes on to the next case. But the psychologist's interest in how Mme. Blavatsky performed her astral manifestations was always a very subordinate and incidental one; the logical scientist, whether he happened to be physicist or biologist or psychologist, was quite convinced that Mme. Blavatsky had not discovered the means of carrying ponderables by unseen agencies from "China to Peru" (which, by the way, would, if possible, be a matter for the physicist and not at all for the psychologist to investigate), any more than she had been able to discover the secret of immortality (which would in turn be a biological discovery), or had been able to leave her body in New York, while her "astral" soul inspected what was going on in India (which might indeed be regarded as a psychological feat). The psychological problem of Theosophy, so far as there is one, is of a different type; it takes up the inquiry as to how such marvelous pretensions come to be believed, by what influences conviction is formed and doctrines spread. It contributes an incident or an apt illustration to the psychology of belief, or to the social psychology of contagion. The psychologist is interested in the illustration which such a movement affords of the action of certain mental processes and influences; and his interest persists, whether there is presumably "something in it," or not. The resulting difference in attitude between the psychologist and the "psychical researcher" is indeed fundamental, and even more so in principle than in practical issue.