increased familiarity with the psychological conditions which produce and foster these narratives and beliefs, and with their social and traditional significance; in concluding, with Mr. Lang, "that the psychological conditions which begat the ancient narratives produce the new legends." IV Thus far, our attention has been centred upon the _tendenz_, the basis of interest, and the affiliations of Psychical Research. It will be well to turn to a consideration of the content of the problems. Inasmuch as the term represents a convenient but arbitrary designation of a heterogeneous group of phenomena, we are prepared to find that the data of the several problems thus collected will be as diverse as their methods of study. We may begin with the group of problems which might properly be considered in the chapter of Abnormal Psychology that is devoted to the milder forms of aberrant or unusual mental phenomena. The study of hypnotism occupies a prominent place in Psychology and in Psychical Research. The remarkable exhibitions of extreme suggestibility, particularly the hyperæsthesia thus inducible, and again the illumination of the subconscious thereby effected, have brought about a realizing sense of how fearfully and wonderfully we are made. Between savage priest and doctor, and Delphic oracle, and mediæval ascetic, and magnetic somnambule, and inspirational medium, there is an irregular connection in their entrance into a trance-like condition involving a readjustment of the strata of consciousness and of the distribution of authority in the hierarchy of the nervous centres. This was and remains one of the gateways to the land of marvel and mystery. The importance of hypnotism in Psychology is in its use, both as a method of exhibiting the relations of processes not otherwise accessible to experiment, and as a demonstration of the actual possibilities of suggestion in health and disease. The hypnotic phenomena are intrinsically interesting and valuable as contributions to the natural history of mentality; the hypnotic method of study offers the experimental psychologist the opportunity to apply his most potent aid to research in precisely that field of inquiry in which the experimental methods of ordinary consciousness are least available.