METAPSYCHICAL PHENOMENA _All rights reserved_ METAPSYCHICAL PHENOMENA METHODS AND OBSERVATIONS BY J. MAXWELL _Doctor of Medicine Deputy-Attorney-General at the Court of Appeal, Bordeaux, France_ WITH A PREFACE BY CHARLES RICHET _Member of the Academy of Medicine Professor of Physiology in the Faculty of Medicine, Paris_ AND AN INTRODUCTION BY SIR OLIVER LODGE _Also with a New Chapter containing_ ‘A COMPLEX CASE,’ BY PROFESSOR RICHET AND AN ACCOUNT OF ‘SOME RECENTLY OBSERVED PHENOMENA’ BY THE TRANSLATOR L. I. FINCH LONDON _DUCKWORTH and CO._ 3 HENRIETTA STREET, W.C. 1905 NOTE BY THE TRANSLATOR The Translator has to thank sincerely a literary friend, a well-known English clergyman, who has been kind enough to revise the translation, and suggest many improvements. INTRODUCTION Asked by my friends in France to introduce the author, Dr. Maxwell, to English readers, I willingly consented, for I have reason to know that he is an earnest and indefatigable student of the phenomena for the investigation of which the Society for Psychical Research was constituted; and not only an earnest student, but a sane and competent observer, with rather special qualifications for the task. A gentleman of independent means, trained and practising as a lawyer at Bordeaux, Deputy Attorney-General, in fact, at the Court of Appeal, he supplemented his legal training by going through a full six years’ medical curriculum, and graduated M.D. in order to pursue psycho-physiological studies with more freedom, and to be able to form a sounder and more instructed judgment on the strange phenomena which came under his notice. Moreover, he was fortunate in enlisting the services of one who appears to be singularly gifted in the supernormal direction, an educated and interested friend, who is anxious to preserve his anonymity, but is otherwise willing to give every assistance in his power towards the production and elucidation of the unusual things which occur in his presence and apparently through his agency. In all this they have been powerfully assisted by Professor Charles Richet, the distinguished physiologist of Paris, whose name and fame are almost as well known in this country as in his own, and who gave the special evening lecture to the British Association on the occasion of its semi-international meeting at Dover in 1899.