The book will be found for the most part eminently readable—rather an unusual circumstance for a record of this kind—and the scrupulous fairness with which the author has related everything he can think of which tells against the genuineness of the phenomena, is highly to be commended. Whatever may be thought of the evidence it is manifestly his earnest wish never to make it appear to others better than it appears to himself. If critics attack the book, as they undoubtedly will, with the objection that though it may contain a mass of well-attested assertions by a competent and careful observer, yet his observations are set down without the necessary details on which an outside critic can judge how far the things really happened, and how far the observer was deceived—let it be remembered that this is admitted. Dr. Maxwell’s defence is, that to give such details as will satisfy a hostile critic who was not actually present is impossible—in that I am disposed to agree with him—he has therefore not attempted the task; and I admit, though I cannot commend, his discretion. It may be said that the attempt to give every detail necessarily produces a dreary and overburdened narrative. So it does. Nevertheless I must urge—as both in accordance with my own judgment of what is fitting, and in loyalty to the high standard of evidence, and the more stringent rules of testimony, inaugurated by the wise founders of the Society for Psychical Research—that observers should always make an effort to record precisely every detail of the circumstances of some at least of these elusive and rare phenomena; so as to assist in enabling a fair judgment to be formed by people who are not too inexperienced in the conditions attending this class of observation, and at any rate to add to the clearness of their apprehension of the events recorded. The opportunities for research are not yet ended, however, and I may be allowed to express a hope that in the future something of this kind will yet be done, when the occasion is favourable, after a study of such a record as that of the Sidgwick-Hodgson-Davy experiments in the _Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research_, vol. iv. Our gratitude to Dr. Maxwell would thus be still further increased. And now, finally, I must not be understood as making myself responsible for the contents of the book, nor for the interjected remarks, nor for the translation. The author and translator must bear their own responsibility. My share in the work is limited to expressing my confidence in the good faith of Dr. Maxwell—in his impartiality and competence,—and while congratulating him on the favourable opportunities for investigation which have fallen to his lot, to thank him, on behalf of English investigators, for the single-minded pertinacity and strenuous devotion with which he has pursued this difficult and still nebulous quest. OLIVER LODGE. PREFACE