For Professor Barrett's present views the reader is referred to his address as President of the Society for Psychical Research delivered in January 1904.[73] It is full of interest, but is not easy to quote from. Speaking of "spiritualistic phenomena," he says: "We must all agree that indiscriminate condemnation on the one hand, and ignorant credulity on the other, are the two most mischievous elements with which we are confronted in connection with this subject. It is because we, as a Society, feel that in the fearless pursuit of truth, it is the paramount duty of science to lead the way, that the scornful attitude of the scientific world towards even the investigation of these phenomena is so much to be deprecated.... I suppose we are all apt to fancy our own power of discernment and of sound judgment to be somewhat better than our neighbours. But after all, is it not the common-sense, the care, the patience, and the amount of uninterrupted attention we bestow upon any psychical phenomena we are investigating, that gives value to the opinion at which we arrive, and not the particular cleverness or scepticism of the observer? The lesson we all need to learn is, that what even the humblest of men _affirm_, from their own experience, is always worth listening to, but what even the cleverest of men, in their ignorance, deny, is never worth a moment's attention."[74] As regards Professor Sidgwick, the experimental work of the Society for Psychical Research soon convinced him that Thought-Transference, or Telepathy, was a fact. In an address in 1889, after speaking of the probabilities of testimony given being false, he says:-- "It is for this reason that I feel that a part of my grounds for believing in Telepathy, depending as it does on personal knowledge, cannot be communicated except in a weakened form to the ordinary reader of the printed statements which represent the evidence that has convinced me. Indeed I feel this so strongly that I have always made it my highest ambition as a psychical researcher to produce evidence which will drive my opponents to doubt my honesty or veracity; I think there are a very small minority who will not doubt them, and that if I can convince them I have done all that I can do: as regards the majority of my own acquaintances I should claim no more than an admission that they were considerably surprised to find me in the trick."[75]