Interesting and revolutionary as are the recent additions to philosophical
physics brought about by the discovery of radium and its like, it is the
other phase of this great physicist's mental trend which particularly
interests the student of human behavior-- that wisdom which gives him (as it
gave William James, and for a like reason), the bravery to look a bit beyond
the more or less materialistic confines of mere science into the broader
realm. And strange, is it not, that a man NEED be brave in this twentieth
century Domini to discuss spiritism and survival and telepathy? Only those
do it who cannot "lose their jobs." Can one indeed honestly doubt that many
an intelligent psychologist to-day is kept from investigating this pressing
phase of knowledge largely, or even solely, by the materialistic incubus
whose continuance still stands for an academic salary usually sufficient to
buy wife and children bread, if not a little meat?
"Material bodies are all that we have any control over, are all that we are
experimentally aware of; anything that we can do with these is open to us;
any conclusions we can draw about them may be legitimate and true. But to
step outside their province and to deny the existence of any other region
because we have no sense-organs for its appreciation, or because (like the
ether) it is too uniformly omnipresent for our ken, is to wrest our
advantages and privileges from their proper use and apply them to our own
misdirection." . . . "I am one of those who think that the methods of
science are not so limited in their scope as has been thought: that they can
be applied much more widely, and that the psychic region can be studied and
brought under law too. Allow us anyhow to make the attempt. Give us a fair
field. Let those who prefer the materialistic hypothesis by all means
develop their thesis as far as they can; but let us try what we can do in
the psychical region, and see which wins. Our methods are really the same as
theirs--the subject-matter differs. Neither should abuse the other for
making the attempt."
Here is this matter in a nutshell, and the evolution of cosmology in the
last few years makes this argument and this plea greatly more persuasive
still, for it forges one more link in the actual knowledge of continuity.
Twenty-four pages of useful, explanatory notes follow in this volume, the
text of the Address. The book lacks an index. To those sapient ones who
have not already saved the important little work out of Science, the dollar
which this volume costs is a dollar well-spent, unless, indeed, philosophy
be to him but a reproach. GEORGE V. N. DEARBORN. Tufts Medical and Dental
Schools.
ADVENTURINGS IN THE PSYCHICAL. By H. Addington Bruce. Little, Brown & Co.,
1914.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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