[Footnote 10: I am not responsible, of course, for the scientific validity
of Dr. Charcot's theory of healing 'by idea.' My point merely is that
certain experts of no slight experience or mean reputation do now admit,
as important certainties within their personal knowledge, exactly the
phenomena which Hume asks the wise and learned to laugh at, indeed, but
never to investigate.]
[Footnote 11: Pp. 353-356.]
[Footnote 12: P. 93.]
[Footnote 13: _Träume_, p. 76.]
[Footnote 14: Hegel accepts the clairvoyance of the Pucelle.]
[Footnote 15: See Dr. Dessoir, in _Das Doppel Ich,_ as quoted by Mr.
Myers, _Proceedings_, vol. vi. 213.]
[Footnote 16: _Philosophie des Geistes, Werke,_ vol. vii. 179. Berlin.
1845. The examples and much of the philosophising are in the _Zusätze_,
not translated in Mr. Wallace's version, Oxford, 1894.]
[Footnote 17: _Proceedings_, S.P.R., vol. ii. pp. 201-207, 390-392.]
[Footnote 18: _Elements of Hypnotism_, p. 67.]
[Footnote 19: Possibly Mr. Vincent only means that Elliotson's
experiments, 'little more than sober footing' (p. 57), with the sisters
Okey, were rubbish. But whether the sisters Okey were or were not honest
is a question on which we cannot enter here.]
III
ANTHROPOLOGY AND RELIGION
Among the various forms of science which are reaching and affecting the
new popular tradition, we have reckoned Anthropology. Pleasantly enough,
Anthropology has herself but recently emerged from that limbo of
the unrecognised in which Psychical Research is pining. The British
Association used to reject anthropological papers as 'vain dreams based on
travellers' tales.' No doubt the British Association would reject a paper
on clairvoyance as a vain dream based on old wives' fables, or on
hysterical imposture. Undeniably the study of such themes is hampered by
fable and fraud, just as anthropology has to be ceaselessly on its guard
against 'travellers' tales,' against European misunderstandings of savage
ideas, and against civilised notions and scientific theories unconsciously
read into barbaric customs, rites, traditions, and usages. Man, _ondoyant
et divers_, is the subject alike of anthropology and of psychical
research. Man (especially savage man) cannot be secluded from disturbing
influences, and watched, like the materials of a chemical experiment in a
laboratory. Nor can man be caught in a 'primitive' state: his intellectual
beginnings lie very far behind the stage of culture in which we find the
lowest known races. Consequently the matter on which anthropology works is
fluctuating; the evidence on which it rests needs the most sceptical
criticism, and many of its conclusions, in the necessary absence of
historical testimony as to times far behind the lowest known savages, must
be hypothetical.
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