The physiologist recognises the tendency of those with unstable, nervous temperaments--e.g. hysterical girls--to gain interest and cause excitement at any cost of trouble in developing methods of deceit. Hence the ghostly visitations of houses, the mysterious bell-ringings, rappings, spillings of water, etc. I, myself, have personally come across and investigated two of these cases--one of a young, educated woman who played pranks on the house of her hosts, pouring water into their beds, etc.; the other of a servant-maid who caused the disappearance of meat from the larder, and dirtying the cat's feet made it make foot-marks on a perpendicular wall leading to the larder window, who spirited away the gardener's firewood and wrote mysterious letters in a feigned hand, the imprint of which were found in her blotting-book, and who reported she saw a mysterious woman prowling round the house. The few eminent scientists who have expressed their belief in spiritualism are mostly physicists, e.g. Crookes, Oliver Lodge and W. Barrett--men who have not made a life-study of physiology and nervous disorders, who are not familiar with the attainments and methods of conjurers and professional impostors, and are shielded in their laboratories and home life from close acquaintance with human deceit and cunning. Their familiarity with the transmission of waves of energy in dead material, and through space leads them to concepts which cannot justly be applied to living beings. To the physiologist, who recognises the majestic unity of natural phenomena, belief in telepathy and spiritualism appear a form of materialism as gross as the ju-ju superstition of the Benin native. Nothing can excite greater contempt than the mean trivialities which are served as communications from that infinite, silent universe wherein the energy of individual life sinks on death. The belief in spiritualism works grave harm on ignorant, credulous people of nervous temperament, and fills the pockets of rascally impostors. Its practice should then be as sternly suppressed by the law as any other fraud and imposture. Dr. Culpin, in his valuable and thoughtful treatment of this subject, shows, _inter alia_, how the medium requires no less to be protected from deception and ruin of his own soul than does his dupe. SPIRITUALISM AND THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY CHAPTER I THE UNCONSCIOUS From the moment of waking till we fall asleep again our thoughts are busy, one thought following another all day long without a break and each being in some way related to the preceding one. Memories come up into the stream, the outer world is constantly affecting it through our senses, and we tend to think that all our mind-work is done in this 'stream of consciousness'.