of the Unconscious or Subconscious. But Gurney’s purpose was to approach the subject by observation and experiment, especially in the hypnotic field, whereas vague and ill-attested anecdotes had hitherto been the staple of the evidence of metaphysicians. The tendency of his mind was to investigate whatever facts may give a colour of truth to the ancient belief in the persistence of the conscious human personality after the death of the body. Like Joseph Glanvill’s, the natural bent of Gurney’s mind was sceptical. Both thought the current and traditional reports of supernormal occurrences suggestive and worth investigating by the ordinary methods of scientific observation, and inquisition into evidence at first hand. But the method of Gurney was, of course, much more strict than that of the author of Sadducismus Triumphatus, and it included hypnotic and other experiments unknown to Glanvill. Gurney began at what he later saw was the wrong end by studying, with Myers, the “séances” of professed spiritualistic “mediums” (1874–1878). Little but detection of imposture came of this, but an impression was left that the subject ought not to be abandoned. In 1882 the Society for Psychical Research was founded. (See Psychical Research.) Paid mediums were discarded, at least for the time, and experiments were made in “thought-transference” and hypnotism. Personal evidence as to uninduced hallucinations was also collected. The first results are embodied in the volumes of Phantasms of the Living, a vast collection (Podmore, Myers and Gurney), and in Gurney’s remarkable essay, Hallucinations. The chief consequence was to furnish evidence for the process called “telepathy,” involving the provisional hypothesis that one human mind can affect another through no recognized channel of sense. The fact was supposed to be established by the experiments chronicled in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, and it was argued that similar experiences occurred spontaneously, as, for example, in the many recorded instances of “deathbed wraiths” among civilized and savage races. (Tylor, Primitive Culture, i. chapter xi., especially pp. 449-450, 1873. Lang, Making of Religion, pp. 120-124, 1898.) The dying man is supposed to convey the hallucination of his presence as one living person experimentally conveys his thought to another, by “thought-transference.” Gurney’s hypnotic experiments, marked by great exactness, patience and ingenuity, were undertaken in 1885–1888. Their tendency was, in Myers’s words, “to prove—so far as any one operator’s experience in this protean subject can be held to prove anything—that there is sometimes, in the induction of hypnotic phenomena, some agency at work which is neither ordinary nervous stimulation (monotonous or sudden) nor suggestion conveyed by any ordinary channel to the subject’s mind.” These results, if accepted, of course corroborate the idea of telepathy. (See Gurney, “Hypnotism and Telepathy,” Proceedings S. P. R. vol. iv.) Experiments by MM. Gibert, Janet, Richet, Héricourt and others are cited as tending in the same direction. Other experiments dealt with “the relation of the memory in the hypnotic state to the memory in another hypnotic state, and of both to the normal or waking memory.” The result of Gurney’s labours, cut short by his early death, was to raise and strengthen the presumption that there exists an unexplored region of human faculty which ought not to be neglected by science as if the belief in it were a mere survival of savage superstition. Rather, it appears to have furnished the experiences which, misinterpreted, are expressed in traditional beliefs. That Gurney was credulous and easily imposed upon those who knew him, and knew his penetrating humour, cannot admit; nor is the theory likely to be maintained by those whom bias does not prevent from studying with care his writings. In controversy “he delighted in replying with easy courtesy to attacks envenomed with that odium plus quam theologicum which the very allusion to a ghost or the human soul seems in some philosophers to inspire.” In discussion of themes unpopular and obscure Gurney displayed the highest tact, patience, good temper, humour and acuteness. There never was a more disinterested student. In addition to his work on music and his psychological writings, he was the author of Tertium Quid (1887), a collection of essays, on the whole a protest against one-sided ideas and methods of discussion. He died at Brighton on 23rd June 1888, from the effects of an overdose of narcotic medicine. (A. L.)
GURWOOD, JOHN (1790–1845), British soldier, began his
career in a merchant’s office, but soon obtained an ensigncy in
the 52nd (1808). With his regiment he served in the “Light
Division” of Wellington’s army throughout the earlier Peninsular
campaigns, and at Ciudad Rodrigo (19th Jan. 1812) he
led one of the forlorn hopes and was severely wounded. For his
gallant conduct on this occasion Wellington presented Gurwood
with the sword of the French governor of Ciudad Rodrigo. A
little later, transferring to the 9th Light Dragoons, he was made
brigade-major to the Guards’ cavalry which had just arrived in
the Peninsula. In the latter part of the war he served as brigade-major
to Lambert’s brigade of the sixth infantry division, and
was present at the various actions in which that division played
a conspicuous part—the Nivelle, the Nive, Orthes and Toulouse.
At Waterloo Captain Gurwood was for the third time severely
wounded. In the first twelve years of the peace he was promoted
up to the grade of lieut.-colonel, and in 1841 became
brevet-colonel. He was for many years the duke of Wellington’s
private secretary, and was entrusted by him with the collection
and editing of the Wellington Despatches, which occupied Gurwood
from 1837 to the end of his life. This work is a monument
of industrious skill, and earned its author a Civil List Pension of
£200. But overwork and the effects of his wounds had broken
his health, and he committed suicide on Christmas day 1845.
He was a C.B. and deputy-lieutenant of the Tower.
GUSLA, or Gusli, an ancient stringed instrument still in use
among the Slavonic races. The modern Servian gusla is a kind
of tanbur (see Pandura), consisting of a round, concave body
covered with a parchment soundboard; there is but one horse-hair
string, and the peg for tuning it is inserted in oriental fashion
in the back of the head. The gusla is played with a primitive
bow called goudalo. The gouslars or blind bards of Servia and
Croatia use it to accompany their chants. C. G. Anton[1] mentions
an instrument of that name in the shape of a half-moon
strung with eighteen strings in use among the Tatars. Prosper
Merimée[2] has taken the gusla as the title for a book of Servian
poems, which are supposed to have been collected by him among
the peasants, but which are thought to have been inspired by the
Viaggio in Dalmazia of Albarto Fortis.
Among the Russians, the gusli is an instrument of a different type, a kind of psaltery having five or more strings stretched across a flat, shallow sound-chest in the shape of a wing. In the gusli the strings, of graduated length, are attached to little nails or pins at one end, and at the other they are wound over a rod having screw attachments for increasing and slackening the tension. There is no bridge to determine the vibrating length of the strings. The body of the instrument is shaped roughly like the tail of the grand piano, following the line of the strings; the longest being at the left of the instrument. Matthew Guthrie gives an illustration of the gusli.[3] (K. S.)
GUSTAVUS I. ERIKSSON (1496–1560), king of Sweden, was born at his mother’s estate at Lindholm on Ascension Day 1496. He came of a family which had shone conspicuously in 15th-century politics, though it generally took the anti-national side. His father, Erik Johansson of Rydboholm, “a merry and jocose gentleman,” but, like all the Swedish Vasas, liable to sudden fierce gusts of temper, was one of the senators who voted for the deposition of Archbishop Trolle, at the riksdag of 1517 (see Sweden, History), for which act of patriotism he lost his head. Gustavus’s mother, Cecilia Månsdåtter, was closely connected by marriage with the great Sture family. Gustavus’s youthful experiences impressed him with a life-long distrust of everything Danish. In his eighteenth year he was sent to the court of his cousin Sten Sture. At the battle of Brännkyrka, when Sture
