my attention several years ago, when I was engaged in the study of the physiology of mind-reading, and making experiments in mental therapeutics; and in essays published on those topics I briefly noted these errors, which I was obliged to study out, and without any theoretical guide or precedent. I found that the whole matter—the importance and interest of which were of the very highest, practically as well as scientifically—was as unexplored as central Africa, and that it was necessary to hew one's way clear of infinite obstructions at every step.
From the elevation of this subject to a positive science these two practical benefits must flow:
1. The world will be spared the reports of such experiments as those of the physician who examined into the condition of the hysterical girls that were the cause of the Salem witchcraft epidemic, and of the committees of the French Academy, of Gregory and of Elliotson and others, with clairvoyance and mesmeric trance; of Crookes with Home, of Wallace and Zöllner with Slade, and, latest of all, of Parkhurst and others with Mollie Fancher; of Charcot, Westphal, and their coadjutors with metalloscopy and metal-therapeutics; and will at the same time be able to reach the solid truth that lies behind all such accredited phenomena. These experiments and these reports are often made by strong and earnest men; indeed, the abler the experimenter in the present state of the subject, the worse his experiments and his reports of these experiments: instead of arriving at the truth of many questions of physiology, we get farther and farther from it the more we study them.
2. There will be more precision to all our investigations in regard to the action of remedies, and especially of new remedies. At the present time we know not whether to believe or reject any report of the virtues of any new medicine or mode of treatment, however high the authority for the reports, for we feel instinctively the elements of error which those who introduce new remedies and modes of treatment ought to know, and in time will know and rationally provide for.
3. Men of narrow or but limited ability will be able to attain accurate results in experimenting with living human beings where now the strongest scientific geniuses of the world are every day failing abjectly and humiliatingly. Sir William Hamilton, in his work on "Logic," remarks most truly that the proud boast of Bacon that, by the system of inductive philosophy, it would be possible for ordinary men to make discoveries in science, has been strictly fulfilled: every day under the light of the inductive method very commonplace minds are finding new and important facts that go to swell the current of science. Genius of the first order is rare, and in every field of knowledge the details of cultivation must be worked out by the average man; the bulk of the work is done, always has been done, and probably always will be done by talent rather than by genius.
