Psychic force and modern spiritualism : a reply to the "Quarterly review" and other critics / by William Crookes.
- William Crookes
- Date:
- 1871
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Psychic force and modern spiritualism : a reply to the "Quarterly review" and other critics / by William Crookes. Source: Wellcome Collection.
10/26 page 8
![“ The wooden foot being i\ inches wide, and resting flat on the table, it is evident that no amount of pressure exerted within this space of ij inches could produce any addon on the balance.” But as this objection had been made by several persons, I devised certain experiments so as to entirely eliminate mechanical contad, and these experi¬ ments were fully described in my last paper. To show the singular inaccuracy of the reviewer’s statements and in¬ ferences, I give below in parallel columns, quotations from the Quarterly Review, to mark the contrast between its unfair statements and my own adual language as printed in the Quarterly Journal of Science. (Quarterly Review, Oct., 1871). “ He admitted that he had not em¬ ployed the tests which men of science had a right to demand before giving credence to the genuineness of those phenomena.” “ He entered upon the inquiry, of which he now makes public the results, with an avowed foregone con¬ clusion of his own.'' “ This obviously deprives his ‘ con- vidion of their objedive reality ’ of even that small measure of value to which his scientific charader might have given it a claim if his testi¬ mony had been impartial ?” On page 351 the reviewer insinuates and fellow-workers has been deficient. (Quarterly Journal of Science, July, 1870). “ My whole scientific education has been one long lesson in exadness of observation, and I wish it to be dis- tindly understood that this firm con- vidion [of the genuineness of certain phenomena] is the. result of most care¬ ful investigation. “ In the present case I prefer to enter upon the inquiry with no pre¬ conceived notions whatever as to what can or cannot be.” . . . “ At first, I believed that the whole affair was a superstition, or at least an unexplained trick.” . . . “I should feel it to be a great satisfadion if I could bring out light in any diredion, and I may safely say that I care not in what direction. . . “I cannot, at present, hazard even the most vague hypothesis as to the cause of the phenomena.” “ Views or opinions I cannot be said to possess on a subjed which I do not pretend to understand.”. “ The increased employment of scien¬ tific methods will promote exad ob¬ servation and greater love of truth among enquirers, and will produce a race of observers who will drive the worthless residuum of spiritualism hence into the unknown limbo of magic and necromancy.” that the early scientific training of myself Speaking for myself, I may say that my scientific training could not well have commenced earlier than it did. Some time before I was sixteen I had been occupied in experimental work in a private physical laboratory. Then I entered the Royal College of Chemistry, under Dr. Hofmann, where I stayed six years. My first original research, on a complicated and difficult subjed, was published when I was nineteen ; and from that time to the present, my scientific education has been one continuous lesson in exadness of observation.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b3057075x_0010.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
