Author Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1903 Excerpt:...the conception of the function of a psychological laboratory, it should be held firmly in mind that psychological laboratories have nothing to do with telepathy, spiritism, clairvoyance, animal magnetism, mesmerism, fortune telling, crystal gazing, palmistry, astrology, witchcraft, or with any other of the relics of the cults of mediaeval superstition. It is true that the question of occult thought transference in its various forms has been put to the test in a few of the laboratories, but as none of these superstitions have been able to stand the test they have been discarded as worthless hypotheses. Quite extensive and elaborate tests have been made with telepathy, but as the results secured were so meager, it is safe to say that there is not a director of any psychological laboratory in Germany or America (most of the laboratories are in these two countries) who has any faith in it. In frequent association with the cults mentioned above are certain other phenomena which have proven themselves to be worthy of consideration and which do occupy a place in a laboratory. Among such phenomena are hypnotism and what might be classed as prodigies or "freaks." To-day no one doubts the existence of hypnotism, but it is understood as something so different from what it was formerly supposed to be that it is robbed of its mysterious and uncanny connections. A mathematical prodigy is not regarded as an individual who holds relationship with an evil spirit, but as a person abnormally developed in a particular direction. Hypnotism and prodigies play such a subordinate part in the workings of a laboratory that it would not be worth while to mention them at all if it were not for the fact that they are so frequently associated with the theories which were menti...