Psychical Research.

The first of a series of lectures to be given under the auspices of the Harvard Philosophical Club, was delivered last evening before a crowded audience, by Prof. George S. Fullerton, of the University of Pennsylvania. His subject was, The Present Condition of Psychical Research. After a few introductory remarks, he proceeded to divide psychical phenomena into five classes. 1. Asomatous, e. g., communication between mind and mind, apart from the ordinary way of communication. Chance will not account for this class of phenomena; for too many experiments have been performed by responsible persons, Prof. Barrett of Dublin, in particular. He has shown that in 31 cases there has been an actual transfer of will. 2. Mesmerism, so called from Mesmer, who first brought it into notice in Paris, in 1778. He claimed that he could cure all diseases by stroking the patient with his hands. His theory was that there was a passage of a certain fluid from one person to another, but it was disproved in 1840, by a celebrated British surgeon, who showed that a mesmeric state could be produced without contact of persons. Hypnotism, or artificial somnambulism, has now attained a scientific recognition. It is the mesmeric trance in which the so-called spiritualistic phenomena arise.

The third class of psychical phenomena was especially investigated by Baron Riechenbach. He claimed some persons possessed a certain power to see luminous effects in the dark, such as the play of light around a magnet. As the experiments were performed by one man, too much confidence must not be placed in this class. Ghosts and Apparitions. The English theory is that of mind transterence; that is, if a person thinks earnestly of another, he can cause that person to see his apparition. There is grave doubt of the reality of this class of phenomena. Spiritualistic Phenomena, (a). physical phenomena, such as table tipping; altering weight of bodies, etc.; (b), chemical phenomena, such as preserving men from fire; (c), direct writing, e. g. automatic writing of a pencil on a slate; (d), musical phenomena, e. g. automatic playing of accordeon, piano, etc.; (e), spirit forms, as of human beings. Spiritualism has arisen since 1848, and now the believers in it number about 20,000,000 persons. A commission, of which the lecturer is a member, has been established to investigate this subject, but it has not yet thought it wise to publish the results of its researches. The credulity of people in general, the danger of accepting the desire for the reality and ignorance of what are natural laws, are great obstacles in the way of such an investigation. The lecturer in closing expressed his belief that before long, some definite conclusions would be arrived at. The next lecture in this course will be given on Friday evening, by Mr. Francis E. Abbot of Cambridge, on Scientific Realism.