SPOOKS AND EXPERIMENTS

Most college men regard the realm of the psychic only as an inexhaustible mine of rather interesting stories, and a "medium" as a species of charlatan earning a living by making giggling girls jump. In view of this wide-spread "he-man" contempt of such stories "authorized by a grandam", it is surprising that Professor MacDougall received as many as six hundred replies out of the fifteen hundred questionnaires which he sent forth.

Whether these six hundred were prompted to reply out of that secret, thrilling half-belief in the supernatural which crawls in the bottom of every man's mind, or, out of pure scientific interest "in little", the response should help out a good cause. Although table tipping and ghosts have largely gone out of fashion, the belief in spirits, or better, talking spirits, is stronger than ever. And where there is so much smoke, there ought to be a little fire. But Professor MacDougall has limited his study to the field of mental telepathy. Of this "though transference" there are so many evidences that few can doubt the existence of the phenomenon.

In age Psychology is still a baby among the sciences. Within the short sixty years or so of its active life it has been so busy in turning out marvels in its study of the human mind, that it has been able to pay little attention to supernatural or extraordinary phenomena. It has never called them false; it has simply asked for proofs. Now with the great renaissance of the supernatural, it has determined to go out and get proofs for itself. Just as William James was a pioneer in discovering how the human mind worked, so now Professor MacDougall, following in his footsteps and finding a laboratory of undergraduates to his hand, may be the first to discover the hidden means of communication between mind and mind.