A remark of M. Richet, the eminent French psychologist, may be said to strike the key-note of the following essay. Richet is arguing (in 1884) for the genuine character of ‘Somnambulism’ by which he means provoked somnambulism, hypnotic phenomena. ‘If the phenomena are simulated,’ says M. Richet, ‘then the skill, the perfection, the universality of the imposture, everywhere and always, constitute one of the most extraordinary phenomena in the records of science.’ This I chanced to read, after publishing an article on ‘Comparative Psychical Research’ in the Contemporary for September, 1893. In that paper, having given a selection of reported ‘spiritualistic phenomena,’ from various ancient sources, including ‘spirit-rapping’ and a ‘medium’ of 1526, I argued, like M. Richet, that the universal similarity of the imposture, granting imposture, is a most curious phenomenon. But M. Richet was thinking of the ordinary and familiar features of hypnotism, which, as I understand, are now denied by no competent authority. The alleged occurrences which interest my inquiry are different from these, and include ghosts, physical movements of untouched objects, unexplained noises and disturbances, clairvoyance, the divining rod, crystal vision, and so forth.

The accounts of these have not been accepted by science, far from it; nor can one do otherwise than applaud science for being ‘sober and distrustful.’ However, M. Richet's contention applies to these outlying phenomena, ghosts, disturbances, clairvoyance, as much as to the accepted facts of hypnotism. The imposture in these affairs (if imposture there be, as a rule) is as uniform, and as widely diffused, as the supposed ‘simulation’ of hypnotic facts. Further, we must note that many of the contested and disdained phenomena notoriously accompany persons subject to trance, to convulsive movements, and other abnormal nervous conditions. This is said to be so at present, and can it be by accident that this was always said to be so in the past? We hear of clairvoyance, of physical movements of objects, of commands transferred and obeyed from a distance, of ‘telepathic’ hallucinations voluntarily produced, among the very people who display the ordinary and accepted phenomena of hypnotism. Now in old witch-trials, in old ghost and bogie stories, in the reports of anthropological observers among savages, we find the ordinary and accepted phenomena of hypnotism occurring among the witches, the ‘possessed,’ the ghost-seers, the savage medicine-men.