Cambridge University; Prof. Balfour Stewart, a Fellow of the Royal Society
of England; Rt. Hon. A.J. Balfour, the eminent English statesman; Prof.
William James, the eminent American psychologist; Sir William Crookes, the
great chemist and discoverer of physical laws, who invented the celebrated
"Crookes' Tubes," without which the discovery of the X Rays,
radio-activity, etc., would have been impossible; Frederick W.H. Myers,
the celebrated explorer of the astral planes, and writer upon psychic
phenomena; Sir Oliver Lodge, the popular English scientist; and other men
of international reputation and high standing. The character of these men
at once gives the stamp of honesty and scientific accuracy to all the work
of the society.

In order that you may understand the spirit which animated these
scientific investigators in their work of the exploration of this new and
strange region of Nature, I ask you to carefully read the following words
of the presidential address of Sir William Crookes, before the Royal
Society, at Bristol, England, in 1898. Remember, please, that this address
was made before an assemblage of distinguished scientists, many of them
rank materialists and, quite skeptical of all occult phenomena--this was
nearly twenty years ago, remember. Sir William Crookes, facing this
gathering, as its president, said:

"Were I now introducing for the first time these inquiries to the world of
science, I should choose a starting point different from that of old
(where we formerly began). It would be well to begin with Telepathy; with
that fundamental law, as I believe it to be, that thoughts and images may
be transferred from one mind to another without the agency of the
recognized organs of sense--that knowledge may enter the human mind
without being communicated in any hitherto known or recognized ways. * * *
If telepathy takes place, we have two physical facts--the physical change