word "psychical"--the _p_ might be sounded or not, according to the taste
and fancy of the pronouncer--and the fashionable children of a scientific
age were thoroughly at ease. "There _must_ be something, you know; one
always felt that there _must_ be something." And now, if one may judge
from what one reads, psychical "science" is comfortably joining hands
with the sorcery of the Middle Ages. It is said to be a lucrative moment
for wizards that peep and that mutter. If the law against
fortune-telling were as strictly enforced in the polite world as it
occasionally is in slums and hamlets, we should have a merry time. But
it is difficult to prosecute a Professor of Telepathy--and how he would
welcome the advertisement!

Of course I know very well that all that make use of these words are not
in one and the same category. There is a study of the human mind, in
health and in disease, which calls for as much respect as any other study
conscientiously and capably pursued; that it lends occasion to fribbles
and knaves is no argument against any honest tendency of thought. Men
whom one cannot but esteem are deeply engaged in psychical
investigations, and have convinced themselves that they are brought into
touch with phenomena inexplicable by the commonly accepted laws of life.
Be it so. They may be on the point of making discoveries in the world
beyond sense. For my own part, everything of this kind not only does not
interest me; I turn from it with the strongest distaste. If every wonder-
story examined by the Psychical Society were set before me with
irresistible evidence of its truth, my feeling (call it my prejudice)
would undergo no change whatever. No whit the less should I yawn over
the next batch, and lay the narratives aside with--yes, with a sort of
disgust. "An ounce of civet, good apothecary!" Why it should be so with
me I cannot say. I am as indifferent to the facts or fancies of
spiritualism as I am, for instance, to the latest mechanical application