SOCIETY FOR PSYCHICAL RE SEARCH, a society founded in England in 1882 under the presidency of Prof. H. Sedgwick, of Cambridge University, for the purpose of "making an organized at tempt to investigate that large group of debatable phenomena designated by such terms as mesmeric, psychical, and spiri tualistic." Six committees were ap pointed to examine (1) the nature and extent of any influence which may be exerted by one mind on another other wise than through the recognized sensory channels;(2) hypnotism and mesmer ism; (3) obscure relations between liv ing organisms and electric and magnetic forces; (4) haunted house and ghosts; (5) spiritualism; (6) for the collection of existing evidence in connection with these subjects, and especially in connec tion with apparitions at the moment of death, or otherwise. A special commit tee was also appointed in 1885 to investi gate the remarkable occurrences which the Theosophical Society claimed to have witnessed. All these committees, however, were subsequently dissolved, and experi mental investigation and the collection of evidence left in the hands of indi vidual members, the results of their in quiries to be embodied in papers and read before the society, and also, if they de sire, to be published by them. The so
ciety has published reports containing papers on thought reading, on mesmer ism, on apparitions and haunted houses, and on many other similar subjects. It has a membership of more than 900, with a branch in the United States with more than 500 members and associates; pub lishes monthly "Proceedings"; and has already gathered quite a large library of works in various languages, all bear ing on topics of a more or less mysterious character. Articles on various subjects have also been contributed by members of the society to various magazines. All that the "investigations" have done has been to bring together a mass of so-called evidence in the form of testimony from persons who claim to have seen or ex perienced something abnormal or out of the common way. See PSYCHICAL RE SEARCH.