The achievements of psychical research are difficult to estimate. The movement has un doubtedly contributed to knowledge of the facts investigated and the conditions under which these facts arise. It has also performed a serv ice to mankind in its critical examination both into the validity of human testimony and into certain unreliable factors in the motives to the establishment of belief. The evidence offered for a telepathic agency and for the independ ent existence of mind apart from cerebral func tions is considered in some quarters as amount ing to proof ; in others, as lending probability only to these hypotheses; and, by many educated persons, as entirely lacking in cogency. It is of importance to notice, in this connection, that be lief in the factual basis of telepathy — that is, in the influence of one mind upon another where no physical medium has yet been dis covered — does not necessarily imply a theory regarding the nature of and the conditions un derlying such influence. Various hypotheses in
tended to explain the facts in question have been offered, but no one of them has as yet found general acceptance.
Psychical research, in so far as it examines conscious experience, sustains a somewhat inti mate relation to psychology; although it is more closely allied to abnormal than to general psy chology. It should be pointed out, however, that its aims and in some respects its methods also bring it into closer relation to certain practical aspects of life and to philosophy than to psychology.
Bibliography.—Abbott, D. P.,