But to the
eyes of some, even now and here, glimpses of angels ascending and
descending are visible.

Five names stand out prominently before all others among the earlier
investigators of the last thirty years--Sir William Crookes and
Professor W. F. Barrett, who are still with us; and Professor Henry
Sidgwick, Edmund Gurney, and F. W. H. Myers, who have gone. Sir William
Crookes' work in other directions has been all-absorbing, so that all he
has been able to tell us during the last few years, in relation to our
present subject, is that he had nothing to add to, and nothing to
retract from what he has said in the past. In his address as President
of the British Association in 1898, Sir William Crookes said, after
referring to his work of thirty years ago:--

"I think I see a little further now. I have glimpses of something like
coherence among the strange elusive phenomena, of something like
continuity between those unexplained forces, and laws already known....
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.
It would be well to begin with Telepathy; with the 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 recognised organs of
sense--that knowledge may enter the human mind without being
communicated in any hitherto known or recognised ways."[72]

For Professor Barrett's present views the reader is referred to his
address as President of the Society for Psychical Research delivered in
January 1904.[73] It is full of interest, but is not easy to quote from.
Speaking of "spiritualistic phenomena," he says: "We must all agree that
indiscriminate condemnation on the one hand, and ignorant credulity on
the other, are the two most mischievous elements with which we are
confronted in connection with this subject. It is because we, as a
Society, feel that in the fearless pursuit of truth, it is the paramount
duty of science to lead the way, that the scornful attitude of the
scientific world towards even the investigation of these phenomena is so
much to be deprecated.... I suppose we are all apt to fancy our own
power of discernment and of sound judgment to be somewhat better than
our neighbours. But after all, is it not the common-sense, the care, the
patience, and the amount of uninterrupted attention we bestow upon any
psychical phenomena we