The cover of this book was created by the transcriberand is placed in the public domain. A more extensive transcriber’s note canbe found at the end of this book.
METAPSYCHICAL PHENOMENA
All rights reserved
METAPSYCHICAL
PHENOMENA
METHODS AND OBSERVATIONS
BY J. MAXWELL
Doctor of Medicine
Deputy-Attorney-General at the Court of Appeal, Bordeaux, France
WITH A PREFACE BY CHARLES RICHET
Member of the Academy of Medicine
Professor of Physiology in the Faculty of Medicine, Paris
AND AN INTRODUCTION BY SIR OLIVER LODGE
Also with a New Chapter containing
‘A COMPLEX CASE,’ BY PROFESSOR RICHET
AND AN ACCOUNT OF
‘SOME RECENTLY OBSERVED PHENOMENA’
BY THE TRANSLATOR L. I. FINCH
LONDON
DUCKWORTH and CO.
3 HENRIETTA STREET, W.C.
1905
NOTE BY THE TRANSLATOR
The Translator has to thank sincerely a literaryfriend, a well-known English clergyman, who hasbeen kind enough to revise the translation, andsuggest many improvements.
INTRODUCTION
Asked by my friends in France to introduce the author,Dr. Maxwell, to English readers, I willingly consented,for I have reason to know that he is an earnest andindefatigable student of the phenomena for the investigationof which the Society for Psychical Research wasconstituted; and not only an earnest student, but a saneand competent observer, with rather special qualificationsfor the task. A gentleman of independent means,trained and practising as a lawyer at Bordeaux, DeputyAttorney-General, in fact, at the Court of Appeal, hesupplemented his legal training by going through a fullsix years’ medical curriculum, and graduated M.D. inorder to pursue psycho-physiological studies with morefreedom, and to be able to form a sounder and moreinstructed judgment on the strange phenomena whichcame under his notice. Moreover, he was fortunate inenlisting the services of one who appears to be singularlygifted in the supernormal direction, an educated andinterested friend, who is anxious to preserve his anonymity,but is otherwise willing to give every assistancein his power towards the production and elucidation ofthe unusual things which occur in his presence andapparently through his agency.
In all this they have been powerfully assisted byProfessor Charles Richet, the distinguished physiologistof Paris, whose name and fame are almost as well knownin this country as in his own, and who gave the specialevening lecture to the British Association on the occasionof its semi-international meeting at Dover in 1899.
In France it so happens that these problems have beenattacked chiefly by biologists and medical men, whereasin this country they have attracted the attention chiefly,though not exclusively, of physicists and chemists amongmen of science. This gives a desirable diversity to thepoint of view, and adds to the value of the work of theFrench investigators. Another advantage they possessis that they have no arrière-pensée towards religion orthe spiritual world. Frankly, I expect they would confessthemselves materialists, and would disclaim all sympathywith the view of a numb