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William Crookes
Highly distinguished physicist and
chemist. Discovered the element thallium. Elected fellow of the
Royal Society in 1863, Royal Gold Medal 1875, Davy Medal 1888,
Sir Joseph Copley Medal 1904, knighted in 1897 and the Order of
Merit in 1910. Invented the radiometer, developed the Crookes
tube, invented the cathode-ray tube, pioneered research into
radiation effects, contributed to photography, wireless
telegraphy, electricity and spectroscopy. President at different
times of the Royal Society, the Chemical Society, the
Institution of Electrical Engineers, the Society of Chemical
Industry, the Society for Psychical Research (from 1896-1899)
and the British Association. Founder of the Chemical News,
editor of Quarterly Journal of Science. |
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WITH A view to supplying the ever-increasing demand for authoritative pronouncements
upon the great question covered by the term "Psychic Research", the Two
Worlds Publishing Company Limited, has undertaken the reprinting of the
fascinating history of the investigations of Mr., now Sir, William Crookes, into
the regions tabooed by the bulk of his scientific brethren.
The
articles, here quoted, first appeared in the Quarterly Journal of Science,
of which Sir William was the able editor; and they have been supplemented by
extracts from the speech of the eminent scientist delivered from the chair of
the British Association, at its Bristol meeting in 1898, in which speech he
declared over again his convictions concerning the value of the results of
scientific investigation into what has been known as the realm of the occult.
Some
correspondences appearing in the earlier reproductions of the Quarterly
articles is withheld from this issue in order that the limit set by the price of
the work may not be exceeded. Such deletion is, however, no material loss to the
student, as it is, in the main, a repetition of the matter contained in the
following pages. The first statements of the scientist were so full, so
complete, that, with the diagrams given, they form the clearest and most
conclusive answer to any criticism.
The
phenomena investigated by Sir William Crookes are so intimately connected with
Modern Spiritualism, that his testimony to their truthfulness is a vindication
of the claims of the Spiritualists. Whatever may be said by the critic there is
no doubt that the events tabulated by the eminent scientist transpired as he
recorded them; and what the materialist may say, the Spiritualist declares that
these undoubted manifestations, with myriads of others of like purport,
establish the certainly of the existence of a world of spirits, with whom it is
at times, under certain conditions, possible to open communication.
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