A PSYCHIC EXPERIMENT.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20022, 12 February 1927, Page 10

A PSYCHIC EXPERIMENT.

Thb Psychical Research Society is to be congratulated on its enterprise. It has arranged, so we learn, to lock up six scientists on a certain night this month, cutting them off from all ordinary means of communication, in order that they may think messages for transmission to mankind at large. The scheme has the approval and assistance of Sir Oliver Lodge. It is hoped by the Society that wireless may have brought within reach achievements hitherto undreamed of in the way of thought transmission. Exactly why the thoughtcommunicating scientists must be locked up is not altogether clear unless it be that it is deemed necessary to take account of the proverbial frailties of human nature and the risk of mundane interference. And, so, each of the chosen six will presumably sit for so many hours like Saturn in his cell, quiet as a stone, concentrating on a thought which has been written out beforehand and placed in a sealed envelope. Listeners-in throughout the world—and herein lies an intriguing element in the scheme—are invited to be on the alert at the appointed hour for the receipt of these winged thought messages and immediately to send back » record of their impressions. The Psychical Research Society is displaying some courage in thus taking the world into its confidence and, in a sense, casting itself upon its mercy. For the listener-in who is disappointed in his efforts to pick up a genuine thought in the ether is as likely as not to draw upon his imaginative resources, and thus the society may even be exposing itself to the risk of being swamped with communications despatched in a spirit of levity. Moreover, thoughts and language are indissolubly associated, and interesting complications may follow in this relation. Whether or not another illustration of tho triumph of mind over natter is in store, it is quite possible that the Psychical Research Society’s test will be productive of some surprising results. The idea of the scientist under lock and key “shooting his thoughts, by hidden nerves, throughout the solid realm,” suggests a subject for the cartoonist.