Chevreul's Report on the Mysterious Oscillations of the Hand-Held Pendulum

I believe my observations connect with the history of the faculties of animals; that there are such and such of their acts that have been attributed to instinct, which actually belong to the class of those I described. It is mainly with animals who live in groups that I believe it would be interesting to study, in this light, the influence of the leaders over the subordinate individuals. Finally, do nor the cited facts shed some light on the cause of the fascination exerted by one animal on another?

I believe it is in the nature of my observations to attract the attention of physiologists who, like Mr. Flourens, have examined very closely the movements raking place in animals after selective ablation of parts of their nervous system; it would seem to me important to gauge the influence that could be exerted by the ablation of some of those parts on the manifestation of the phenomena that were the subject of this letter.

Such are, my dear friend, the matters which in your estimate were likely to be of interest to those people who think along with ourselves that the procedure to be followed in psychology is the one outlined by the men to whom the natural sciences owe their advances, and who share our conviction that there is no such thing as positive metaphysics for those who ignore the essential truths of the physical and mathematical sciences. The study of man's faculties is invariably linked not only to the knowledge of the means he put to use in founding each of the special branches of those same sciences, but it is also linked to the knowledge of animals' faculties. Before attempting to compose a general system of philosophy, it is necessary to have collected as vast a number as possible of groups of analogous facts, and moreover the facts in each group must have been previously investigated in depth by specific studies.

E. CHEVREUL

(1.) I readily admit that an honest man, whose entire attention is focused on the movement which a rod he holds in his hands may acquire from an unknown cause, may very well receive from the smallest of circumstances the tendency to movement necessary to bring about a manifestation of the phenomenon with which he is occupied; for instance, if this man is looking for a spring, if he is nor blindfolded, the sight of green, lush grass, whereon he is treading, may determine in him, unbeknownst to himself, the muscular movement required to stir the rod, because of the link he established between the idea of vegetation and that of water.

(1.) It is not impossible that, in seasickness, something similar to what I just described happens in us.

COPYRIGHT 2001 Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal
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