ABSTRACT
Henry Sidgwick, one of the founders and the first President of our Society, was born on 31st May 1838. His centenary has recently been celebrated by a memorial lecture at Leeds, in the neighbourhood of which city he was born, and at Cambridge, where he dwelled and worked throughout the greater part of his life. As the S.P.R. owes its existence and its present status of at least semi-respectability in scientific circles very largely to the courage, patience, wisdom, and generosity of Sidgwick, it is only fitting that the great services he rendered to it should be recalled at this time to our members. From the nature of the case, most of Sidgwick's intimate friends and colleagues are now dead or advanced in years. The present writer never knew Sidgwick personally and has had no access to unpublished sources of information about him. But he happens to have succeeded him, longo intervallo in every sense of the phrase, both as President of the S.P.R. and as Knightbridge Professor at Cambridge, and he finds Sidgwick's attitude both in philosophy and in psychical research peculiarly admirable and sympathetic. These seemed to him to be adequate grounds for undertaking to write for the Proceedings an account of Sidgwick's relations with psychical research in general and the S.P.R. in particular.
