Early Life
He was born at Hersham, near Walton-on-Thames. He was educated at Blackheath and at Trinity College, Cambridge from 1866, where he took fourth place in the classical tripos and obtained a fellowship in 1872. His work for the tripos was done, said his friend F. W. H. Myers, in the intervals of his practice on the piano. Dissatisfied with his own executive skill as a musician, he wrote The Power of Sound (1880), an essay on the philosophy of music.
He then studied medicine with no intention of practising, devoting himself to physics, chemistry and physiology. In 1880 he passed the second M.B. Cambridge examination in the science of the healing profession. In 1881 he began the study of law at Lincoln's Inn.
In relation to Psychical Research, he asked whether there is an unexplored region of human faculty transcending the normal limitations of sensible knowledge. Gurney's purpose was to approach the subject by observation and experiment, especially in the hypnotism field. He wanted to investigate the persistence of the conscious human personality after the death of the body.
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