6 3 6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



agreed upon quite unsuspected by the audience to be amused or 

 deceived. 



We have, therefore, an intelligible and admitted explanation 

 which fully serves to cover all the facts in question. Such things are 

 constantly done by collusion it is a vera causa. It would be illog- 

 ical to substitute for this a perfectly gratuitous hypothesis and an 

 unknown agency. This is especially true in the case of such a set of 

 phenomena as we are now considering. The possibility of thought- 

 reading, as alleged by the writers of the paper, is so far beyond, or 

 rather contrary to, universal experience that some use might fairly be 

 made of the a priori argument, although the case need in no way 

 rest on such a method. It may be said in passing that there is an 

 enormous prima facie objection to the truth of the proposition that 

 such divination is possible : the assumption and conviction of the con- 

 trary, based on immemorial experience, being, as it were, one of the 

 suppressed major premises of all social intercourse. 



On this argument, however, we would not depend unduly. The 

 case against the genuineness of the asserted phenomena seems strong 

 enough without it. 



The children in question were not blindfolded. 



In most of the experiments there is no mention made of silence 

 being preserved. On the contrary, we may infer that no such rule was 

 made ; as the children must have been corrected when their guesses 

 were wrong, as they often were. 



On the hypothesis of collusion, it must further be noted that, in 

 order to minimize the difficulty of the code of signals, and simplify 

 the performance as much as possible, the child was previously in- 

 formed of the nature of the object selected e. g., whether it was a 

 card or a name. The first guess, then, would give an opportunity for 

 the conveyance of perhaps even the final hint contained in the correc- 

 tion offered. 



The mistake made by the servant in guessing the name " 'Enry " 

 for "Emily" is obviously significant, and an excellent example of an 

 " undesigned coincidence." Surely it must lead almost every plain 

 mind to the irresistible conclusion that a mistaken whisper or facial 

 gesture played some part in the phenomenon. This remark applies as 

 well to the errors made by the children in the case of words alike in 

 sound. 



The theory of collusion is, moreover, strongly countenanced by the 

 fact of the mediums being children, who are always ready to join in 

 any game of deception ; and by the association with them of the 

 servant-girl a valuable fact, putting out of court the assumption of 

 any inherited special quality peculiar to the family, as an explanation, 

 possibly plausible to some minds, of the alleged marvels. 



It will probably, however, be readily allowed, with the authors of 

 the article, that the experiments made in the presence of the members 



