BIOLOGICAL EXPERIMENTS. 243 



freaks of the most excitable of modern religious sects appear as 

 mild, quiet, and decorous services, and show how even the half- 

 educated have advanced in self-control. 



Probably, the communicability of electricity from one person 

 to another may have something to do with the curious phenomena 

 of what is known as " thought-reading." I must premise that I 

 exclude all experiments in " thought-reading '' where a paid or 

 professional expert of any kind is employed. Our senses are so 

 entirely at the mercy of any skilled juggler, that I should not be 

 surprised if an expert of this kind could tell me what my grand- 

 mother thought when my grandfather proposed to her. But I 

 have seen cases in my own family which appear to me unaccount- 

 able, except on the supposition that something physical can be 

 conveyed from one person to another, which influences the second 

 person, and which may be conceived to be of the nature of 

 electric force. I form a mental image of the thing I wish the 

 person experimented upon to do ; I concentrate my attention as 

 strongly as I possibly can upon this mental image, and, at the 

 same time, I " will " strongly that the thing should be done. All 

 this concentration of thought and will involves a kind of exertion 

 very difficult and exhausting to keep up long. 



In the last experiment I tried, I wished my little girl, aged 12, 

 to take a bunch of flowers out of a vase (standing with a number 

 of other ornaments) on the sideboard, and to put the bunch of 

 flowers in a certain basket on the table. x\ll this was done, very 

 slowly, but quite accurately, nor had the child any idea whilst she 

 was accomplishing these acts, of what it was she was required to 

 do. I often fail ; often succeed only partially in these simple 

 experiments ; and the failures or partial successes seem to corres- 

 pond with the idiosyncrasies of the children. Where no profes- 

 sional is concerned, the communicability of electric nervous force 

 may account for many queer eccentricities on the part of hats, 

 chairs, and tables. And it may also account for the strange 

 influence which some persons exert over their fellow-creatures. 

 They may be neither strong, nor wise, nor clever, their tempers 

 are probably equable, and they do not rule by fear ; yet they do 

 rule, or in ordinary phrase, " get their own way in everything." 

 My readers will probably be reminded of Leonora Galigai, the 



