Alfred Russel Wallace 



at first than Prof. Barrett had had, they were ultimately 

 convinced of the genuineness of the phenomena. In addi- 

 tion, Mr. Edmund Gurney, Mr. Frederic Myers, Prof. A. 

 Hopkinson and Prof. Balfour Stewart, all responded to 

 Prof. Barrett's invitation to visit Buxton and test the 

 matter for themselves, and all came to the same con- 

 clusion as he had. Subsequently Gurney and Myers asso- 

 ciated their name with Barrett's in a paper on the subject, 

 published in the 'Nineteenth Century. 



Prof. Barrett asked Wallace to read over the first 

 report made by Prof, and Mrs. Sidgwick, which at first 

 seemed somewhat disheartening, and the following is his 

 reply : 



Remarks on Experiments in Thought Reading by 

 Mr. and Mrs. Sidgwick at Buxton 



The failure of so many of these experiments seems to 

 me to depend on their having been conducted without any 

 knowledge of the main peculiarity of thought reading or 

 clairvoyance — that it is a perception of the object thought 

 of or hidden, not by its name, or even by its sum total of 

 distinctive qualities, but by the simple qualities separately. 

 A clairvoyant will perceive a thing as round, then as yellow, 

 and finally as an orange. Now Mr. Galton's experiments 

 have shown how various are the powers of visualising objects 

 possessed by different persons, and how distinct their modes 

 of doing so ; and if these distinct visualisations of the same 

 thing are in any way presented to a clairvoyant, there is 

 little wonder that some confusion should result. This would 

 suggest that one person who possesses the faculty of clearly 

 visualising objects would meet with more success than a 

 number of persons some of whom visualise one portion or 

 quality of the object, some another, while to others the name 

 alone is present to the mind. It follows from these considera- 

 tions that cards are bad for such experiments. The qualities 

 of number, CQlour, form and arrangement may be severally 



