532 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



[June 19, 1885. 



sions from another brain, and yet be conscious only of the effect 

 produced, just as we sometimes hare a singing in our ears and do 

 not know whether it is produced externally or internally, would 

 not such a sense account for all the phenomena of thought-reading 

 and muscle-reading, besides such every-daj' occurrences as men- 

 tioning a person's name on his approach, two persons changing 

 step at the same time, and two persons turning to look back at one 

 another at precisely the same moment ? Let ns apply this theory 

 to the commoner, and also to the less common, phenomena 

 of thought-reading. The electro-biologist mesmerises a certain 

 number of persons by a mechanical process. In this state their 

 ordinary senses are more or less inactive, but a new sense is appa- 

 rently aroused. This new sense is able to comprehend the wishes 

 of another person. On the stage, these wishes are generally ex- 

 pressed in words ; but this is for the benefit of the audience, as the 

 subject mesmerised is apparently deaf and blind for the time being. 

 The spirit medium seems to be a person in this state.* Mr. Stuart 

 Cumberland, as far as I can gather from the reports of his per- 

 formances, thinks it necessary to be touching the person whose 

 thoughts he reads, and he himself at the same time has his 

 ordinary senses about him. Now, if the theory of thought- 

 reading is correct, it is easy to see how Mr. Labouchere might 

 safely make the bet about the five-pound note under certain condi- 

 tions, for, supposing no one knew the number of the note, not even 

 Mr. Labouchere himself, there would be no thought to read, and 

 yet Mr. Bishop would not necessarily be an impostor. I once saw 

 an impostor detected thus : He borrowed a watch from one of the 

 audience, but, before doing so, asked the owner to look at the 

 number and remember it. L'nfortunately the watch had two 

 numbers, and the conjuror guessed (?) the wrong one. On the 

 other hand, one of the most remarkable experiments of those con- 

 ducted by the committee of the S.P.R. is that in which Mr. 

 Blackburne did not correctly remember the diagi'am, and Mr. 

 Smith reproduced Mr. Blackburne's incorrect idea. Had the con- 

 juror referred to above been a thought -reader, be would have read 

 the correct number or none at all. But this is self-evident ; the 

 question is, " Is there suiEcient circumstantial evidence to warrant 

 the supposition that there is a rudimentary sense of thought- 

 hearing, thought-sight, or thought-tonch ? " 



I am not certain that this sense, ordinarily dormant, would not 

 account also for the phenomena of double consciousness, as it is 

 called. AVe do not necessarily connect in our memory the pheno- 

 mena observed by one sense with those observed by another, 

 although the cause may be the same. For instance, we may asso- 

 ciate a certain combination of ideas with the ticking of a clock, 

 which the sight of the clock would never arouse. If the ordinarily 

 dormant sense were the active one in the hypnotic state, the ideas 

 aroused would be those connected with a former hypnotic state. 



Jos. W. Alexandee. 



[1770] — Mr. Blackburn, to whom I referred in my last letter 

 [1735], was an Associate of the Society for Psychical Kesearch. 

 Mr. Smith was a young mesnierist. Mr. Blackburn had previously 

 conducted many private experiments with Mr. Smith, but had been 

 accustomed to hold Mr. Smith's hand or touch his forehead, so that 

 the results of such prior exi>eriments might have been explained on 

 the muscle-reading hypothesis in preference to the thought-read- 

 ing hypothesis. 



The society always looks askance at the platform exhibitions of 

 Mr. Irving Bishop and other paid mediums, who are certainly 

 " peculiar," 



" For ways that are dark, 

 And for tricks that are vain." 



Believers in " thought-transference" prefer to rest their case on 

 the results of experiments carried on in private under test condi- 

 tions. For the accounts of these experiments I must refer readers 

 of Knowledge to the " Proceedings of the S.P.R," as I do not 

 like to encroach too much on your already over-burdened columns. 

 Otherwise I should have liked to refer more fully to the experi- 

 ments with Messrs. Blackburn and Smith, and also to those carried 

 on by the Rev. A. M. Creery with his own children, and by Mr. 

 Malcolm Guthrie and some friends, at Liverpool, with two young 

 ladies who were well-known to Mr. Guthrie. To hint at collusion 

 in these cases would be absurd, and any one who makes a careful 

 study of the results of these experiments will, I am sure, be con- 

 vinced that the S.P.I!, have made out a very " strong prim6.-facic 

 ■ case for the possibility of the molecular motion of the grey matter 

 of our brain exciting corresponding movements in that of another." 



A. Fountain. 



* If Mr. Alexander had had the same experience of "Spirit 

 Mediums" that I have, he might and would find a very much less 

 recondite explanation of their performances. — Eu. 



"THOUGHT-READIXG" (?). 



[1771] — I was glad to see, in your issue of May 22, Mr. N. G. 

 Munro's eminently sensible explanation of the manner in which 

 "pin-finding" and other feats of muscle-reading are performed. 

 The same points have been urged almost ad nauseam during the 

 last few years in the Reports of the Society for Psychical Research, 

 but as long as the confusion between " mind-reading " and 

 " muscle-reading" continues to be met with, the explanation must 

 continue to be repeated. It is specially necessary to insist (as we 

 have always done, and as Mr. Munro now does) on two facts — that 

 physical signs may be both given and received unconsciously, and 

 that unconscious physical signs may pass otherwise than through 

 contact. But Mr. Munro seems somewhat to have underestimated 

 the means of this unconscious signalling. He dwells only on " the 

 lineaments of the body," on gestures which may be read by the 

 eye. But if that was the only danger it could be oviated by blind- 

 folding the would-be percipient. A more important channel of 

 unconscious communication is sound. It the " wilier" is following 

 the " willed " person about the room, his manner of walking, or 

 even of breathing, may be a quite suiEcient guide ; for slight indi- 

 cations of pleasure, or disappointment, or expectancy, may thus be 

 given, and these are practically " Yes " or "No" hints, which, so 

 to speak, mould the subject's course for him from moment to 

 moment. And we may lay it down as a general rule that no 

 experiments where an action is to be performed, and where the 

 "wilier" is watching the subject's efforts to perform it, can have 

 any value as a test of " thought-reading," which we define as the 

 transference of ideas from one mind to another otherwise than 

 through the recognised channels of sense. 



The best experiments to try are as follows : — First, let the 

 would-be percipient, instead of having something to do (such as 

 finding a pin or ^vriting down the number of a bank-note), have 

 something to say. For instance, let A draw a card at random out 

 of a pack, and concentrate his attention on it in perfect silence ; and 

 let B, who is sitting at a little distance, and out of sight of the 

 card, try to guess what it is. There is one form of this experiment, 

 lately introduced by the celebrated French savant, M. Richet, which 

 we are especially anxious to see widelv taken up. (See " Proceed- 

 ings of the S.P.R.," Part YII., pp. 241-3. Triibner & Co.) Two 

 persons, A and B, agree to make a thousand trials, fifty a day. The 

 daily fifty will be found to occupy ten minutes or less. A takes in 

 his hands a pack of cards from which the picture-cards have been 

 removed ; he makes a random cut, whereby some card is brought 

 to the surface ; he contemplates this card. B, who is seated so that 

 he cannot even by inadvertence catch a glimpse of the face of the 

 pack, makes a guess at the suit. He is either right or wrong. If 

 he is right, A makes an upright mark en a sheet of foolscap ; if 

 he is wrong, A makes a horizontal mark. This is all over in a few 

 seconds. The operation is then repeated with another card brought 

 to the surface of the pack by another random cut ; and the mark 

 of right or wrong is duly put under the tii'st mark. At the end of 

 the day's trial there wUl be a column of fifty marks. A goes 

 through them, making crosses of the upright marks by putting a 

 stroke through them, and counting the crosses thus made. The 

 number of crosses is the number of right guesses; and this number 

 is recorded at the bottom of the column. At the end of twenty 

 days there will have been 1,000 guesses, and the bottom numbers, 

 added together, give the total of right guesses. The most probable 

 number of right guesses for pure chance to bring abont is, of 

 course, one-fourth of the whole number (there being always one 

 chance in four of guessing the suit correctly), that is 250. If the 

 number of right guesses actually attained exceeds 250, this excess 

 might, of course, be accidental ; but if a hundred couples of people 

 can be induced to do what I have described, and if the total of right 

 guesses exceeds 250 in all the cases, or in a very large pro- 

 portion of the cases, then there will be some reason to think 

 that something beyond chance has been at work ; in other 

 words, that some of B's guesses have been right, owing 

 to the fact that A, sitting near him, was concen- 

 trating his attention on the pips of a particular suit. And 

 if this form of experiment were repeated again and again 

 always, or almost always, with the result that the right guesses 

 exceeded 250, the hypothesis that "thought-transference" had 

 operated would receive ever-increasing confirmation. The great 

 advantage of this form of experiment is that it enables persons 

 who possess the faculty of thought-transference in only a slight 

 degi'ee to accumulate valuable results. We should be glad to have 

 trials made in every educated family in the kingdom. 



The second form of experiment that I would recommend is suited 

 only to persons who possess the faculty of thought-transference in 

 an exceptional degree. The "agent" draws a diagram of some 

 irregular shape, and contemplates it ; and the "percipient," sitting 

 out of sight of the diagram, waits till he seems to get an impres- 

 sion uf what its shape is, and then reproduces his impression on a 



