TH UGHT-EEADING. 3 1 1 



sitting behind her and placing her finger on the girl's 

 bare arm, even above the flexed elbow." In this 

 case careful experiments proved that indiscernible 

 and probably unconscious movements of the touching 

 finger served to convey a sufficient guidance to the 

 girl's delicate skin and quick intelligence. But no 

 one who has examined such cases as this, and 

 recognised the wide range of difference between one 

 person and another in sensibility to slight muscular 

 impressions, can attach any weight to the customary 

 protestations in drawing-room experiments. On the 

 one hand, the person guiding asserts that there has 

 been no guiding, and probably often believes there 

 has been none ; on the other, the person guided is as 

 ready to asseverate that there has been no. guiding 

 influence whatever (and possibly may have recognised 

 none). But experiment shows that there has been. 



Thus, we must not be expected to find space for 

 accounts of remarkable cases of apparent mind- 

 reading or mind-guiding, generally sent without any 

 of the details that have scientific value, and without 

 any attestation more satisfactory than some remark 

 that the writer knows there was no trickery. Nor can 

 we admit, as a scientific explanation, the expression of 

 a belief that there must have been magnetism. As 

 Professor Barrett remarks, the explanation "It is 

 magnetism," seems perfectly sufficient " to many who, 

 for a thousand pounds, could not write down a single 

 true sentence on the ascertained laws of magnetic 

 attraction "; while Cf if one ventures euphemistically to 



