172 



NATURE 



\_yune 23, 188] 



touched this chandelier on his coming beneath it. He 

 then stopped and pointed as high as he could, but not 

 being a tall man, was not able to touch the pencil-case, 

 which had been purposely placed above his reach. After 

 satisfying ourselves that his determination to reach up at 

 that particular spot could not be attributed to accident, 

 but rather that his finger appeared to be smelling the 

 object of his search, the experiment was concluded. As 

 a rule, unless success is achieved within the first two or 

 three minutes, it is never achieved at all ; but in some 

 cases, as in the one just quoted, after several minutes of 

 feeling about in various places and directions, a new 

 point of departure seems suddenly to be taken, and Mr. 

 Bishop starts off straight to the right spot. As an instance 

 of this I may quote another experiment, in which 1 placed 

 a shilling beneath a sheet of paper lying on a table which 

 was crowded with other articles. After going about the 

 room in various directions for a considerable time, this 

 table was reached, apparently by accident, and just at the 

 time when I was thinking that the experiment would 

 certainly prove a failure, Mr. Bishop suddenly became 

 more animated in his movements, and exclaiming " Now 

 I am within two feet of it," began to hover the point of 

 his finger over the table, and eventually brought it down 

 upon the sheet of paper just where the shiUing was lying 

 beneath. 



Mr. Bishop can also very frequently localise any spot 

 on his subject's person of which the subject may choose 

 to think. As in all other cases he presses the hand of 

 the subject upon his forehead with one hand, and uses the 

 other as a feeler. Here again he succeeds much better 

 with some persons than with others, and the persons with 

 whom he succeeds best are the same as those with whom 

 he does so in his other e.xperiments. Thus he altogether 

 failed with Mr. Galton, although the latter, in order to 

 fasten his attention the more exclusively on one particular 

 spot, pricked this spot with a needle. With Prof. Lan- 

 kester success was partial ; for while he thought of the 

 point of his nose, Mr. Bishop was only able to say that 

 the point thought of seemed to occupy the median line 

 of the body on the front aspect. But on a previous occa- 

 sion at Bedford Square Mr. Bishop localised correctly a 

 pain (slight toothache) from which Prof. Lankester was 

 suffering. With Prof. Croom Robertson success was 

 better, though not quite perfect, for while the place 

 thought of was the ball of the right thumb, Mr. Bishop 

 localised it in the right wrist. In the only two experi- 

 ments tried in this connection with myself the results 

 were somewhat peculiar. In the first experiment I 

 thought of a spot situated under the left scapula, and Mr. 

 Bishop localised it as situated under the right; in the 

 second experiment I thought of my right great toe-nail, 

 and for a long time Mr. Bishop prodded round and on 

 the left great toe-nail, though he eventually changed to 

 the right one, and so localised the spot correctly. In 

 both these experiments, therefore, it seemed that with 

 me Mr. Bishop experienced a strong tendency to confuse 

 symmetrically homologous parts. 



From this brief summary ol^ the results gained by 

 following Mr. Bishop's own methods, it will be seen that 

 on the whole his power of localising objects or places 

 thought of by a person whose hand he clasps is un- 

 questionably very striking. C f course the hypothesis which 

 immediately suggests itself to explain the modus operandi 

 is that Mr. Bishop is guided by the indications uncon- 

 sciously given through the muscles of his subject — differ- 

 ential pressure playing the part of the words "hot" and 

 "cold" in the childish game which these words signify. 

 Mr. Bishop is not himself averse to this hypothesis, but 

 insists that if it is the true one he does not act upon it 

 consciou-ly. He describes his own feelings as those of a 

 dreamy abstraction or " reverie,'' and his finding a con- 

 cealed object, &c., as due to an " impression borne in" 

 upon him. But however this may be (and of course we had 



no means of testing the statement) all our experiments 

 have gone to show that the hypothesis in question is the 

 true one, and that Mr. Bishop owes his success entirely 

 to a process of interpreting, whether con^ciously or un- 

 consciously, the indications involuntarily and unwittingly 

 supplied to him by the muscles of his subjects. Thus 

 when his subject is blindfold and loses his bearings, failure 

 results. Failure also results if the connection between 

 Mr. Bishop and his subject is not of a rigid nature — a 

 loose strap, for instance, being apparently of no such use 

 to him for the estabhshment of connection as a walking- 

 stick. Similarly, although he was very successful when 

 he grasped my left hand when I did not know where the 

 object was concealed, but when my left wrist was held by 

 Mr. Sidgwick, who had concealed the object ; he failed 

 when, under otherwise similar circumstances, Mr. Sidg- 

 wick held my right hand — so establishing a limp instead 

 of a firm connection through my person. 



Lastly, a number of other experiments were tried, in 

 deference to some statements which Mr. Bishop made 

 concerning his occasional success in reading thoughts of 

 a kind which could not be indicated by muscular con- 

 traction. From these experiments, it is needless to say, 

 we did not anticipate any results ; but (with the exception 

 of Prof. Lankester) we thought it was worth while to 

 make them, not only because Mr. Bishop seemed to 

 desire it, but also to satisfy the general public that we 

 had given the hypothesis of "thought-reading," as well 

 as that of " muscle reading," a fair trial. The experi- 

 ments consisted in the subject looking at some letter of 

 the alphabet which Mr. Bishop could not see, and the 

 latter endeavouring to read in the thoughts of the former 

 what the letter was. Although this experiment succeeded 

 the first time it was tried, it afterwards failed so fre- 

 quently that we entertain no doubt as to the one success 

 having been due to accident, and therefore conclude that 

 if Mr. Bishop has any powers of "thought-reading" 

 properly so-called, he has failed to show us evidence of 

 the fact. 



Deeming it a remarkable thing that such precise in- 

 formation as to a mental picture of locality should be 

 communicated so instantaneously by unconscious muscular 

 movement, we thought it desirable to ascertain whether 

 Mr. Bishop, who is able so well to interpret these indica- 

 tions, is endowed with any unusual degree of tactile 

 sensibility or power of distinguishing between small 

 variations of resistance and pressure. We therefore tried 

 the sensitiveness of his finger-tips w ith the ordinary test of 

 compass-points, but found that he did not display more 

 than a usual delicacy of tactile perception, while his 

 power of distinguishing between slight differences in 

 weights placed successively on a letter-balance concealed 

 from his eyes was conspicuously less than that dis- 

 played by Prof Croom Robertson. As Mr. Bishop is not 

 opposed to the hypothesis by which we conclude that his 

 results are obtained, there is no reason to suppose that he 

 tried to depreciate his powers of tactile sensibility and 

 of distinguishing between small differences of weight. 

 In their main features Mr. Bishop's experiments aire 

 frequently performed as an ordinary drawing-room amuse- 

 ment, and we are therefore inclined to think that he does 

 not enjoy any peculiar advantages over other persons in 

 regard to sensitiveness of touch or power of appreciating 

 pressure, but that his superior success in performing the 

 experiments is to be ascribed merely to his having paid 

 greater attention to the subject. 



In conclusion, we desire to express our thanks to Mr. 

 Bishop for the trouble which he has taken in submitting 

 to the numerous experiments, the general results of which 

 have now been stated. 



This report has been read in proof by Prof. Croom 

 Robertson, Mr. Francis Galton, and Prof. E. R. Lankester, 

 and meets with their full approval. 



George J. Romanes 



