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Physiology of Mind-Reading. 
(Ju>y. 
When connected by a wire she was less successful than when 
she depended on pure chance without any physical connec- 
tion. In order still further to confirm this, I suggested to 
this lady to find objects with two persons touching her body 
in the manner we have above described. I told these two 
to deceive her, concentrating their minds on the object 
hidden, at the same time using conscious motion toward 
some other part of the room. These experiments, several 
timesrepeated, showed that it was possible todeceive her, just 
as we had found it possible to deceive other muscle-readers. 
It is possible to become quite an adept in this art without 
suspecting, even remotely, the physiological explanation. 
The muscular tension necessary to guide the operator is but 
slight, and the sensation it produces may be very easily 
referred by credulous, uninformed operators to the passage 
of “ magnetism and I am sure that with a number of 
operators on whom I have experimented this mistake is 
made. Some operators declare that they cannot tell how 
they find the locality, that their success is to them a mystery. 
Other operators speak of thrills or vibrations which they 
feel, auras and all sorts of indefinable sensations. These 
manifold symptoms are purely subjective, the result of mind 
aCting on the body, the emotions of wonder and expectancy 
developing various phenomena that are attributed to 
“ animal magnetism,” “ mesmerism,” or “ electricity” — to 
everything but the real cause. I have seen amateurs who 
declared that they experienced these sensations when trying 
without success to “ read mind” through the wires, or per- 
haps without any connection with the subject whatever. 
The faCts which sustain the theory that the so-called 
mind-reading is really muscle-reading — that is, unconscious 
muscular tension and relaxation on the part of the subject — 
may be thus summarised : 
i. Mind-readers are only able to find direction and locality, 
and, in order to find even these, they must be in physical 
connection with the subject, who must move his body or some 
portion of it — as the fingers, hand, or arm. If the subject 
sits perfectly still, and keeps his fingers, hand, and arm 
perfectly quiet, so far as it is possible for him to do so by 
conscious effort, the mind-reader can never find even the 
locality on which the subject’s mind is concentrated ; he can 
only find the direction where the locality is. Mind- readers 
never tell what an object is, nor can they describe its colour 
or appearance ; locality , and nothing more definite than 
locality, is all they find. Again, where connection of the 
operator with the subject is made by a wire, so arranged 
