416 Physiology of Mind- Reading. [July 
The movements of the operator in these experiments may 
be either very slow, cautious, and deliberate, or rapid and 
reckless. Brown, in his public exhibitions, was very careful 
about getting the physical connection right, and then moved 
off very rapidly, sometimes in the right direction, sometimes 
in the wrong one, but frequently with such speed as to 
inconvenience the subject on whom he was operating. These 
rapid movements serve, no doubt, in many cases, to bewilder 
or partially entrance the subject, and thus to render him far 
more likely to be unconscious of his own muscular tension 
and relaxation through which the operator is guided. 
The power of muscle-reading depends mainly, if not 
entirely, on some phase of the sense of touch. 
Every physician recognises the fact of this difference of 
susceptibility to touch ; and, in the diagnosis of certain con- 
ditions of disease, much depends on the tactns eruditus. I 
am not sure whether this delicacy of perception, by which 
muscle-reading is accomplished, is the ordinary sense of 
touch, that of contact, or of some of the special modifications 
of this sense. It is to physiologists and students of diseases 
of the nervous system a well known fact that there are 
several varieties of sensibility — to touch, to temperature, to 
pressure or weight, and to pain — which, possibly, repre- 
sent different rates or modes of vibration of the nerve- 
force. 
The proportion of persons who can succeed in muscle- 
reading, by the methods here described, is likewise a natural 
subject of inquiry. It is probable that the majority of people 
of either sex, between the ages of fifteen and fifty, could 
attain , if they chose to labour for it, under suitable instruction, 
a certain grade of skill as muscle-readers, provided, of 
course, good subjects were experimented with. It is esti- 
mated that about one in five or ten persons can be put into 
the mesmeric trance by the ordinary processes ; and, under 
extraordinary circumstances, while under great excitement, 
and by different causes, every one is liable to be thrown into 
certain stages or forms of trance ; the capacity for the trance- 
state is not exceptional ; it is not the peculiar property of a 
few individuals — it belongs to the human race ; similarly 
with the capacity for muscle-reading. The age at which 
this delicacy of touch is most marked is an inquiry of 
interest ; experience, up to date, would show that the very 
young or the very old are not good muscle-readers. 
In these mind-reading experiments, as indeed in all 
similar or allied experiments with living human beings, 
there are six sources of error, all of which must be absolutely 
