418 Physiology of Mind-Reading. [July, 
of mind or thought reading is disproved not by any such 
experiments as are here detailed, no matter how accurate or 
numerous they may be, but by reasoning deductively from 
the broad principle of physiology, that no human being has 
or can have any qualities different in kind from those that 
belong to the race in general. The advantage which one 
human being has over another — not excepting the greatest 
geniuses and the greatest monsters — is, and must be, of 
degree only. Mind-reading, in the usual meaning of the 
term, is a faculty that in any degree does not belong — 
indeed, it is never claimed that it belongs — to the human 
race ; it cannot, therefore, belong to any individual. For 
one person to read the thoughts of another would be as much 
a violation or apparent violation of the laws of Nature as 
the demonstration of perpetual motion, the turning of iron 
into gold, or the rising of the sun in the west. Experiments 
such as here recorded, if made for the purpose of ascertaining 
whether certain persons have the power of reading thoughts, 
would .be more than unnecessary ; they would be exceedingly 
unscientific. Reasoning deductively also from the known 
laws of the involuntary life, the power to read muscles, in 
the method here described, is not only possible and probable, 
but inevitable. Everybody is a muscle-reader, although all 
are not capable of attaining the highest degrees of skill in 
the art.* 
The one fact, the only fact brought out by these experi- 
ments that could not be predicted from known laws of 
physiology, is the exceeding refinement to which muscle- 
reading can be carried, the minuteness of the localities that 
are found, and the rapidity with which, oftentimes, the 
results are obtained. This fact is of permanent value to 
science, a new and positive addition to the physiology of the 
involuntary life, and of vast suggestion in relation to the 
general subject of the interactions of mind and body in health 
and in disease. 
An incidental fact impressed on my mind during these 
researches was the prevalence and the power of the belief in 
animal magnetism. This delusion may well be regarded as 
the witchcraft of the nineteenth century ; its hand is every- 
where — on the press and the pulpit, on all our literature, on 
science itself, even on physiology, to which its phenomena 
rightly belong, and by which they can be and are fully 
* Every horse that is good for anything is a muscle-reader ; he reads the 
mind of his driver through the pressure on the bit, and by detecting tension 
and relaxation knows when to go ahead, when to stop, and when and which 
way to turn, though not a word of command is uttered. 
