Some of the older cases referred to will be found quoted in extenso in the first chapter of the Supplement [not here reproduced]. Though recorded for the most part in a fragmentary and unsatisfactory way, it will be seen that they do not lack good, or even high, scientific authority. The testimony of Mr. Esdaile, for many years Presidency Surgeon in Calcutta, cannot be despised by any instructed physiologist in our day; inasmuch as his work is now recognised as one of the most important contributions ever made to the rapidly-growing science of hypnotism. No one has denied the ability and integrity of Dr. Elliotson, nor (in spite of his speculative extravagances) of Reichenbach - who both witnessed instances of hypnotic telepathy. And though Professor Gregory, Dr. Mayo, the Rev. C. H. Townsend, and others, may not have been men of acute scientific intelligence, they were probably competent to conduct, and to record with accuracy, experiments the conditions of which involved no more than common care and honesty. We cannot but account it strange that such items of testimony as these men supplied should have been neglected, even by those who were most repelled by the ignorance and fanaticism which infected a large amount of the mesmeric literature.

But since such was the fact, the observations will hardly now make their weight felt, except in connection with the fuller testimony of a more recent date. It is characteristic of every subject which depends on questions of fact, and which has yet failed to win a secure place in intelligent opinion, that any further advance must for the most part depend on contemporary evidence. I may, therefore, pass at once to the wholly new departure in thought-transference which the last few years have witnessed.

§ 3. The novelty of this departure - as has been already intimated -consists in the fact that successful results have been obtained when the percipient was apparently in a perfectly normal state, and had been subjected to no mesmerising or hypnotising process. The dawn of the discovery must be referred to the years 1875 and 1876. It was in the autumn of the latter year that our colleague, Professor W. F. Barrett [now Sir William Barrett] brought under the notice of the British Association, at Glasgow, a cautious statement of some remarkable facts which he had encountered, and a suggestion of the expediency of ascertaining how far recognised physiological laws would account for them. The facts themselves were connected with mesmerism;² but the discussion in the Press to which the paper gave rise led to a considerable correspondence, in which Professor Barrett found his first hints of a faculty of thought-transference existing independently of the specific mesmeric rapport.

1 I refer specially to the eminent group of hypnotists at Nancy - Dr. Lie beault, and Professors Beaunis, Bernheim, and Liegeois. Dr. Liebeault has, however, personally described to us several instances of apparently telepathic transference which he has encountered in the course of his professional experience; and some observations recorded by Professor Beaunis (in his admirable article on hypnotism in the Revue Philosophique for August, 1885, p. 126), at any rate point, as he admits, to a new mode of sensibility. And since the above remarks were written, both these gentlemen have made definite experiments in telepathy, some of the results of which will be found [quoted in the original edition].

2 Proceedings of the Soeiety for Psychical Research, vol. i., pn. 241-2.

That these hints happened to be forthcoming, just at the right moment, was a piece of great good fortune, and was due primarily to a circumstance quite unconnected with science, and from which serious results would scarcely have been anticipated - the invention of the "willing-game." In some form or other this pastime is probably familiar to most of my readers, either through personal trials or through the exhibitions of platform performers. The ordinary process is this. A member of the party, who is to act as "thought-reader;" or percipient, leaves the room; the rest determine on some simple action which he, or she, is to perform, or hide some object which he is to find. The would-be percipient is then recalled, and his hand is taken or his shoulders are lightly touched by one or more of the willers. Under these conditions the action is often quickly performed or the object found. Nothing could at first sight look less like a promising starting-point for a new branch of inquiry. The "wilier" usually asserts, with perfect good faith, and often perhaps quite correctly, that he did not push; but so little is it necessary for the guiding impression to be a push that it may be the very reverse - a slight release of tension when the " willed "performer, after various minute indications of a tendency to move in this, that, or the other wrong direction, at last hits on the right one.

Even when the utmost care is used to maintain the light contact with absolute neutrality, it is impossible to lay down the limits of any given subject's sensibility to such slight tactile and muscular hints. The experiments of Drs. Carpenter and Beard, and especially those of a member of our own Society, the Rev. E. H. Sugden, of Bradford,1 and other unpublished ones on which we can rely, have shown us that the difference between one person and another in this respect is very great, and that with some organisations a variation of pressure so slight that the supposed "wilier" may be quite unaware of exercising it, but which he applies according as the movements of the other person are on the right track or not, may afford a kind of yes or no indication quite sufficient for a clue. This, indeed, is the one direct piece of instruction which the game has supplied. We might perhaps have been to some extent prepared for the result by observing the infinitesimal touches to which a horse will respond, or the extremely slight indications on which we ourselves often act in ordinary life.