It is the "delicate psychological conditions" of which Professor Lodge here speaks that are in danger of being ignored, just because they cannot be measured and handled. The man who first hears of thought-transference very naturally imagines that, if it is a reality, it ought to be demonstrated to him at a moment's notice. He forgets that the experiment being essentially a mental one, his own presence - so far as he has a mind - may be a factor in it; that he is demanding that a delicate weighing operation shall be carried out, while he himself, a person of unknown weight, sits judicially in one of the scales. After a time he will learn to allow for the conditions of his instruments, and will not expect in the operations of an obscure vital influence the rigorous certainty of a chemical reaction.

I cannot conclude this division of the subject without a reference to a remarkable set of diagrams which appeared in Science for July, 1885 the first-fruits of the investigation of thought-transference set on foot by the American Society for Psychical Research. Most of the trials were carried out by Mr. W. H. Pickering (brother of the eminent astronomer at Harvard) and his sister-in-law. Though the success is far less striking to the eye than in the several English series, the evidence for some agency beyond chance seems on examination irresistible.

§ 10. So far the present sketch has included transference of impressions of the visual and auditory sorts only - impressions, moreover, which for the most part represented formed objects or definite groups of sensations, not sensations pure and simple. These are not only by far the most important forms of the phenomenon, in relation to the wider spontaneous operations of telepathy which we shall consider in the sequel; but are also the most convenient forms for experiment. Moreover, I have been tracing the development of the subject historically; and it was in connection with ideas belonging to the higher forms of sense that the transferences to percipients who were in a normal state were first obtained. But the existence of such cases would prepare us for transferences of a more elementary type - transferences of a simple formless sensation and nothing more, which should impress the percipient not as an idea, but in its direct sensational character; and if the phenomena be arranged in a logical scale from the less to the more complex, such cases would have the priority.

For their exhibition, it is naturally to the lower senses that we should look - taste, smell, and touch - which last (since a certain intensity of experience seems necessary) we should hardly expect to prove effective till it reached the degree of pain. These lower forms are, in fact, those which preponderate in the earlier observations of mesmeric rapport in this country; and our own experiments in mesmerism have included several instances of this sort.1 Thus the discovery that a similar "community of sensation" might exist between persons in a normal state, and without any resort to mesmeric or hypnotic processes, not only filled up an obvious lacuna, but gave a fresh proof of the fundamental unity of our many-sided subject.

In the case of taste, we owe the discovery to Mr. Guthrie - the phenomenon having been, we believe, first observed by him on August 30th, 1883, and first fully examined in the course of a visit which Mr. Myers and the present writer paid to him in the following week. Failing to obtain very marked success in other lines of experiment, it occurred to us to introduce this novel form; but the superiority of the results was probably due simply to the fact that they were obtained on the later days of our visit, when the "subjects" had become accustomed to our presence.

I will quote the report made at the time: -

"The taste to be discerned was known only to one or more of the three actual experimenters; and the sensations experienced were verbally described by the ' subjects ' (not written down), so that all danger of involuntary muscular guidance was eliminated.

"A selection of about twenty strongly-tasting substances was made.

1It is impossible here to give more than a selection of cases. I must refer the reader to chap. i. of the Supplement [original edition], and to the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, vol. i., p. 225, etc., vol. ii., p. 17, etc., and p. 205, etc.; and Mr. Guthrie's *' Farther Report" in vol. iii.