CHAPTER II.

THE EXPERIMENTAL BASIS: THOUGHT-TRANSFERENCE.

§ 1. The term "thought-transference" has been adopted in preference to "thought-reading," as the latter term (1) has become identified with exhibitions of muscle-reading, and (2) suggests a power of reading a person's thoughts against his will. 10-11

§ 2. The phenomena of thought-transference first attracted the attention of competent witnesses in connection with "mesmerism" An early term for hypnosis. and were regarded as one of the peculiarities of the mesmeric rapport Original: "rapport" (connection/relation).; this was most prejudicial to their chance of scientific acceptance. 11-13

§ 3. Hints of thought-transference between persons in a normal state were obtained by Professor Barrett William Fletcher Barrett (1844–1925), a physicist and early psychical researcher. in 1876. Just at that time, the attention of others was attracted to certain phenomena of the "willing-game" A parlor game involving finding hidden objects, often dismissed as muscle-reading., which were not easily explicable (as almost all so-called "willing" and "thought-reading" exhibitions are) by unconscious muscular guidance. But the issue could never be definitely decided by cases where the two persons concerned were in any sort of contact. 13-17

§ 4. Even where contact is excluded, other possibilities of unconscious guidance must be taken into account; likewise, the possibility of conscious collusion must be considered. Anyone unable to gain conviction as to the bona fides Original: "bona fides" (good faith). of experiments by acting as agent or percipient himself (and so becoming one of the people who would have to take part in the trick, if it were one) may fairly demand that the responsibility for the results be spread over a considerable group of persons—a group so large that he finds it impossible to extend to all of them the hypothesis of deceit (or such imbecility as would take the place of deceit) which he might apply to a smaller number. 17-20

§ 5. Experiments with the Creery family; earlier trials. 21-22
Crucial experiments, in which knowledge of what was to be transferred (usually the idea of a particular card, name, or number) was confined to members of the investigating committee who acted as agents; with a table of results and an estimate of probabilities. 22-26
In many cases reckoned as failures, there was a degree of approximate success which was very significant. 27-28
The form of the impression in the percipient's mind seems to have been sometimes visual and sometimes auditory. 28-29

§ 6. Reasons why these experiments were not accessible to a larger...