An incident of exact word-reading is related by Gerald Massey, the distinguished philosopher and poet. Mr. Massey met Mr. Home at the London terminus just on his (Mr. Massey’s) arrival from Hertfordshire. Home and he entered into conversation, during which Home suddenly said “he hoped Mr. Massey would go on with his poem.”
“What did he mean?” asked Mr. Massey.
“The poem,” replied Home, “you composed four lines of just now in the train.”
This was surprising to Mr. Massey, who had actually composed, but had not written, the four lines of a new poem on the journey. Mr. Massey challenged Mr. Home to repeat the lines, which Home did word for word.
How are thoughts transferred? No one can positively say. There are theories enough—the theory of brain-waves and of a universal impalpable elastic ether, of undulating motions, or other more or less materialistic hypothesis.[E]
We know there are no psychic phenomena without their corresponding physical correlatives, and, in this life at least, these are in thoughts evolved without producing corresponding molecular changes in the brain.
We notice the human brain is capable of being, and is, acted upon daily by much less subtle influences than mental impressions. We can appreciate light impinged upon our cerebral centres at the rate of millions of undulations, and sound as the result of 20,000 to 30,000 vibrations per second. So sensitives, when in the mesmeric or psychic states, are readily acted upon, and respond as in thought-transference to our thoughts and sensations, and veritably read our minds, because of the rapport or sympathy thus established. Whether they become percipients of the nerve-vibrations which escape from our own sensoriums or not, what does it matter if they can, as they frequently do, read our minds?
“Professor Wheaton,” says Hudson Tuttle, “devised a means of illustrating sympathy. If a sounding board is placed so as to resound to all instruments of the orchestra, and connected by a metallic rod of considerable length with the sounding board of a harp or piano, the instrument will accurately repeat the notes transmitted.
“The nervous system, in its two-fold relation to the physical and spiritual being, is inconceivably more finely organised than the most perfect musical instrument, and is possessed of finer sensitiveness.
“It must not be inferred that all minds are equally receptive. Light falls on all substances alike, but is very differently affected by each substance. One class of bodies absorb all but the yellow rays, another all but the blue, another all but the red, because these substances are so organised that they respond only to the waves of the colours reflected.”