4. Answers which were not only not in his mind, but which he directly pronounces "_false_" and thus dismisses them. Such, for instance, is the answer "Nobody knows," to the question "Where is Mary C----?" "That this," says he, "was false, is evident on the very face of it."
With this analysis of the leading phenomena cited by Mr. H. before us, lot us look at the wonderful things which "electricity and magnetism" are made to accomplish.
I do not dispute that there is such a power of the human mind as that known as clairvoyance. I have had too many proofs of this to doubt it. But I have had equally positive proofs that the development of its phenomena is dependent upon certain necessary conditions, among which are, that the agent of them, in order to be able to reveal the secret thoughts of another, must possess by nature peculiar nervous susceptibilities, enabling his psychic emanations, so to speak, to sympathetically coalesce with those of the person whose thoughts and internal mental states are to be the subject of investigation. But this sympathetic coalescence can not take place where there is the slightest psychic repulsion or antagonism to the clairvoyant on the part of the interrogating party. Moreover, even when all these conditions are present, nothing can be correctly read from the mind of the questioner unless there is on his mind a _clear and distinct definition_ of the matters of which he seeks to be told.
But even in class No. 1 of the above series we find that "electricity," hitherto believed to be only an imponderable and impersonal fluid, has, upon Mr. H.'s theory, been able to accomplish the revealment of secret thoughts entirely independent of all these conditions. It is distinctly stated that those young persons whose hands were on the Planchette knew nothing whatever of the matters which formed the several subjects of inquiry; and for aught that is stated to the contrary, they appear to have been perfectly awake and in their normal state. In addition to this, it is to be observed that Mr. Headley here appears in the assumed character of a captious, contentious, and somewhat irritating questioner, which, whether he intended it or not, was entirely the opposite of that harmonious and sympathetic interflow of mental states known in other cases to be necessary to a successful clairvoyant diagnosis of inward thoughts. And yet "electricity" overleaps all these obstacles, seizes facts that occurred many years previous, some of which were known only to Mr. H. and wife, others only to Mr. H. himself, and instantly flashes forth the appropriate answer! Here is science! If there were no other phenomena connected with Planchette, this alone might well challenge the attention of philosophers!