our
efforts, is neither premature praise nor equally premature theorizing,
but active co-operation in our endeavor to improve and extend our
experiments in thought-transference. We want to get our telepathic
transmissions distant, definite, and reproducible.

It is desirable to get them _at long distances_,--not because it is
really more marvellous that thought should thus travel a million miles
than that it should travel a millimetre,--but for the merely
practical reason that at long distances it is easy to avoid two main
sources of error, namely, _hyperaesthesia_, which may be quite
unconscious, and _fraudulent codes_, which may be hard to detect.
Most, nay, probably all, of the so-called experiments in
thought-transference which have been offered by "thought-readers,"
etc., from the public platform, have really had nothing at all to do
with thought-transference, have depended either on abnormal delicacy
of tactile and other sensory perception, or on the adroit use of
preconcerted signals. It is only when the observer has complete
control of the conditions (which he never has in any public
exhibition), that it is worth while to conduct experiments between two
persons in the same room.

And even in cases where the good faith--the _conscious_ good faith--of
everyone concerned is above suspicion, it must be remembered that
there are both unconscious actions and unconscious perceptions which
may wholly vitiate an experiment. The rule should be so to arrange the
experiment that the percipient _cannot_ profit by unconscious
indications; that he cannot (for example) see the expression of the
agent's face, or hear the sound of his pencil as he writes down a
number to be guessed. Such precautions should be a matter of course;
and when they are taken, these experiments near at hand are certainly
the easiest and best for private experimenters to begin with, although
the desirability of gradually increasing the distance between the
persons concerned should always be kept in view.

Let A and P begin their trial, then, in quiet and calm of mind; let A,
the agent, sit behind P, the percipient, and not in contact. Let A be
provided with a full pack of cards, in which he replaces the card
drawn, after each trial, or with a bag of known numbers--say from ten
to one hundred--a range convenient for computation--in which bag he
replaces and shuffles up the number drawn, after each trial. Let him
draw a card (to take cards as our examp