St. Paul daily globe., 1889-04-01
ABOUT MIND READING.

OOu 10 tllC AIT dbUtT. CuIlSb IS tfi6
worlds brother. '.The sky is the roof
OF but one people"
ABOUT MIND READING.
Rev. II. M. Simmons Tries His
Hand at Explaining 1t.
AT the First Unitarian church yester-
day morning Rev. II. M. Simmons
preached an interesting sermon on
mind Reading" Following is all abb
stract:
Nature seems to dislike secrets, and
is ever publishing them to all who will
learn her languages. The buried his
tory of the earth is upheaved in the
mountain sides and told to the geolo-
glSt. Matter is carried far by rivers,
waves and winds; ana when too fine to
be seen, still tells its secret to the chem
lst. Even without this transfer of mat
ter, news is spread more swiftly by
waves of air or ether. The speakers
words are borne in all directions faster
than the wind, and told in a thousand
ears at once. They are even carried to
distant cities in the telephone, and to
distant centuries in the phOnOgraph;
and far finer sounds and secrets are
whispered in the microphone.
Light is still greater revealer of
secrets, publishing to all eyes every
thing it touches, and telling infinitely
more if it can find a microscope to
speak through, 1t even travels space,
brings message from the moon in a
second and half, and will bring far
fuller one If allowed to come through
a telescope tube. 1t even flies from
furthest space to tell the last explosion
in the sun and latest news from the
stars; and if only given spectroscope
to write Its story in, will tell the gases
OF the nebula and little gossip from
the milky way. 1t not only tells it's
story in the eye for an instant, but
prints it to keep, if it can only find a
photograph plate, and makes its pict-
ure in fraction of a second, too. 1t
even pictures what cannot be seen at
all; and photograph taken tonight of
given spot in the sky will show every
star that the telescope can find there,
and about as many more. Such tell
tale is the light.
And electricity is another. 1t carries
items of news and gossip around the
world in no time, and to all the cities of
the globe, to be repeated in countless
papers and be known by everybody
next day. 1t tells even what is going to
be, and lets us know whether to expect
a blizzard OF thaw, and whether to
take the umbrella or paraSOl. And it
not only tells so much through little
wire, but will start other currents out
side the wire, by mysterious induction,
and enable the electrician on the NOV
ing train to read the messages flashing
over the line along the track.
With nature so eager to remove all
other secrets, we might expect that she
nf Of hn
human mind too, and the recent eXhibi-
tionS in our city seem to show that she
docs. Some would try to explain Mr..
Bishops work as skilled deception. and
no doubt he has remarkable power in
that direction when he wishes to use it,;
but this could account for but small
part of his performance. Most scientists
have been prone to explain it as muscle
reading; and no doubt person of his
sensitive nerves and acute perceptions,
and with so long experience, could
do most of these things through
the unconscious help of his
guide and of sounds and other
signs in the audience. But after MAX
remains large amount of marvel that
seems quite ineXplicable without sup
posing much genuine mind reading.
This conclusion is strengthened when
we read of his exhibitions, not in pro-
miscuous audiences Hand with ineXpe-
rienced committees, but before scien-
tific critics in England and elsewhere.
And it is strengthened still more when
we read the reports of the London So
ciety for psychical research, and their
prOtracted experiments with the Creery
girls and others. From such reports
we have to conclude that thought is
communicated from mind to mind by
methods unSuSpected before.
Nor does such a conclusion seem at
all unscientific. Why is it any more
impossible for nervous currents in one
man to start similar currents in another
by induction, and be read by him, than
for electric currents to do the same and
be read outside the original wire? The
analogy is suggestive: and some one has
called mind-reading nervous induc-
tion." Nor would this influence of
mind on mind be any more wonderful
than the familiar fact of the gas in
star leaving Its line in the spectroscope,
or the star itself leaving its picture
in the photograph, OF even it's
image in our eyes. The former
influence is not familiar like the
miliar long. And seeing how photo
graphs that were thought impossible two
generations ago now fill all the albums:
and seeing how electricity, whichwas
hardly known few generations ago,
Row does large part of the work of
the world, one may raise the question
whether this mlnd-reading may not yet
come to be a common and practical
thing in life.
Such result would not be so unde-
sirable as it seems. The exposure of
all secrets would help the world more
than harm it. 1t might harm the grocer
to have the secret of his sugar dis
covered, and the manufacturer to have
it known just what he is putting in
those cloths and boot soles, but it would
help all others. 1t might harm the
politician or doctor, OF even preacher,
to have the secrets of their pro-
fessions all eXposed-but it would help
mankind. Charles Sumner opposed
secret sessions of the senate, saying
that the genius of our institutions re-
quired publicity, and should follow that
old Roman who ordered his house SO
constructed that all that was done in it
could be seen by the world. The
abolition of secrets would doubtless be
better both for states and individuals.
The knowledge that our inmost thoughts
and feelings were known to all our
neighbors would check the bad ones
morality than all the fear of laws and
jails and gallows in this world, OF of
tortures in the next. Whether mind
reading is ever to become general or
not, it certainly ought to be encouraged.
CHAT OF THE CHURCHES.