But it was precisely his unmitigated positivism which led him _a priori_ to regard many things as possible and open to discussion, from which others in their specialist narrowness would have (doubtless in this instance more wisely) turned away. In the year 1888, Lombroso believed himself to have proved the influence of the magnet upon suggested colour sensations. With this begins the series of his publications upon occult phenomena (“Studi sull’ ipnotismo e sulla credulità,” _Archivio di psichiatria_, 1888, ix., pp. 528–546). From these effects of the magnet (whose subjective causation he left an open question) he drew the following inference: “The magnet is an object known to have effect within the physical sphere. If a new result is seen to follow its application, this must also be of a physical character, and cannot be of any other. Thus in the hypnotized person, whose cerebral molecules are in a condition different from that in the brain of the non-hypnotized person, the magnet has given rise to a rearrangement of the cerebral molecules. If the observed effect is purely subjective, we must conclude that the subjective phenomena are dependent upon the physical conditions, and that the rearrangement of the cerebral molecules gives rise to the phenomenon of so-called polarization.” Psychologically allied with this is Lombroso’s utterance regarding muscle-reading, to the effect that if an act of the will is effective at a distance, this proves that the will, far from being immaterial, is a phenomenon of movement, and is, therefore, a manifestation of matter. Indeed, he expresses his astonishment that thought-transference is so rarely observed: “May it be that in the forms of energy known under the names of electricity, magnetism, heat, light, and sound, there is produced the same thing as in thought; and if one admits this, may it not be that thought is simply a phenomenon of movement.”[53]