Now it may be admitted that to form such rules (and there are many more far more ingenious and generally applicable) and to put them into practice with tact, adapting them to intuitions of character, not only as seen in the face but as heard in the voice or betrayed by gestures and dress and manner, must in the end develop a power. And, further still, this power by frequent practice enables its possessor to perform feats which are really marvellous and perhaps inexplicable, as yet, to men of science. I have, I think, indicated the road by which they travel to produce this result, but to what they arrived I do not know. Nor do they all get there. What genius is, physiology, with all the vast flood of light spread by Francis Galton on hereditary gifts, cannot as yet explain. It is an absolute thing of itself, and a "miracle." Sometimes this wonderful power of prediction and of reading thought and quickly finding and applying rules falls into the hands of a genius. Then all our explanations of "humbug" and "trickery" and juggling fall to the ground, because he or she works what are absolutely as much miracles as if the artist had raised the dead. Such geniuses are the prophets of old; sometimes they are poets. There are as many clearly-defined and admirable predictions as to events in art and politics in the works of Heine, which were fulfilled, as can be found anywhere. By the constant application of such rules, promptly and aptly, or boldly, the fortune-teller acquires a very singular quickness of perception. There are very few persons living who really know what this means and to what apparently marvellous results constant practice in it may lead. Beginning with very simple and merely mechanical exercises ("Practical Education," p. 151. London: Whittaker & Co.), perception may be gradually developed until not only the eye and ear observe a thousand things which escape ordinary observation, and also many "images" at once, but finally the mind notes innumerable traits of character which would have once escaped it, combines these, and in a second draws conclusions which would amuse those who are ignorant--as indeed all men are as yet--of the extraordinary faculties latent in every man.