I will endeavour to show these psychic characteristics, or soul gifts, underlie, and enter into the varied phenomena--clairvoyance, psychometry, thought transference, thought-reading, and what not, which are collated under the title of, “HOW TO THOUGHT-READ.” CHAPTER II. Clairvoyance. What is clairvoyance? “The term, clairvoyance,” says Dr. George Wyld, in a paper read before the Psychical Research Society, London, “is French, and means _clear-seeing_, but it appears to me to be an inadequate term, because it might signify clear optical vision, or clear mental vision. What is signified by the term is the power which certain individuals possess of seeing external objects under circumstances which render the sight of these objects impossible to physical optics. In short, by clairvoyance, we mean the power which the _mind_ has of seeing or knowing thoughts and psychical conditions, and objects hidden from or beyond the reach of the physical senses; and if the existence of this faculty can be established, we arrive at a demonstration that man has a power within his body as yet unrecognised by physical science--a power which is called soul, or mind-seeing, and for the description of such a power the term might be auto-nocticy (αυτονοητικος), or psychoscopy.” Psychoscopy, or soul sight, would, perhaps, be the better term. I propose to use the old term--clairvoyance--as it signifies, in popular usage, the power of seeing beyond the range of physical vision, as we know it. That certain persons are endowed with this faculty of clear seeing--in some of its various phases--is a matter settled beyond dispute. What special name to call this faculty, or what are the true causes of its existence; why it should be possessed by some persons and not by others; why it should be so frail and fugitive in the presence of some people, and strong and vivid before others; why some persons are never clairvoyant until they have been through the mesmeric and psychic states; why some become possessed of the faculty through disease; while, with others, the gift of clairvoyance appears to be a spontaneous possession; and why some operators are successful in inducing clairvoyance, and others not, etc., are interesting questions to which the student of psychology may, with advantage, direct his attention.