The truth is that the muscles have nothing to do with the passage of the mental currents or waves from the Transmitter to the Receiver any more than they have to do with the transmission of nervous sensations from body to brain, or the motor impulses from brain to body. When you wish to close your hand you send a nervous current from your brain to the muscles controlling your hand. The current travels along the nervous system, and is by it distributed over the muscles causing them to contract. A current from a galvanic battery will cause the muscles to act in the same way. But the muscle is the machinery affected and set into motion, and the nerves are the delicate telegraphic wires leading to the parts. And so it is with this transmission of the mental waves and currents. The brain of the Transmitter, aroused by his active _Will_, sends a powerful current or wave through his nervous system. When it reaches the extremity of his fingers it leaps over the tiny space separating his nerves from the nerves of the Receiver, and enters the nervous system of the latter, and influences his actions. The Receiver being in a passive condition, and his brain sending practically no impulses over his nerves, he is in a receptive condition to the imparted nervous current, which acts upon him something like an impulse from his own brain, only weaker. That is the whole secret of Contact Mind Reading. It is "Nerve Reading" if you like, but certainly _not_ Muscle Reading. The tips of the fingers of a person of fine sensibilities, and delicate touch, are known by anatomists to be filled with masses of nerve-matter similar to that forming parts of the brain. In fact they are tiny finger-brains, and they will send out, convey, and receive delicate impulses from one mind to another. Those of you who have experienced the peculiar touch of some persons of this kind, can bear witness to the fact that a subtle "magnetism" or current passed from them to you. This is a fact well known to investigators of psychic phenomena, and such people laugh at the crude "muscle reading" theories, for they have disproved them repeatedly in actual careful experiments. And you may do the same, if you will practice the demonstrations given in this book. The fact that the developed Contact Mind Reader usually walks ahead of his Transmitter, instead of being led by him; and that he usually allows the latter's arm to hang limp, instead of muscularly contracted, is another proof of the absurdity of the theory above mentioned. Besides this, wires may be used between the two persons, or even a third person may be placed between them. But, as we have said, after all the best and only real test is to try the experiments yourself and learn that "muscle reading" has nothing to do with the real phenomena.