The kind of shots which I made at the name before recalling it--which it may seem frivolous to have actually recorded--are reminiscent of the kind of shots which are made by mediums under control when they too are striving after a name; and it was a perception of this analogy which caused me to jot down my own guesses, or what, in the case of a medium, we should impolitely call 'fishing.' I think that the name was certainly in my memory though it would not come through my brain. The effort is like the effort to use a muscle not often or ever used--say the outer ear--one does not know which string to pull, so to speak, or, more accurately, which nerve to stimulate, and the result is a peculiarly helpless feeling, akin to stammering. In the case of a medium, I suppose the name is often in the mind of the communicator, but it will not come through the control. The control sometimes describes it as being spoken or shown but not clearly caught. The communicator often does not know whether a medium has successfully conveyed it or not. CHAPTER XIV VARIOUS PSYCHO-PHYSICAL METHODS "If man, then, shall attempt to sound and fathom the depths that lie not without him, but within, analogy may surely warn him that the first attempts of his rude _psychoscopes_ to give precision and actuality to thought will grope among 'beggarly elements'--will be concerned with things grotesque, or trivial, or obscure. Yet here also one handsbreadth of reality gives better footing than all the castles of our dream; here also by beginning with the least things we shall best learn how great things may remain to do."--F. W. H. M., Introduction to _Phantasms of the Living_ I must not shirk a rather queer subject which yet needs touching upon, though it bristles with theoretical difficulties; and that is the rationale of one of the most elementary methods of ultra-normal communication, a method which many find practically the easiest to begin with.