[30] Critics are apt to compare psychic phenomena to the links of a chain--each phenomenon being a separate link. As the chain is only as strong as its separate links, it has been pointed out, and as each case, taken by itself, can be shown to be inconclusive, it is obvious that the whole of psychic research comes to naught. This objection is met, it seems to me, by the following consideration. Each separate case represents, not the link of a chain, but the thread of a woven rope, which, taken by itself, is extremely weak, but which, when placed beside hundreds of others, becomes so strong as to be practically unbreakable. [31] This appears to me to be rather an illusion than a pure hallucination. Miss Johnson's own case appears to me to be an illusion also. See the discussion of this point later on, however. [32] _Journal_, vol. vi. p. 343. [33] See _The Physical Phenomena of Spiritualism_, pp. 386-93, and my pamphlet _Hindu Magic_, for a discussion of these performances, and of the theory of hallucination in connection therewith. [34] See, e.g., Count Solovovo's position which he was driven to accept--that the chair-threading witnessed by him was due to unconscious telepathic suggestion! (p. 469). The position appears to me to be absolutely untenable, in face of the evidence he himself adduces. [35] An excellent example of an illusion generated by the conditions of a spiritualistic seance is the following, which occurred to myself at Lily Dale, N. Y., during my investigations there in the summer of 1907, and which I reported in the _Proceedings of the American S.P.R._, as follows:--