Psychology and Social Sanity Part 3

If I were to characterize their writings from an outside point of view, I might first say that their expressions are expansive. There is no limit to their ma.n.u.scripts, though I have to confess that an exposition of eighty-five hundred pages which has just been announced to me by its author has not yet reached me. Nor can it be denied that their relation to old-fas.h.i.+oned or to new-fas.h.i.+oned spelling is not always a harmonious one. Nor should I call them always polite: the criticism of my own opinions, which they generally know only from some garbled newspaper reports, often takes forms which are not the usual ones for scholarly correspondence. "Whether it is your darkness or if it is the badness of the police that go around calling themselves the government, that probably ordered you to put such ignorance in the Sunday article, I do not know." Or more straightforward are letters of this type: "Greeting-You take the prize as an educated fool.

According to reports to me by less stupid and more honest men than you, the matter is...." It is surprising how often the handwriting is pretty, coquettish, or affected, but almost half of my crank correspondence is typewritten.

When the newspapers tell of a mysterious case, minds of this type immediately feel attracted to mix in. When a few years ago I published an article disclosing the tricks of Madame Palladino, I was simply flooded with letters of advice and of explanation. The same thing occurred recently when the papers reported that I was experimenting with Beulah Miller. Now it is easy to understand that those who fancied that the Miller child had supernatural gifts of telepathy and clairvoyance would wish to bring their questions to me so that I might make Beulah Miller trace their lost bracelets or predict their fortune in the Stock Exchange. But I was at a loss to understand why so many persons from Maine to California felt tempted to write long letters to me in which they told me what kind of questions I ought to ask the child, as if I could not formulate a question for myself. Every one expected a special report for himself with exact statements of her answers. The whole performance showed a lack of judgment which is typical of that lower intellectual layer; and yet the letters were often written on beautifully monogrammed letter paper. More often, however, my own writings or doings have nothing to do with the case. I am the perfectly innocent receiver of written messages about anything between heaven and earth, while the messages which my correspondents receive from me are not always authentic. One of my psychically talented writers reports: "On May 31st at eight forty-nine A. M. in the midst of a thunderstorm I came into communication with Doctor Munsterberg and asked him to send me a message. He said, 'The name of my son is Wilhelm Munsterberg.'" It is improbable that I lied so boldly about my family, even in a telepathic message.

I may select a few typical theories, which all come from evidently otherwise normal and harmless people. I have before me a whole series of ma.n.u.scripts from a druggist who is sure that his ego theory is "very near the truth." It is in itself very simple and convincing.

"The right and the left cerebral egos united with one sublime ego are in the body in a loose union in possession of an amboid cell. During sleep they may separate. The sublime ego wanders through nerve paths to the bowels, and the bowel experiences are the dreams." An experiment brought a definite proof of this. The druggist dyed some crackers deep blue with methylene blue, and later dreamed that a large train of blue food was pa.s.sing by. As each carriage of the train corresponded to a granule of starch in the crackers, he was able to figure that the ego which saw those parts of the crackers was about one thousandth of an inch large. "The fact of seeing in dreams is due to vital force, the peculiar low speed to the high vibration force of living alb.u.minoids emitted from every tendril of bioplasm and perceived by the eye of the ego-bion during its visit." "Within the ego-bion is the ego itself, which is much simpler looking, about one hundredth of a micromillimeter." I do not want to go into details of how these egos can be transmitted "by kiss or otherwise" from one generation to another, but I can say that as soon as the reader has grasped the fundamental thesis of the author, everything follows with perfect logic. The good man, who is doubtless a faithful druggist and whose mind is perfectly clear, has simply twisted some of the ideas which he has gathered from his ample reading and developed his pet theory.

His case is very similar to that of a dignified, elderly trained nurse who is faithfully devoted to her n.o.ble daily work and who follows her vocation without indicating to any one that she is the author of a great unpublished philosophical work. She has spent twenty-five years of her life on the elaboration of this _magnum opus_, which is richly ill.u.s.trated. Everything in the book is consistent and in harmony with its presuppositions. The theory again is very simple; every detail is perfectly convincing, if you acknowledge the starting point. As to this, there may be difference of opinion. The fundamental thought is that all human souls are born in the forests of Central Africa. "Souls are s.e.xless forces. Never is one soul born into life. There are always two. Often we find three pairs of almost the same type with but a shadow of density to distinguish each pair. Man evolutes upward on the scale of life by two tribes of apes. Ere man becomes human, he represents one cell force. When man takes the human form as Maquake, he becomes a double life cell." I do not claim to be an expert in this system, but if I understand the whole work rightly, the idea is that any human soul born there by the monkeys in Africa has to pa.s.s in circles of one thousand years from individual to individual, becoming at first negro, then Indian, then Malayan, then Hindu, then Greek, Celt, and Roman, then Jew, and finally American. After a thousand years the soul begins to degenerate and enters sinners and criminals.

Which stage the soul has reached can easily be seen from the finger nails. The chief ill.u.s.trations of the great work were therefore drawings of finger nails of all races. It is a side issue of the theory that "souls once matured generally pa.s.s on to another star. The nearer the sun is to the star holding life, the denser is all growth in nature." I acknowledge that this view of evolution does not harmonize exactly with my own, but I cannot deny that the whole system is worked out with perfect consistency, and wherever I asked the writer difficult questions as to some special problems, she was at once ready to give the answers with completely logical deduction from her premises. She is by no means mentally diseased, and she does not mix her theories with her practical activity. If she sits as nurse at the bedside of a patient, she recognizes of course from the finger nails that this particular soul may be three or five thousand years old, and accordingly in a decaying state, but that does not interfere with her conscientious work as a nurse and helper.

To be sure, not every one spends twenty-five years on the elaboration of some twisted fancies. Most of my correspondents write the monumental thoughts of their systems with decisive brevity. A physician informs me that every thought and act of our lives is transfixed on the etheric vapours that surround our earth, and that it is therefore only natural that a clairvoyant is able to see those fixed events and write them down afterward from the ethereal inscriptions. Another tells about his discovery that the human body is a great electrical magnet. I am the more glad to make this fact widely known, as the author writes that he has not given it to the public yet, as he is not financially able to advertise it. Yet he himself adds that after all it is not necessary to advertise truth. On eight quarto pages he draws the most evident consequences of his discovery and shows how he is able to explain by it the chemical change of each cell in the brain and to prove that "foolish so-called spirits are simply electrical demonstrations." "I can demonstrate every current, nerve cell, and atom of the human body. It may seem strange to you that I claim so much, but with the induction every investigation has been so easy for me. I have never been puzzled for any demonstration yet, but I am still searching for more knowledge. Yours for investigation...." I may say that this is a feature common to most of my correspondents of this metaphysical type. They are never "puzzled."

Nearly related to this type of theories are the systems of astrology; and in our upper world very few are really aware what a role astrology is still playing in the intellectual underworld. Some of the astrological communications I receive periodically go so far beyond my understanding that I do not even dare to quote them. But some of the astrological authors present very neat and clean theories which are so simple and so practical that it is almost a pity that they are absurd.

For instance, I am greatly interested in the question of determining how far the mind of individuals is predisposed for particular vocations, and in the psychological laboratory we are busy with methods to approach the problem. The astrologers have a much more convincing scheme. My friend writes that he has observed "over two thousand cases wherein the dates of birth have been the means to give the position of the planets at the hour of birth, the purpose being to ascertain the influence they had on man. Now the furniture business calls for an artistic temperament, and after careful observation through birth dates it is found that the successful furniture men have the planet Venus in their nativities. But the Venus influence is prominent also in other lines of business such as art, jewellery, and in all lines where women's necessities are manufactured. Other planetary influences on success in business are: Saturn for miners, tanners, gardeners, clowns, and beggars; Mercury for teachers, secretaries, stationers, printers, and tailors; Jupiter for clergymen, judges, lawyers, and senators; Mars for dentists, barbers, cutlers, carpenters, and apothecaries; Ura.n.u.s for inventors, chemists, occultists, and others."

One system which is still more frequent than the astrological is the strictly spiritualistic one, which expresses itself in spirit returns and messages from the other world. Geographically the most favoured stations for wireless heavenly connections seem to be Brooklyn, New York, and Los Angeles, California. The adherents of this underworld philosophy have a slang of their own, and the result is that their letters, while they spring from the deepest emotions, sound as if they were copied from the same sample book. The better style begins about like this: "Knowing that you are intensely interested in things psychological, I beg to enclose you copies of some of the automatic letters which I have received. I have a young lawyer friend in the city, and he and I can throw down fifteen or twenty sheets of paper on a table, take hold of hands and get them written full, and in this way I have received letters from Pericles, Aristides, Immanuel Kant, and many others. I got letters from Julia Ward Howe a week after her transition, and I got letters from Emerson and Abraham Lincoln by asking for them. I enclose copy of the last letter which I received from Charlotte Cushman, and I think you will agree there is nothing foolish about it or indeed about any of the letters. I have recently married again, and my present wife is a wonderful trance medium, probably the best means of communication between the two worlds living to-day." This is not exceptional, as practically every one of my spiritualistic correspondents has some "best means of communication between the two worlds." The messages themselves usually begin: "My loved one, out of the realms of light and truth, I come to you ..."

and so on. If the letters do not come from the spiritualists themselves, some of their friends feel the need of turning my attention to the "wonderful psychic powers" of their acquaintances.

Not seldom the spirits take a more refined form. "The forms of the newly dead come to me in bulk. I see and feel them. They are purplish inky in colour. When a real spirit comes to me in white, I close my eyes. I seem to have to. The spirit or presence most commonly seen, I believe, is a thought form. It frequently comes off the cover of a magazine, and were I not getting wise, I would think the universe turned suddenly to beauty. But I am learning that a person can receive wonderfully exaggerated reports from the very soul of the artist."

From here we see before us the wide vista of the individual gifts and talents: the underworld people are sometimes bragging of them, sometimes grafting with them, if not blackmailing, and often simply enjoying them with the sweet feeling of superiority. The powers turn in all valuable directions. Here is one who wishes to know whether I have ever heard of any other "person who senses the magnetism of the earth and is able to tell many kinds of earthquakes? Also volcanic heats? A quick reply will favour me." Many have the regular prophetic gift; practically every one of them foresaw the a.s.sa.s.sination of McKinley. Most of them, however, are gifted in curing diseases. The typical letter reads as follows: "There is a young man living here who seems to be endowed with a wonderful occult power by the use of which he is able to diagnose almost any human ailment. He goes into a trance, and while in this condition the name of the subject is given him, and then without any further questions he proceeds to diagnose his case fully and correctly and prescribes a treatment for the relief of the trouble. In every case yet diagnosed a cure has almost immediately resulted." This kind of gift is so frequent that it is really surprising that so many physicians still rely on their clumsier method. Marvellous also are the effects which hypnotism can secure in this paradise of the ignorant. After having hypnotized patients many hundred times, I fancied that I had a general impression as to the powers and limits of hypnotism. But there is no end to the new information which I get from my hypnotizing correspondents. "Has it ever occurred to you that by hypnotism death will be prevented, and all ills, mental or otherwise, be cured before long? Why do I think so?" Of course I do not know why she thinks so. I usually do not know why the writers of the underworld letters think so. Or rather I usually do know that they do not think at all.

There may be many who will read all this not only with surprise, but with skepticism. They live their intellectually clean lives, dwell in safe, comfortable houses of the intellect and move on well-paved educational streets, and never see or hear anything of those inhabitants of the intellectual slums. If ever a letter like those which pour in hundreds to the desk of the psychologist were to stray into their mail, they would feel sure that they had to do with a lunatic who belongs in an asylum under a physician's care. They have no idea that not only their furnaceman and washwoman, but also their tailor and their watchmaker, or perhaps the teacher of their children, and, if they examine more carefully, three of their last dinner guests, are strolling for hours or for a night, or living for seasons, if not for a lifetime, in that world of superst.i.tion and anti-intellectual mentality. Such people are not ill; they are personally not even cranks; they are simply confused and unable to live an ordered intellectual life. Their character and temperament and their personality in every other respect may be faultless, but their ideas are chaotic. They bring together the contradictory and make contrasts out of the identical, and, far from any sound religious belief or any true metaphysical philosophy, they simply mix any mystical whims into the groups of thought which civilization has brought into systematic order. Instead of trying to learn, they are always longing for some illegitimate intellectual profit; they are always trying to pick the pocket of the absolute.

It is not difficult to recognize the social conditions from which this tendency springs. The fundamental one, after all, is the widely spread lack of respect for the expert. Such a lack easily results from democratic life, as democracy encourages the belief that every one can judge about everything and can decide from his own resources what ought to be thought and what ought to be done. Yet no one can claim that it is truly a part of democracy itself and that the democratic spirit would suffer if this view were suppressed. On the contrary, democracy can never be fully successful and can never be carried through in consistent purity until this greatest danger of the democratic spirit of society is completely overcome and repressed by an honest respect for the expert and a willing subordination of judgment to his better knowledge. Another condition which makes our country a favourite playground for fantastic vagaries is the strong emphasis on the material sides of life, on business and business success. The result is a kind of contrast effect. As the surface of such a rus.h.i.+ng business life lacks everything which would satisfy the deeper longings of the soul, the effort to create an inner world is readily pushed to mystical extremes in which all contact with the practical world is lost, and finally all solid knowledge disregarded and caricatured. The newspapers have their great share, too. Any absurdity which a crank anywhere in the world brings forth is heralded with a joy in the sensational impossibilities which must devastate the mind of the nave reader.

But whatever the sources of this prevailing superst.i.tion may be, there ought to be no disagreement about its intellectual sinfulness and its danger to society. We see some alarming consequences in the growth of the revolt against scientific medicine. Millions of good Americans do not want to know anything about physicians who have devoted their lives to the study of medicine, but prefer any quack or humbug, any healer or mystic. Yet for a queer reason the case of the treatment of diseases shows the ruinous results of this social procedure very slowly. Every scientific physician knows that many diseases can be cured by autosuggestion in emotional excitement, and if this belief in the quack produces the excitement and the suggestion, the patient may really be cured, not on account but in spite of the quack who treats him. The whole misery of this antimedical movement is therefore somewhat veiled and alleviated. But this is not so in the fields of real culture and knowledge. The belief in the absurdities there has not even an autosuggestive value. It is simply destructive to the life of civilized society. It is absurd for us to put our best energies to work to build up a splendid system of education for the youth of the whole nation, and at the same time to allow its structure to be undermined by the millionfold intellectual depravity.

Of course it may be difficult to say what ought to be done. I feel sure that society ought to suppress with relentless energy all those parlours of the astrologists and palmists, of the scientific mediums and spiritualists, of the quacks and prophets. Their announcements by signs or in the public press ought to be stopped, and ought to be treated by the postal department of the government as the advertis.e.m.e.nts of other fraudulent enterprises are treated. A large role in the campaign would have to be played by the newspapers, but their best help would be rendered by negative action, by not publis.h.i.+ng anything of a superst.i.tious and mystical type. The most important part of the fight, however, is to recognize the danger clearly, to acknowledge it frankly, and to see with open eyes how alarmingly the evil has grown around us. No one will fancy that any social schemes can be sufficient to bring superst.i.tion to an end, any more than any one can expect that the present fight against city vice will forever put a stop to s.e.xual immorality. But that surely cannot be an argument for giving up the battle against the moral perversities of metropolitan life. The fact that we cannot be entirely successful ought still less to be an argument for any leniency with the intellectual perversities and the infectious diseases the germs of which are disseminated in our world of honest culture by the inhabitants of the cultural underworld.

IV

THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE

The harmony and soundness of society depend upon its inner unity of mind. Social organization does not mean only an external fitting together, but an internal equality of mind. Men must understand one another in order to form a social unit, and such understanding certainly means more than using the same words and the same grammar.

They must be able to grasp other men's point of view, they must have a common world in which to work, and this demands that they mould the world in the same forms of thought. If one calls green what another calls sour, and one feels as noise what another feels as toothache, they cannot enter into a social group. Yet it is no less confusing and no less antisocial if the world which one sees as a system of causes and effects is to another a realm of capricious, causeless, zigzag happenings. The mental links which join society are threatened if some live with their thoughts in a world of order and natural law, and others in a mystical chaos.

This has nothing to do with differences of opinion. Society profits from contrasting views, from discussion and struggle. The opposing parties in a real debate understand each other well and are working with the same logic and the same desire for order of thought. This contrast between order and mysticism has still less to do with the difference of knowledge and belief in a higher religious and philosophical sense. There is no real antagonism between science and religion, between experience and philosophical speculation. They point to each other, they demand each other, and no social question is involved when the interests of one man emphasize more the scholarly search for scientific truth, and those of another concentrate throughout his lifework on the emotional wisdom of religion. It is quite different with mysticism and science; they are not two parties of a debate on equal terms. They exclude each other, as the mystic projects his feeling interests into those objects which the scientist tries to a.n.a.lyze and to understand as effects of causes. Nothing is a safer test of the cultural development of a society than the instinct for the difference between religion and superst.i.tion. Mysticism is a systematized superst.i.tion. It never undermines the true interests of society more than when it goes to work with pseudo-scientific tools.

Its most repellent form, that of sheer spiritualism, has in recent years declined somewhat, and the organizations for antilogical, psychical research eke out a pitiable existence nowadays. But the community of the silent or noisy believers in telepathy, mystical foresight, clairvoyance, and wonder workers seems to increase.

The scientific psychologist might have a twofold contact with such movements. His most natural interest is that of studying the mental makeup of those who chase this will-o'-the-wisp. Their mental vagaries and superst.i.tious fancies are quite fascinating material for his dissection. But for the interests of society an entirely different effort is, after all, more consequential. The psychologist has no right to avoid the trouble of examining conspicuous cases which superficially seem to endorse the fantastic theories of the mentally untrained. Such an investigation is his share, as indeed mental occurrences generally stand in the centre of the alleged wonderful facts. From this feeling of social responsibility some years ago I approached the hysterical trickster, Madame Palladino, who had so much inflamed the mystical imagination of the country, and from this interest in the social aspect I undertook again recently a research into the mental powers of Beulah Miller, who was well on the way to bewilder the whole nation and thus to stir up the always latent mystic inclinations of the community. It is a typical specimen of those cases which can easily upset the loosely reasoning public and do tremendous harm to the mental unity of the social organism. It seems worth while to illuminate it in full detail.

Indeed, since the days when Madame Eusapia Palladino stirred the whole country with her marvellous mystic powers, no case of psychical mystery has engaged the interest of the nation as that of little Beulah Miller in Warren, Rhode Island, has done. The story of her wonderful performances has become a favourite feature of the Sunday papers, and the small New England town for the first time in its long history has been in the limelight. The reporters have made their pilgrimages, and every one has returned bewildered and amazed. Here at last the truth of telepathy was proved. Sworn affidavits of reliable persons removed the last doubts; and I myself, with my long training as a scientist, had to confess, when for the first time I had spent a few hours with Beulah Miller, that I was as deeply startled and overcome with wonder as I was after the first night with Eusapia Palladino. Yet what a contrast! There the elderly, stout Italian woman at a midnight hour, in dimly lighted rooms, in disreputable New York quarters, where the palmists and mediums live in their world of sham psychology, sitting in a trance state at a table surrounded by spiritualistic believers who had to pay their entrance fees; here a little, nave, ten-year-old girl among her toys in the kitchen of her parents' modest white cottage in a lovely country village! I never felt a more uncanny, nerve-irritating atmosphere than in Palladino's squalid quarters, and I do not remember more idyllic, peaceful surroundings than when I sat between Beulah and her sister through bright sunny mornings in their mother's home with their cat beside them and the pet lamb coming into the room from the meadow. There everything suggested fraud, and when at my second seance her foot was caught behind the curtain and the whole humbug exposed, it was exactly what I had expected. But here everything breathed sincerity and navete and absence of fraud-yet my mere a.s.surance cannot convince a skeptic; we must examine the case carefully.

The claims are very simple: Here is a school child of ten years who is able to read in the mind of any one present anything of which he is thinking. If you take a card from a pack and look at it, and still better if several people look at it, and best of all if her mother or sister looks at it, too, Beulah will say at once which card it is, although she may stand in the farthest corner of the room. She will give you the date on any coin which you have in hand; in a book she will tell you the particular word at which you are looking. Indeed, a sworn affidavit reports still more surprising feats. Beulah gave correctly the name of the reporter whom n.o.body else knew and the name of the New York paper for which she is writing. At school she reads words written on the blackboard with her back turned to it. At home she knows what any visitor is hiding in his pocket.

The serious-minded man who is disgusted with spiritualistic charlatans and their commercial humbug is naturally inclined here, too, at once to offer the theory that all is fraud and that a detective would be the right man to investigate the case. When the newspapers discovered that I had begun to study the girl, I received from many sides letters with suggestions to look for certain devices with which stage performers carry out such tricks, such as marked cards and the equipment of the magician. But whoever thinks of fraud here misunderstands the whole situation. The psychical powers of Beulah Miller were not brought before the public by the child or her family; there was no desire for notoriety, and in spite of the very modest circ.u.mstances in which this carpenter's family has to live, the facts became known before any commercial possibility suggested itself.

The mother was startled by Beulah's psychical gifts because she noticed two years ago that when the family was playing "Old Maid"

Beulah always knew in whose hands the dangerous queen was to be found.

Then they began to experiment with cards in the family circle, and her ability to know of what the mother or the sister was thinking became more and more interesting to them. Slowly her school friends began to notice it, and children in the Sunday-school told the minister about Beulah's queer mind-reading. All this time no newspaper had known about it. One day the minister, when he pa.s.sed the house, entered and inquired whether those rumours were true. He had a little gla.s.s full of honey in his pocket, and Beulah spelled the word honey at once. He made some tests with coins, and every one was successful. This minister, Rev. H. W. Watjen, told this to his friend Judge Mason, who has lived in Warren for more than thirty years, and then both the minister and the judge visited repeatedly the village where the Millers live, performed a large number of experiments with cards and coins and words, and became the friendly advisers of the mother, who was still troubled by her doubt whether these supernatural gifts of the child came from G.o.d or from the devil. Only through the agency of these two well-known men, the Baptist minister and the judge, was the public informed that a mysterious case existed in the neighbourhood of Warren, and when the newspapers began to send their reporters and strangers came to see the wonder, these two men decided who should see the child. Of course, commercial propositions, invitations to give performances on the vaudeville stage, soon began to pour in, but with indignation the mother refused to listen to any such idea. Because of my scientific interest in such psychological puzzles, the judge and the minister turned to me to investigate the case. It is evident that this whole social situation lacks every conceivable motive for fraud.

But this impression was strongly heightened by the behaviour of the family and of the child during the study which I carried on in the three weeks following. The mother, the twelve-year-old sister Gladys, and Beulah herself were most willing to agree to anything which would make the test difficult, and they themselves asked to have everything tried with no member of the family in the room. Beulah was quite happy to show her art under unaccustomed conditions like having her eyes covered with thick bandages. When inadvertently some one turned a card so that she could see it, she was the first to break out into childish laughter at her having seen it. In short, everything indicated such perfect sincerity, and the most careful examination yielded so absolutely no trace of intentional fraud, that I can vouch for the honesty of the intentions of all concerned in the experiments carried on so far.

If fraud and humbug may certainly be excluded, the wiseacres will say that the results must then have been a matter of chance coincidence.

No one can deny that chance may sometimes bring surprising results.

Dreams of far-distant accidents come true, and yet no one who considers those millions of dreams which do not come true and which therefore remain disregarded will acknowledge any prophetic power in sleep. It may happen, if you are asked to call a name or a figure of which another man is thinking, that you will strike the right one.

Moreover, recent experiments have shown that there is much natural uniformity in the thoughts of men. Certain figures or names or things more readily rush to the mind than others. Hence the chances that two persons will be thinking of the same figure are much larger than would appear from the mere calculation of probabilities. Yet even if we make the largest possible concession to happy coincidences, there cannot remain the slightest doubt that the experiments carried on under standard conditions yielded results the correctness of which endlessly surpa.s.ses any possible accidental outcome. We may take a typical ill.u.s.tration: I drew cards which she could not possibly see, while they were shown to the mother and sister sitting next to me, Beulah sitting on the other side of the room. The first was a nine of hearts; she said nine of hearts. The next was six of clubs, to which she said first six of spades; when told it was not spades, she answered clubs. The next was two of diamonds; her first figure was four; when told that it was wrong, she corrected herself two, and added diamonds. The next was nine of clubs, which she gave correctly; seven of spades, she said at first seven of diamonds, then spades; jack of spades, she gave correctly at once, and so on.

One other series: We had little cardboard squares on each of which was a large single letter. I drew any three, put them into the cover of a box, and while the mother, Gladys, and I were looking at the three letters, Beulah, sitting beside us, looked at the ceiling. The first were R-T-O. She said R-T-I. When told it was wrong, she added O. The next were S-U-T; she gave S-U, and then wrongly R P Q, and finally T.

The next were N-A-R; she gave G N-A-S R. The following D-W-O she gave D-W, but could not find the last letter. It is evident that every one of the cards gave her fifty-two chances, and not more than one in fifty-two would have been correct if it were only guessing, and as to the letters, not more than one among twenty-six would have been chosen correctly by chance. The given example demonstrates that of five cards she gave three correctly, two half correctly, and those two mistakes were rectified after the first wrong guess. The second experiment demanded from her four times three letters. Of these twelve letters, six were right at the first guess and five after one or two wrong trials. Taking only this little list of card and letter experiments together, we can say that the probabilities are only one to many billions that such a result would ever come by chance.

Yet such correctness was not exceptional. On the contrary, I have no series performed under these conditions which did not yield as favourable an outcome as this. Some were even much more startling.

Once she gave six cards in succession correctly. It was no different with word experiments. The printed word at which the sister and I looked was stall; she spelled E S-T-O A-R I L-L. And when the word was steam, she spelled L S-N K T-O A E-A-M; when it was gla.s.s, S G-L-R A-S. Whenever a letter was wrong, she was told so and was allowed a second or a third choice, but never more than three. It is evident from these three ill.u.s.trations that she gave the right letter in the first place six times, and that the right letter was her second choice four times, and her third choice three times, while no letter was missed in three choices. Cases of this type again could never occur by mere chance. The number of successful strokes in this last experiment might be belittled by the claim that the last letters of the word were guessed when the first letters had been found. But this was not the case. First, even such a guess would have been chance. The word might have been grave instead of gra.s.s, or star instead of stall. What is much more important, however, is that a large number of other cases proved that she was not aware of the words at all, but spelled the letters without reference to their forming a word. Once I wrote Chicago on a pad. The mother and sister gazed at the word, and Beulah spelled correctly C-H-I-C-A-G, but made eight wrong efforts before she found the closing O. In other cases, she did not notice that the word was completed, and was trying to fish up still other letters from her mind. Everything showed that the word as a word did not come to her mind, but only the single letters. I leave entirely out of consideration the marvels of mind-reading which were secured by the judge and the minister, the male and female newspaper reporters, before I took charge of the study of the case. I rely only on what I saw and of which I took exact notes. I wrote down every wrong letter and every wrong figure, and base my calculation only on this entirely reliable material. Nevertheless, I must acknowledge it as a fact beyond doubt that such results as I got regularly could never possibly have been secured by mere coincidence and chance. As chance and fraud are thus equally out of the question, we are obliged to seek for another explanation.

There is one explanation which offers itself most readily: We saw that in order to succeed, some one around her, preferably the mother and sister, who stand nearest to her heart, have to know the words or the cards. Those visual images must be in some one's mind, and she has the unusual power of being able to read what is in the minds of those others. Such an explanation even seems to some a very modest claim, almost a kind of critical and skeptical view. The judge and the minister, for instance, in accepting this idea of her mind-reading, felt conservative, as through it they disclaimed any belief in mysterious clairvoyance and telepathic powers. In the newspaper stories, where the mysteries grew with the geographical distance from Rhode Island, Beulah was said to be able to tell names or dates or facts which no one present knew. It was a.s.serted that she could give the dates on the coins which any one had in his pocket without the possessor himself knowing them, or that she could give a word in a book on which some one was holding his finger without reading it. No wonder that the public felt sure that she could just as well discover secrets which no one knows and be aware of far-distant happenings. It is only one step from this to the belief in a prophetic foresight of what is to come. For most unthinking people, mind-reading leads in this fas.h.i.+on over to the whole world of mysticism. In sharp contrast to such vagaries, the critical observers like the judge and the minister insisted that there was no trace of such prophetic gifts or of such telepathic wonders to be found, and that everything resolves itself simply into mere mind-reading. Some one in the neighbourhood must have the idea in mind and must fixedly think of it. Only then will it arise in Beulah's consciousness.

But have we really a right to speak of mind-reading itself as if it were such a simple process, perhaps unusual, but not surprising, something like a slightly abnormal state? If we look at it from the standpoint of the scientist, we should say, on the contrary, that there is a very sharp boundary line which separates mind-reading from all the experiences which the scientific psychologist knows. The psychologist has no difficulty in understanding mental diseases like hysteria or abnormal states like hypnotism, or any other unusual variation of mental life. The same principles by which he explains the ordinary life of the mind are sufficient to give account of all the strange and rare occurrences. But when he comes to mind-reading, an entirely new point of view is chosen. It would mean a complete break with everything which science has found in the mental world. The psychologist has never discovered a mental content which was not the effect or the after-effect of the stimulation of the senses. No man born blind has ever by his own powers brought the colour sensations to his mind, and no communication from without was ever traced which was not carried over the path of the senses. The world which is in the mind of my friend, in order to reach my mind, must stimulate his brain, and that brain excitement must lead to the contraction of his mouth muscles, and that must stir the air waves which reach my ear drum, and the excitement must be carried from my ear to the brain, where the mental ideas arise. No abnormal states like hypnotism change in the least this procedure. But if we fancy that the mere mental idea in one man can start the same idea in another, we lack every possible means to connect such a wonder with anything which the scientist so far acknowledges.

To be sure, every sincere scholar devoted to truth has to yield to the actual facts. We cannot stubbornly say that the facts do not exist because they do not harmonize with what is known so far. The psychologist would not necessarily be at the end of his wit if the developments of to-morrow proved that mind-reading in Beulah Miller's case, or in any other case, is a fact beyond doubt. He might argue that all previous knowledge was based on a wrong idea and that, for instance, other processes go on in the brain, which can be transmitted from organism to organism like wireless telegraphic waves without the perception of the senses. If these other processes were conceived as the foundation of mental images, the scientific psychological scholar of the future might possibly work out a consistent theory and all the previously known facts might then be translated into the language of the new science. Whether in this or a similar way we should ever come to really satisfactory results, no one can foresee, but at least it is certain that this would involve a complete giving up of everything which scientists have so far held to be right. Certainly in the history of civilization great revolutions in science have happened.

The astronomers had to begin almost anew; why cannot the psychologists turn around and acknowledge that they have been entirely wrong so far and that they must begin once more at the beginning and rewrite all which they have so far taken to be truth?

Certainly the psychologists are no cowards. They would not hesitate to declare their mental bankruptcy if the progress of truth demanded it.

But at least we must be entirely clear that this is indeed the situation and that no step on the track of mind-reading can be taken without giving up everything which we have so far held to be true. And it is evident that such a radical break with the whole past of human science can be considered only if every other effort for explanation fails, and if it seems really impossible to understand the facts in the light of all which science has already accomplished. If Beulah Miller's little hands are to set the torch to the whole pile of our knowledge, we ought first to be perfectly sure that there is really nothing worth saving. We cannot accept the theory of the apostles of mind-reading until we know surely that Beulah Miller can receive communications which cannot possibly be explained with the means of science.

Now we all know one kind of mind-reading which looks very astounding and yet which there is no difficulty at all in explaining. It is a favourite performance on the stage, and not seldom tried as a parlour game. I refer to the kind of mind-reading in which one person thinks of a hidden coin, and the other holds his wrist and is then able to find the secreted object. There is no mystery in such apparent transmission of the idea, because it is the result of small unintentional movements of the arm. The one who thinks hard of the corner of the room in which the coin is placed cannot help giving small impulses in that direction. He himself is not aware of these faint movements, but the man who has a fine sense of touch becomes conscious of these motions in the wrist which his fingers grasp, and under the guidance of these slight movements he is led to the particular place. Some persons express their thought of places more easily than others and are therefore better fitted for the game, and we find still greater differences in the sensitiveness of different persons. Not every one can play the game as well as a trained stage performer, who may have an extreme refinement of touch and may notice even the least movements in the wrist which others would not feel at all. Such an explanation is not an arbitrary theory. We can easily show with delicate instruments in the psychological laboratory that every one in thinking of a special direction soon begins to move his hand toward it without knowing anything of these slight movements. The instruments allow the reading of such impulses where the mere feeling of the hand would hardly show any signs. A very neat form of the same type is often seen on the stage when the performer is to read a series of numbers in the mind of some one who thinks intensely of the figures. Some one in the audience thinks of the number fifty-seven.

The performer asks him to think of the first figure, then he grasps his hand and counts slowly from zero to nine. After that he asks him to think of the second figure, and counts once more. Immediately after he will announce rightly the two digits. Again there is no mystery in it. He knows that the man who thinks of the figure five will make a slight involuntary movement when the five is reached in counting, and the same movement will occur at the seven in the second counting. If he is very well trained, he will not need the touching of the hand; he will perform the same experiment with figures without any actual contact whatever. It will be sufficient to see the man who is thinking of a figure while he himself is counting. As soon as the dangerous digit is reached, the man will give some unintentional sign. Perhaps his breathing will become a degree deeper, or stop for a moment, his eyelids may make a reflex movement, his fingers may contract a bit.

This remains entirely unnoticed by any one in the audience, but the professional mind-reader has heightened his sensibility so much that none of these involuntary signs escapes him. Yet from the standpoint of science his seeing these subtle signs is on principle no different from our ordinary seeing when a man points his finger in some direction.

But the experience of the scientist goes still farther. In the cases of this parlour trick and the stage performance the one who claims to read the mind of the other is more or less clearly aware of those unintended signs. He feels those slight movement impulses, which he follows. But we know from experiences of very different kind that such signs may make an impression on the senses and influence the man, and yet may not really come to consciousness. Even those who play the game of mind-reading in the parlour and who are led by the arm movements to find the hidden coin will often say with perfect sincerity that they do not feel any movements in the wrist which they touch. This is indeed quite possible. Those slight shocks which come to their finger tips reach their brains and control their movements without producing a conscious impression. They are led in the right direction without knowing what is leading them. The physician finds the most extreme cases of such happenings with some types of his hysteric patients.

They may not hear what is said to them or see what is shown to them, and yet it makes an impression on them and works on their minds, and they may be able later to bring it to their memory and it may guide their actions, but on account of their disease those impressions do not really reach their conscious minds.

We find the same lack of seeing or hearing or feeling in many cases of hypnotism. But it is not necessary to go to such extreme happenings.

All of us can remember experiences when impressions reached our eyes or ears and yet were not noticed at the time, although they guided our actions. We may have been on the street in deep thought or in an interesting conversation so that we were not giving any attention whatever to the way, and yet every step was taken correctly under the guidance of our eyes. We saw the street, although we were not conscious of seeing it. We do not hear a clock ticking in our room when we are working, and yet if the clock suddenly stops we notice it.

This indicates that the ticking of the clock reached us somehow and had an effect on us in spite of our not being conscious of it. The scientists are still debating whether it is best to say that these not conscious processes are going on in our subconscious mind or whether they are simply brain processes. For all practical purposes, this makes no difference. We may say that our brain gets an impression through our eyes when we see the street, or through our ears when we hear the clock, or we may say that our subconscious mind receives these messages of eye and ear. In neither case does the scientist find anything mysterious or supernatural.

I am convinced that all the experiences with Beulah Miller may ultimately be understood through those two principles. She has unusual gifts and her performances are extremely interesting, but I think everything can be explained through her subconscious noticing of unintended signs. Where no signs are given which reach her senses, she cannot read any one's mind. But the signs which she receives are not noticed by her consciously. She is not really aware of them; they go to her brain or to her subconscious mind and work from there on her conscious mind.

What speaks in favour of such a skeptical view? I mention at first one fact which was absolutely proved by my experiments-namely, that Beulah Miller's successes turn into complete failures as soon as neither the mother nor the sister is present in the room. All the experiments which I have conducted in which I alone, or I together with the minister and the judge, thought of words or cards or letters or numbers did not yield better results than any one would get by mere guessing. In one series, for instance, in which we all three made the greatest effort to concentrate our minds on written figures, she knew the first number correctly only in two out of fourteen cases. In another series of twelve letters she did not know a single one at the first trial. Sometimes when she showed splendid results with her sister Gladys present, everything stopped the very moment the sister left the room. Sometimes Beulah knew the first half of a word while Gladys stood still in the same room, and could not get the second half of the word when Gladys in the meantime had stepped from the little parlour to the kitchen. Beulah was helpless even when a wooden door was between her and the member of her family. She herself did not know that it made such a difference, but the records leave no doubt. I may at once add here another argument. The good results stop entirely when Beulah is blindfolded. Even when both her mother and sister were sitting quite near her, her mind-reading became pure guesswork when her eyes were covered with a scarf. Again, she liked to make the experiment under this condition and was not aware that her knowledge failed her when she did not see her mother or sister. Her delight in being blindfolded spoke very clearly for her nave sincerity, but her failure indicated no less clearly that she must be dependent upon unintentional signs for her success.

Let me say at once that some of the observers would probably object to my statement that the presence of the family was needed and that she had to be in such direct connection with them. The newspapers told wonderful stories of her success with strangers, and even the judge and the minister felt certain that they had seen splendid results under most difficult conditions. Yet I have to stick to what I observed myself. It may be objected-and it is well known that this is the pet objection of the spiritualists against the criticism of scholars-that the results come well only when the child is in full sympathy with those present and that I may have disturbed her. But this was not the case. I evidently did not disturb her, inasmuch as we saw that the experiments which I made with her when the sister or the mother was present were most satisfactory. Moreover, she was evidently very much at ease with me when we had become more acquainted, and just those entirely negative results were mostly received on a morning when I had fulfilled the dearest wishes of the two children, a watch for the one and a ring for the other, besides all the candy with which my pockets were regularly stuffed. She was in the happiest frame of mind and most willing to do her best. But if I rely exclusively on my own observation, it is not only because I suppose that the experiments yielded just as good results as those of other observers. It is rather because I know how difficult it is to give reliable accounts from mere memory and to make experiments without long training in experimental methods. All those publicly reported experiments had been made without any actual exact records, and, moreover, by persons who overlooked the most evident sources of error. As a matter of course, I took notes of everything which happened, and treated the case with the same carefulness with which I am accustomed to carry on the experiments in the Harvard Psychological Laboratory.

To give some ill.u.s.trations of sources of error, I may mention that the earlier observers were convinced that Beulah could not see slight movements of the persons in the room when she was looking fixedly at the ceiling, or that she could not notice the movements of the sister or the mother when she was staring straight into the eyes of the experimenter. Any psychologist, on the contrary, would say that that would be a most favourable condition for watching small signs. He knows that while we fixate a point with the centre of our eye we are most sensitive to slight movement impressions on the side parts of our eye, and that this sensitiveness is often abnormally heightened. Just when the child is looking steadily into our face or to the ceiling, the outside parts of her sensitive retina may bring to her the visible unintentional signs from her sister or mother. The untrained observer is also usually unaware how easily he helps by suggestive movements or utterances to the other observers. When Beulah gave a six instead of a nine, one of our friends whispered that she may have seen it upside down in her mind, or when she gave a zero instead of a six that it looked similar. In short, they keep helping without knowing it. Very characteristic is the habit of unintentionally using phrases which begin with the letters of which they are thinking. The letter in their minds forces them to speak words which begin with it. If they start at a C, we hear "Come, Beulah," if at a T, "Try, Beulah," if at an S, "See, Beulah." It is very hard to protect ourselves against such unintended and unnoticed helps. It is still more difficult to keep the failures in mind. The eager expectancy of hearing the right letter or number from the lips of the child gives such a strong emphasis to the right results that the wrong ones slip from the mind of the hearer.

The right figure may be only the third or the fourth guess of the child, but if then the whole admiring chorus around say emphatically at this fourth trial that this is quite right, those three wrong efforts which preceded fade away from the memory. I may acknowledge for myself that I was mostly inclined to believe that the number of the correct answers had been greater than they actually were according to my exact records. For all these reasons I had the very best right to disregard the reports of all those who relied on their amateur art of experimenting and on their mere memory account.