Fact and Fable in Psychology
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY ***
By Joseph Jastrow
THE SUBCONSCIOUS. Large crown 8vo, $2.50,
_net_. Postage 16 cents.
FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY. Large
crown 8vo, gilt top, $2.00.
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
FACT AND FABLE
IN
PSYCHOLOGY
BY JOSEPH JASTROW
PROFESSOR OF PSYCHOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN
[Logo]
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
COPYRIGHT, 1900, BY JOSEPH JASTROW
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
TO MY HELPMATE
PREFACE
A group of problems that appears conspicuously in the present volume,
and in so far contributes to the fitness of its title, has obtained
a considerable interest on the part of the public at large. Such
interest seems prone to take its clue from the activity of those
who herald startling revelations on the basis of unusual psychic
experiences, and who give promise of disclosing other worlds than
the one with which common sense and common sensation acquaint us,
rather than from the cautious and consistent results of serious and
professional students in study or in laboratory. The fascination of
the unusual over the popular mind is familiar and intelligible, and
seems in no direction more pronounced than in matters psychological.
So long as this interest is properly subordinated to a comprehensive
and illuminating general view of the phenomena in question, it is
not likely to be harmful and may prove to be helpful. But when the
conception of the nature of our mental endowment and the interest in
the understanding thereof are derived from the unusual, the abnormal,
and the obscure, instead of from the normal, law-abiding observations
systematized and illuminated by long and successful research,
there is danger that the interest will become unwholesome and the
conception misleading. It is quite natural that the plain man should
be interested in the experiences of the world of mind which form an
intrinsic part of his common humanity; and it is equally natural that
he should find attraction in less commonplace and seemingly anomalous
mental phenomena. If thunderstorms were as rare as total eclipses of
the sun, it is likely that they would attract equal attention, be
looked upon as terrifying and portentous by superstitious humanity,
and be invested by tradition with mysterious significance, under
the influence of the interest in the unusual. The existence of this
interest is itself a distinctive trait meriting a psychological
interpretation, and one not likely to be overlooked. Its direction
and regulation become the care of the several departments of science
that deal with the respective subject-matters involved. And yet
in a special way, as expressions of the popular _esprit_, such
interests claim the psychologist's attention as they do not claim the
attention of representatives of other sciences. It may happen that
the astronomer finds an interest in noting popular conceptions in
regard to comets and life on other planets and beliefs about meteors
and eclipses, but such interest forms no essential part of his
occupation. He knows very well that the intelligent layman who wishes
to be informed on astronomical matters will turn with confidence
and respect to the accounts of the solar system, which represent
the result of generations of scientific research under the guidance
of exceptional ability and devotion. The psychologist is in a less
fortunate position. His topic has neither that exclusive definiteness
of content nor that position of hereditary prestige nor the general
acknowledgment of its essentially technical character, which belong
to astronomy. All men have their own psychological experiences and
notions about mental phenomena, but opinions concerning astronomy are
admitted to belong to those who have specially fitted themselves for
such pursuits.
There is thus a natural reason why it should be particularly
difficult in psychology to bring about a wholesome and right-minded
and helpful interest on the part of the layman,--a difficulty further
aggravated by the encouragement of well-meaning but logically
defective publications claiming to substantiate by quasi-scientific
methods the popular belief in the peculiar personal and mysterious
significance of events. In the face of this situation, the
professional psychologist cannot but take heed of the dangers which
imperil the true appreciation of his labors and his purpose, on the
part of the sympathetic layman. It is a matter of serious concern
that the methods of genuine psychological study, that the conditions
of advance in psychology, that the scope and nature of its problems
should be properly understood. It is matter of importance that the
dominant interest in psychology should centre about the normal use
and development of functions with respect to which psychology bears
a significant message for the regulation of life. The restoration
of a more desirable and progressive point of view requires some
examination of the false and misleading conceptions and alleged data,
which threaten to divert the sound and progressive interest from
its proper channels. It is not to be expected, when many who engage
public attention speak in favor of the importance of the unknown and
the mystic in psychology, when the twilight phenomena of mental life
are dwelt upon--and professionally as well as by amateurs--to the
neglect of the luminous daylight actualities, that the layman will
always correctly distinguish between what is authentically scientific
and in accordance with the advancing ideals of psychology, and what
is but the embodiment of unfortunate traditions, or the misguided
effort of the dilettante, or the perverse fallacy of the prepossessed
mystic. Fact and fable in psychology can only be separated by the
logical sifting of evidence, by the exercise of the prerogative of a
scientific point of view substantiated and fortified by the lessons
embodied in the history of rational opinion. The cause of truth and
the overthrow of error must sometimes be fought in drawn battle
and with the clash of arms, but are more frequently served by the
inauguration of an adherence to one side and the consequent desertion
of the other. Both procedures may be made necessary by the current
status of psychological discussion.
The present collection of essays is offered as a contribution
towards the realization of a sounder interest in and a more intimate
appreciation of certain problems upon which psychology has an
authoritative charge to make to the public jury. These essays take
their stand distinctively upon one side of certain issues, and as
determinately as the situation seems to warrant, antagonize contrary
positions; they aim to oppose certain tendencies and to support
others; to show that the sound and profitable interest in mental life
is in the usual and normal, and that the resolute pursuit of this
interest necessarily results in bringing the apparently irregular
phenomena of the mental world within the field of illumination of
the more familiar and the law-abiding. They further aim to illustrate
that misconceptions in psychology, as in other realms, are as often
the result of bad logic as of defective observation, and that both
are apt to be called into being by inherent mental prepossessions.
Some of the essays are more especially occupied with an analysis
of the defective logic which lends plausibility to and induces
credence in certain beliefs; others bring forward contributions to
an understanding of phenomena about which misconception is likely to
arise; still others are presented as psychological investigations
which, it is believed, command a somewhat general interest. The
prominence of the discussion of unfortunate and misleading tendencies
in psychological opinion should not be allowed to obscure the
more intrinsically important problems which in the main are of a
different, though possibly not of an unrelated character. I should be
defeating one of the purposes of these essays if, by the discussion
of mooted positions, I conveyed the notion that the problems thus
presented were naturally the fundamental ones about which advance
in psychology may be most promisingly centred. I deeply regret
that the dispossession of fable requires more resolute and more
elaborate exposition than the unfoldment of fact; but such is part
of the condition confronting the critical student of psychological
opinion. I must depend upon the reader to make due allowances for
this foreshortening of a portion of the composition, and so to bring
away a truer impression of the whole than the apparent perspective
suggests.
It would not be proper to claim for this budget of psychological
studies a pre-arranged unity of design or a serial unfoldment of
argument. They represent the unity of interest of a worker in a
special field, who has his favorite excursions and vistas, who at
times ventures away from the beaten paths and as frequently returns
along those already traversed, but with varying purposes, and
reaches the outlook from a different approach. There seems enough of
singleness of purpose in the several presentations to warrant their
inclusion in a single volume with a common name. There is enough
also to make it pertinent to explain that the occasional repetitions
of the same line of thought seemed less objectionable than frequent
reference from one essay to another.
All of the essays have been previously printed in the pages of
various scientific and popular magazines; and I have accordingly
to acknowledge the courtesy of the several publishers, which makes
possible their appearance in their present form. The essays have,
however, been subjected to a critical revision, in the hope of
increasing their acceptability in regard to form and material, and of
giving them a setting appropriate to the interests of the present-day
readers of psychological literature. Both in the selection of the
essays from a larger group of published studies, and in their
arrangement and elaboration, I have attempted to bear in mind the
several current interests in questions of this type, and to direct
these interests formatively along lines which seem to me fertile in
promise and sterling in value. In the recasting thus made necessary
it has come about (markedly in two cases, The Problems of Psychical
Research and The Logic of Mental Telegraphy) that some of the essays
have been entirely rewritten and bear only a generic resemblance to
their former appearance.
The several acknowledgments to be recorded are as follows: To the
"Popular Science Monthly," for permission to reprint The Psychology
of Deception (December, 1888), The Psychology of Spiritualism (April,
1889), A Study of Involuntary Movements (April and September, 1892),
The Mind's Eye (January, 1899), The Modern Occult (September,
1900); to the "New Princeton Review," for The Dreams of the Blind
(January, 1888); to "Harper's Monthly Magazine," for The Problems of
Psychical Research (June, 1889); to "Scribner's Magazine," for The
Logic of Mental Telegraphy (October, 1895); to the "Cosmopolitan,"
for Hypnotism and its Antecedents (February, 1896). The Natural
History of Analogy was delivered as a vice-presidential address
before the Section of Anthropology of the American Association for
the Advancement of Science, and was printed in its Proceedings, vol.
xl., 1891. The article, Mental Prepossession and Inertia, appeared
in a college publication of the University of Wisconsin, the "Aegis"
(April, 1897). I have also to acknowledge my indebtedness to Miss
Helen Keller for her very interesting contribution to my presentation
of the dreams of the blind. My most comprehensive obligation in the
preparation of the volume I have acknowledged upon the dedicatory
page.
JOSEPH JASTROW.
MADISON, WISCONSIN, November, 1900.
CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFACE v
THE MODERN OCCULT
I. The nature of the occult 1
II. Historical aspect of the occult 5
III. Theosophy 7
IV. Spiritualism 12
V. Practical occult systems: Alchemy 18
VI. Astrology, Phrenology, etc. 21
VII. The occult in relation to medicine 24
VIII. Christian Science 26
IX. Other forms of occult healing 33
X. Influences affecting belief in the occult 38
THE PROBLEMS OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH
I. Science and its attitude toward borderland phenomena 47
II. The attitude of Psychical Research; its relation
to Psychology 50
III. Types of interest in Psychical Research: the occult
interest; the psychological interest; practical
applications of "psychical" investigations; the
explanatory interest; the investigative interest;
the anthropological interest 56
IV. The content of the problems of Psychical Research:
hypnotism; subconscious activities; hallucinations;
telepathy 66
V. The tendencies of Psychical Research 75
THE LOGIC OF MENTAL TELEGRAPHY
Introductory 78
I. Factors of the problem: unconscious mental processes;
mental community; coincidences 79
II. The statistical nature of the inquiry; the
application of theory to special cases 83
III. Sources of error in the data 87
IV. The source of coincidences in the subjective interest 88
V. Résumé 93
VI. The value of the data; coincidences; experimental
evidence; assumption and logical hypothesis 95
VII. The legitimacy of the telepathic hypothesis 99
VIII. Logical interpretation of the evidence 102
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF DECEPTION
Introductory 106
I. The interpretative factor in perception; its
relation to sense-deceptions 106
II. The rôle of the conjurer; the comprehension of
conjuring tricks dependent upon a knowledge of
technical detail; illustrations; conjuring
deceptions as imitations of the conditions of
real experience 111
III. The subjective factors in deception: suggestion,
expectation, misdirection of the attention; the
setting of a trick; illustrations 118
IV. The subjective attitude and prepossession as a
factor in deception; illustrated by the phenomena
of Spiritualism; experimental proof of the
influence of the belief-attitude; extreme instances
of prepossession 125
V. Mental contagion 132
VI. Résumé; the safeguards against deception 134
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SPIRITUALISM
I. Origin of modern Spiritualism; a survey of typical
manifestations; report of the Seybert Commission;
reports of other observers 137
II. The belief in Spiritualism psychologically
interpreted; the technical requisites for a
judgment in the matter; the investigations of Messrs.
Hodgson and Davey; the psychological factors
contributory to deception 147
III. The logical status of Spiritualism 159
IV. The source of the belief in spirit-agency; its
anthropological bearings; the appeal to unfortunate
predispositions; the moral aversion to Spiritualism 166
HYPNOTISM AND ITS ANTECEDENTS
Introductory 171
I. The historical aspect of hypnotism; the point of
view of modern hypnotism 172
II. Healers of disease by mental methods; their methods;
Greatrakes; Gassner 176
III. Mesmer; the beginnings of Animal Magnetism;
Mesmer's career in Paris; the Commission of 1784;
decline of Mesmerism 180
IV. The system of Animal Magnetism; its practices; a
critical view 189
V. Puységur and the discovery of artificial
somnambulism; the status of Puységur; Pétetin and
his contributions 193
VI. The revival of Mesmerism; Abbé Faria; somnambulism
in the hospitals of Paris; the report of the
Commission of 1825; the report of the Commission
of 1837 200
VII. James Braid; his early observations; his
enunciation of the physiology of the hypnotic
state; his connection with phrenology; his later
views; his recognition of unconscious deception 205
VIII. The chaotic condition of hypnotism in the middle
decades of the nineteenth century; hypnotism
as an anæsthetic; scientific contributions 213
IX. Extravagances of Mesmerism; Deleuze and his
followers; "electro-biology;" Harriet Martineau's
letters on Mesmerism; Mesmeric miracles;
Reichenbach and the "odic" force 216
X. Transition to modern hypnotism; the scientific
recognition of hypnotism; Charcot and his followers;
Bernheim and the school of Nancy 227
XI. Principles illustrated by the history of hypnotism;
lack of proper conceptions; unconscious suggestion;
conclusion 231
THE NATURAL HISTORY OF ANALOGY
I. The logical and psychological aspects of analogy 236
II. Analogy and primitive mental life; illustrations;
sympathetic magic based upon analogy; further
illustrations 238
III. Analogy the basis of belief in the connection
between object and name; illustrations; similar
relation between the object and its image, drawing,
or shadow 243
IV. Analogy and metaphor; vaguer forms of analogy 248
V. Analogy in children 250
VI. Analogy in superstitions and folk-lore customs;
in dream-interpretation; in fortune-telling; in
numbers; in folk-medicine 252
VII. The doctrine of sympathies; of signatures;
astrology; the rôle of analogy in these systems;
their modern survivals 261
VIII. Analogy as a phase in mental evolution; the
transition from superstition to science; the
evolution of the race and of the individual;
analogy, the serious thought habit of primitive man,
becomes in civilization a source of amusement;
conclusion 269
THE MIND'S EYE
I. The nature of perception; its subjective and
objective factors 275
II. Illustrations of the effects of the subjective
factor 279
III. Perception as modified by attention and by the
mental concept; illustrations; equivocal drawings 282
IV. The function of the mind's eye 294
MENTAL PREPOSSESSION AND INERTIA
I. The nature of prepossession; pedagogical
illustrations 296
II. Illustration derived from the experience of the
Census Bureau 301
III. Psychological interpretation 304
A STUDY OF INVOLUNTARY MOVEMENTS
I. Unconscious activities 307
II. Muscle-reading; method of recording involuntary
movements 308
III. Illustrations and description of records of
involuntary movements 312
IV. Interpretation and analysis of records of
involuntary movements 321
V. Influence of the nature of the object of attention
upon involuntary movements 330
VI. Other forms of involuntary indications;
"involuntary whispering;" the subconscious 334
THE DREAMS OF THE BLIND
I. The rôle of vision in mental life 337
II. The retention of vision in dreams as dependent
upon the age of the loss of sight; the "critical
period;" the investigation of Heermann in 1838;
the status as to "dream-vision" of the partially
blind 340
III. Corroborations of the above results by other
evidence; the dreams of the blind-deaf; dreams of
Laura Bridgman; Helen Keller's account of her
dream-life; interpretations 345
IV. Distinctions in dream-life of incidents experienced
during the period of sight from those of the
blindness period; the imagination of the blind;
illustrations of their dreams 360
V. Résumé 369
INDEX 371
FACT AND FABLE IN PSYCHOLOGY
THE MODERN OCCULT
I
If that imaginary individual so convenient for literary illustration,
a visitor from Mars, were to alight upon our planet at its present
stage of development, and if his intellectual interests induced him
to survey the range of terrestrial views of the nature of what is
"in heaven above, or on the earth beneath, or in the waters under
the earth," to appraise mundane opinion in regard to the perennial
problems of mind and matter, of government and society, of life
and death, our Martian observer might conceivably report that a
limited portion of mankind were guided by beliefs representing the
accumulated toil and studious devotion of generations,--the outcome
of a slow and tortuous but progressive growth through error and
superstition, and at the cost of persecution and bloodshed; that they
maintained institutions of learning where the fruits of such thought
could be imparted and the seeds cultivated to bear still more richly;
but that outside of this respectable yet influential minority, there
were endless upholders of utterly unlike notions and of widely
diverging beliefs, clamoring like the builders of the tower of Babel
in diverse tongues.
It is well, at least occasionally, to remember that our conceptions
of science and of truth, of the nature of logic and of evidence,
are not so universally held as we unreflectingly assume or as we
hopefully wish. Almost every one of the fundamental, basal, and
indisputable tenets of science is regarded as hopelessly in error
by some ardent would-be reformer. One Hampden declares the earth
to be a motionless plane with the North Pole as the centre; one
Carpenter gives a hundred remarkable reasons why the earth is not
round, with a challenge to the scientists of America to disprove
them; one Symmes regarded the earth as hollow and habitable within,
with openings at the poles, which he offered to explore for the
consideration of the "patronage of this and the new worlds;" while
Symmes, Jr., explains how the interior is lighted, and that it
probably forms the home of the lost tribes of Israel; and one Teed
announces, on equally conclusive evidence, that the earth is a
"stationary concave cell ... with people, Sun, Moon, Planets, and
Stars on the inside," the whole constituting an "alchemico-organic
structure, a Gigantic Electro-Magnetic Battery." If we were to
pass from opinions regarding the shape of the earth to the many
other and complex problems that appeal to human interests, it would
be equally easy to collect "ideas" comparable to these in value,
evidence, and eccentricity. With this conspicuously pathological
outgrowth of brain-functioning,--although its representatives in the
literature of the occult are neither few nor far between,--I shall
not specifically deal; and yet the general abuse of logic, the
helpless flounderings in the mire of delusive analogy, the baseless
assumptions, which characterize insane or "crank" productions, are
readily found in the literary products of occultism.
The occult consists of a mixed aggregate of movements and doctrines,
which may be the expressions of kindred interests and dispositions,
but present no essential community of content. Such members of this
cluster of beliefs as in our day and generation have attained a
considerable adherence or still retain it from former generations,
constitute the modern occult. A conspicuous and truly distinctive
characteristic of the occult is its marked divergence in trend and
belief from the recognized standards and achievements of human
thought. This divergence is one of attitude and logic and general
perspective. It is a divergence of intellectual temperament, that
distorts the normal reactions to science and evidence, and to the
general significance and values of the factors of our complicated
natures and of our equally complicated environment. At least it is
this in extreme and pronounced forms; and shades from it through
an irregular variety of tints to a vague and often unconscious
susceptibility for the unusual and eccentric, combined with an
instability of conviction regarding established beliefs that is more
often the expression of the weakness of ignorance than of the courage
of independence.
In their temper and course of unfoldment, occult doctrines are likely
to involve and to proceed upon mysticism, obscurity, and a disguised
form of superstition. In their content, they are attracted to such
themes as the ultimate nature of mental action, the conception
of life and death, the effect of cosmic conditions upon human
events and endowment, the delineation of character, the nature and
treatment of disease; or indeed to any of the larger or smaller
realms of knowledge that combine with a strong human, and at times
a practical interest, a considerable complexity of basal principles
and general relations. Both the temper and the content, the manner
and the matter of the occult, should be borne in mind in a survey
of its more distinctive examples. It is well, while observing the
particular form of occultism or mysticism, or, it may be, merely of
superstition and error, which one or another of the occult movements
exhibits, to note as well the importance of the intellectual motive
or temperament that inclines to the occult. It is important to
inquire not only what is believed, but what is the nature of the
evidence that induces belief; to observe what attracts and then makes
converts; to discover what are the influences by which the belief
spreads. Two classes of motives or interests are conspicuous: the
one prominently intellectual or theoretical, the other moderately or
grossly practical. Movements in which the former interest dominates,
contain elements that command respect even when they do not engage
sympathy; and that appeal, though it may be unwisely, to worthy
impulses and lofty aspirations. Amongst the movements presenting
prominent practical aspects are to be found instances of the most
irreverent and pernicious, as well as of the most vulgar, ignorant,
and fraudulent schemes which have been devised to mislead the human
mind. Most occult movements, however, are of a mixed character;
and in their career, the speculative and the practical change in
importance at different times, or in different lands, or at the hands
of variously minded leaders. Few escape, and some seem especially
designed for the partisanship of that class who are seeking whom they
may devour; who, stimulated by the greed for gain or the love of
notoriety, set their snares for the eternally gullible. The interest
in the occult, however, is under the sway of the law of fashion;
and fortunately, many a mental garment which is donned in spite of
the protest of reason and propriety, is quietly laid aside when the
dictum of the hour pronounces it unbecoming.
II
Historically considered, the occult points back to distant epochs and
to foreign civilizations; to ages when the facts of nature were but
weakly grasped, when belief was largely dominated by the authority
of tradition, when even the ablest minds fostered or assented to
superstition, when the social conditions of life were inimical
to independent thought, and the mass of men were cut off from
intellectual growth of even the most elementary kind. Pseudo-science
flourished in the absence of true knowledge; and imaginative
speculation and unfounded belief held the office intended for
inductive reason. Ignorance inevitably led to error, and false views
to false practices. In the sympathetic environment thus developed,
the occultist flourished and displayed the impressive insignia of
exclusive wisdom. His attitude was that of one seeking to solve an
enigma, to find the key to a secret arcanum; his search was for some
mystic charm, some talismanic formula, some magical procedure, which
should dispel the mist that hides the face of nature and expose her
secrets to his ecstatic gaze. By one all-encompassing, masterful
effort the correct solution was to be discovered or revealed; and
at once and for all, ignorance was to give place to true knowledge,
science and nature were to be as an open book, doubt and despair
to be replaced by the serenity of perfect wisdom. As our ordinary
senses and faculties proved insufficient to accomplish such ends,
supernatural powers were appealed to, a transcendental sphere of
spiritual activity was cultivated, capable of perceiving, through
the hidden symbolism of apparent phenomena, the underlying relations
of cosmic structure and final purposes. Long periods of training and
devotion, seclusion from the world, contemplation of inner mysteries,
were to lead the initiate through the various stages of adeptship
up to the final plane of communion with the infinite and the
comprehension of truth in all things. This form of occultism reaches
its fullest and purest expression in Oriental wisdom-religions. These
vie in interest to the historian with the mythology and philosophy
of Greece and Rome; and we of the Occident feel free to profit by
their ethical and philosophical content, and to cherish the impulses
which gave them life. But when such views are forcibly transplanted
to our age and clime, when they are decked in garments so unlike
their original vestments, particularly when they are associated with
dubious practices and come into violent conflict with the truth
that has accumulated since they first had birth,--their aspect is
profoundly altered, and they come within the circle of the modern
occult.
III
Of this character is Theosophy, an occult movement brought into
recent prominence by the activity and personality of Mme. Blavatsky.
The story of the checkered career of this remarkable woman is fairly
accessible. Born in Russia in 1831 as Helen Petrovna, daughter of
Colonel Hahn, of the Russian army, she was married at the age of
seventeen to an elderly gentleman, M. Blavatsky. She is described
in girlhood as a person of passionate temper and wilful and erratic
disposition. She separated or escaped from her husband after a few
months of married life, and entered upon an extended period of
travel and adventure. The search for "psychic" experiences and for
unusual persons and beliefs seemed to form the _leit-motiv_ of her
nomadic existence. She absorbed Hindu wisdom from the adepts of
India; she sat at the feet of a thaumaturgist at Cairo; she journeyed
to Canada to meet the medicine man of the Red Indians, and to New
Orleans to observe the practices of Voodoo among the negroes. It is
difficult to know what to believe in the accounts prepared by her
enthusiastic followers. Violations of physical law were constantly
occurring in her presence; and, to borrow a phrase from Mr. Lang,
"sporadic outbreaks of rappings and feats of impulsive pots, pans,
beds, and chairs insisted on making themselves notorious." In 1873
she came to New York and sat in "spiritualistic" circles, assuming
an assent to their theories, but claiming to see through and
beyond the manifestations the operations of her theosophic guides
in astral projection. At such a séance she met Colonel Olcott,
and assisted him in the foundation of the Theosophical Society in
New York in October, 1875. Mme. Blavatsky directed the thought of
this society to the doctrines of Indian occultism, and reported
the appearance in New York of a Hindu Mahatma, who left a turban
behind him as evidence of his astral visit. The Mahatmas, it was
explained, were a Society of Brothers, who dwelt in the fastnesses
of far-off Thibet, and there handed on by tradition the super-mortal
wisdom which their spirituality and contemplative training enabled
them to absorb. Later, this modern priestess of Isis and Colonel
Olcott (who remained her staunch supporter, but whom she referred
to in private as a "psychologized baby") exchanged the distracting
atmosphere of New York for the more serene environment of India;
and at Adyar established a shrine, from which were mysteriously
issued answers to letters placed within its recesses, from which
secret facts were revealed, and a variety of interesting marvels
performed. Discords arose within the household, and led to the
publication by M. and Mme. Coulomb, her confederates, of letters
illuminating the tricks of the trade by which the miracles had been
produced. Mme. Blavatsky pronounced the letters to be forgeries,
but they were sufficiently momentous to bring Mr. Hodgson to India
to investigate for the Society for Psychical Research. He was able
to deprive many of the miracles of their mystery; to show how the
shrine from which the Mahatma's messages emanated was accessible to
Mme. Blavatsky by the aid of sliding panels and secret drawers, to
show that these messages were in style, spelling, and handwriting
the counterpart of Mme. Blavatsky's, to show that many of the
phenomena were the result of planned collusion and that others were
created by the limitless credulity and the imaginative exaggeration
of the witnesses,--"domestic imbeciles," as madame confidentially
referred to them. Through the Akasic force, the medium of which was
the mysterious world-ether, Akaz, were brought messages that suddenly
appeared in space or fluttered down from the ceiling; yet M. Coulomb
explained how by means of a piece of thread, a convenient recess
in the plaster of the ceiling, and an arranged signal, the letters
could be made to appear at the proper dramatic moment. When a saucer
was left standing near the edge of a shelf in the shrine, and the
opening of the door brought it to the floor shattered to pieces, the
same mysterious force was sufficient to recreate it, without flaw
or blemish; but when Mr. Hodgson finds that at a shop at which Mme.
Blavatsky had made purchases, two such articles had been sold at the
price of two rupees eight annas the pair, the miracle becomes more
intelligible.
In brief, the report of the society convicted "the Priestess of Isis"
of "a long continued combination with other persons to produce by
ordinary means a series of apparent marvels for the support of the
Theosophic movement;" and concludes with these words: "For our own
part, we regard her neither as the mouthpiece of hidden seers nor as
a mere vulgar adventuress; we think that she has achieved a title to
permanent remembrance as one of the most accomplished, ingenious, and
interesting impostors in history." Mme. Blavatsky died in 1891, and
her ashes were divided between Adyar, London, and New York.
The Theosophic movement continues, though with abated vigor, owing
partly to the above-mentioned disclosures, but probably more to the
increasing propagandism of other cults, to the lack of a leader
of Mme. Blavatsky's genius, or to the inevitable ebb and flow of
such interests. Mme. Blavatsky continued to expound Theosophy after
the exposures, and although depressed by their publication still
occasionally essayed a miracle. Later, in a moment of confession
induced by the discovery of a package of Chinese envelopes ready
to serve for miraculous appearances, she is reported to have said,
"What is one to do, when in order to rule men it is necessary to
deceive them; when their very stupidity invites trickery, for
almost invariably the more simple, the more silly, and the more
gross the phenomena, the more likely it is to succeed?" Still,
even self-confession does not detract from the fervor of convinced
believers; and Mrs. Besant, Mr. Sinnett, and others were ready to
take up the work at her death. However, miracles are no longer
performed, and no immediately practical ends are proclaimed.
Individual development and evolution, mystic discourses on adeptship
and Karma and Maya and Nirvana, communion with the higher ends of
life, the cultivation of an esoteric psychic insight, form the goal
of present endeavor. The Mahatmas, says Mrs. Besant, are giving
"intellectual instructions, enormously more interesting than even the
exhibition of their abnormal powers." "Our European thinkers," thus
Mr. Podmore interprets Mr. Sinnett's attitude, "are like blind men
who are painfully learning to read with their fingers from a child's
primer, whilst these have eyes to see the universe, past, present,
and to come. To Mr. Sinnett it had been given to learn the alphabet
of that transcendent language." "He could make the most extravagant
mysticism seem matter of fact. He could write of _Manvantaras_
and _Nirvana_, and the septenary constitution of man, in language
which would have been appropriate in a treatise on kitchen-middens,
or the functions of the pineal gland. In his lucid prose the vast
conceptions of primitive Buddhism were fused with the commonplaces of
modern science; and whilst the cosmology which resulted from their
union dazzled by its splendid visions, the precise terminology of the
writer, and the very poverty of his imagination, served to reassure
his readers that they were listening to words of truth and soberness.
We were taught to look back upon this earth and all its mighty
sisterhood of planets and suns rolling onward in infinite space,
through cycle after cycle in the past. We were shown how, through
the perpetual flux and reflux of the spiritual and the natural, the
cosmic evolution was accomplished, and the earth grew, through the
life of crystal, and plant, and brute, to man. We saw how the worlds
throbbed in vast alternation of systole and diastole, and how the
tide of human life itself had its ebb and flow. And this fugitive
human personality--the man who works, and loves, and suffers--we saw
to endure but for a short life on earth, and for an age, shorter or
longer, in _Devachan_. Memory is then purged away, the eternal spirit
puts on a new dress, and a new life on earth is begun. And so through
each succeeding reincarnation the goal of the life preceding becomes
the starting-point of the life which follows." In such manner the
modern Theosophist seeks to appeal to men and women of philosophical
inclinations, for whom an element of mysticism has its charm, and
who are intellectually at unrest with the conceptions underlying
modern science and modern life. Such persons are quite likely to be
educated, refined, and sincere. We may believe them intellectually
misguided; we may recognize the fraud to which their leader resorted
to glorify her creed, but we must equally recognize the absence of
many pernicious tendencies in their teachings, which characterize
other and more practical occult movements.
IV
Spiritualism, another member of the modern occult family, presents
a combination of features rather difficult to portray; but its
public career of half a century has probably rendered its tenets and
practices fairly familiar.[1] For, like other movements, it presents
both doctrines and manifestations; and, like other movements, it
achieved its popularity through its manifestations and emphasized the
doctrines to maintain the interest and solidarity of its numerous
converts. Deliberate fraud has been repeatedly demonstrated in a
large number of alleged "spiritualistic" manifestations; in many more
the very nature of the phenomena and of the conditions under which
they appear is so strongly suggestive of trickery as to render any
other hypothesis of their origin equally improbable and superfluous.
Unconscious deception, exaggerated and distorted reports, defective
and misleading observation, have been demonstrated to be most potent
reagents, whereby alleged miracles are made to throw off their
mystifying envelopings and to leave a simple deposit of intelligible
and often commonplace fact. That the methods of this or that medium
have not been brought within the range of such explanation may be
admitted, but the admission carries with it no bias in favor of the
spiritualistic hypothesis. It may be urged, however, that where there
is much smoke there is apt to be some fire; yet there is little
prospect of discovering the nature of the fire until the smoke has
been completely cleared away. Perhaps it has been snatched from
heaven by a materialized Prometheus; perhaps it may prove to be the
trick of a _ridiculus mus_ gnawing at a match. And yet, in this
connection, the main point to be insisted upon with regard to such
manifestations is that their interpretation and their explanation
demand some measure of technical knowledge and training, and of
special adaptability to such pursuits. "The problem cannot be solved
and settled by amateurs, nor by 'common sense' that
'Delivers brawling judgments all day long,
On all things unashamed.'"
Spiritualism represents a systematization of popular beliefs and
superstitions, modified by echoes of religious and philosophical
doctrines; it thus contains factors which owe their origin to other
interests than those which lead directly to the occult. Its main
purpose was to establish the reality of communication with departed
spirits; the means, which at first spontaneously presented themselves
and later were devised for this purpose, were in large measure not
original. The rappings are in accord with the traditional folk-lore
behavior of ghosts; their transformation into a signal code (although
a device discovered before) may have been due to the originality of
the Fox children; the planchette has its analogies in Chinese and
European modes of divination; clairvoyance was incorporated from the
phenomena of artificial somnambulism, as practiced by the successors
of Mesmer; the "sensitive" or "medium" suggests the same origin as
well as the popular belief in the gift of supernatural powers in
favored individuals; others of the phenomena, such as "levitation"
and "cabinet performances," have their counterparts in Oriental
magic; "slate-writing," "form materializations," "spirit-messages"
and "spirit photographs" are, in the main, modern contributions. Mr.
Lang has attractively set forth the resemblances between primitive
and ancient spiritualism and its modern revival; he suggests that
"the 'Trance Medium,' the 'Inspirational Speaker' was a reproduction
of the maiden with a spirit of divination, of the Delphic Pythia.
In the old belief, the god dominated her, and spoke from her lips,
just as the 'control' or directing spirit dominates the medium." He
suggests that it is for like reasons that "the Davenport Brothers,
like Eskimo and Australian conjurers, like the Highland seer in
the bull's hide," are swathed or bound; he notes that "the lowest
savages have their _séances_, levitations, bindings of the medium,
trance speakers; Peruvians, Indians, have their objects moved without
contact;" he surmises that the Fox children, being of a Methodist
family, may have been inspired by "old Jeffrey," who haunted the
Wesleys' house.
The phenomena now associated with modern Spiritualism, with their
characteristic _milieu_, breed the typical atmosphere of the séance
chamber, which resists precise analysis, but which in its extreme
form involves morbid credulity, blind prepossession, and emotional
contagion; while the dependence of the phenomena on the character
of the medium offers strong temptation alike to shrewdness,
eccentricity, and dishonesty. On the side of his teachings the
Spiritualist is likewise not strikingly original. The relations of
his beliefs to those that grew about the revelations of Swedenborg,
to the speculations of the German "pneumatologists," and to other
philosophical doctrines, though perhaps not intimate, are yet
traceable and interesting; and in another view the Spiritualist is as
old as man himself, and finds his antecedents in the necromancer of
Chaldea, or in the Shaman of Siberia, or the Angekok of Greenland, or
the spirit-doctor of various savage tribes. The modern mediums are
thus simply repeating with new costumes and improved scenic effects
the mystic drama of primitive man.
Spiritualism thus appeals to a deep-seated craving in human nature,
that of assurance of personal immortality and of communion with
the departed. Just so long as a portion of mankind will accept
material evidence of such a belief, and will even countenance the
irreverence, the triviality, and the vulgarity surrounding the
manifestations; just so long as those persons will misjudge their
own powers of detecting how the alleged supernatural appearances
are really produced, and remain unimpressed by the principles upon
which alone a consistent explanation is possible, just so long will
Spiritualism and kindred delusions flourish.
As to the present-day status of this cult it is not easy to speak
positively. Its _clientèle_ has apparently greatly diminished;
it still numbers amongst its adherents men and women of culture
and education, and many more who cannot be said to possess these
qualities. There seems to be a considerable class of persons who
believe that natural laws are insufficient to account for their
personal experiences and those of others, and who temporarily or
permanently incline to a spiritualistic hypothesis in preference to
any other. Spiritualists of this intellectual temper can, however,
form but a small portion of those who are enrolled under its creed.
If one may judge by the tone and contents of current spiritualistic
literature, the rank and file to which Spiritualism appeals present
an unintellectual occult company, credulously accepting what they
wish to believe, utterly regardless of the intrinsic significance
of evidence or hypothesis, vibrating from one extreme or absurdity
to another, and blindly following a blinder or more fanatic leader
or a self-interested charlatan. While for the most extravagant and
unreasonable expressions of Spiritualism one would probably turn to
the literature of a few decades ago, yet the symptoms presented by
the Spiritualism of to-day are unmistakably of the same character,
and form a complex as characteristic as the symptom-complex of
hysteria or epilepsy, and which, _faute de mieux_, may be termed
occult. It is a type of occultism of a particularly pernicious
character, because of its power to lead a parasitic life upon the
established growths of religious beliefs and interests, and at the
same time to administer to the needs of an unfortunate but widely
prevalent passion for special signs and omens and the interpretation
of personal experiences. It is a weak though comprehensible nature
that becomes bewildered in the presence of a few experiences that
seem homeless among the generous provisions of modern science, and
runs off panic-stricken to find shelter in a system that satisfies
a narrow personal craving at the sacrifice of broadly established
principles, nurtured and grown strong in the hardy and beneficent
atmosphere of science. It is a weaker and an ignorant nature that
is attracted to the cruder forms of such beliefs, be it by the
impulsive yielding to emotional susceptibility, by the contagion of
an unfortunate mental environment, or by the absence of the steadying
power of religious faith, or of logical vigor, or of confidence in
the knowledge of others. Spiritualism finds converts in both camps
and assembles them under the flag of the occult.[2]
The wane in the popularity of Spiritualism may be due in part to
frequent exposures, in part to the passing of the occult interest to
pastures new, and in part to other and less accessible causes. Such
interest may again become dominant by the success or innovations
of some original medium or by the appearance of some unforeseen
circumstances. The present disposition to take up "spiritual healing"
and "spiritual readings of the future" rather than mere assurances
from the dead, indicates a desire to emulate the practical success
of more recently established rivals. The history of Spiritualism, by
its importance and its extravagance of doctrine and practice, forms
an essential and an instructive chapter in the history of aberrant
belief; and there is no difficulty in tracing the imprints of its
footsteps on the sands of the occult.
V
The impress of ancient and mediæval lore upon latter-day occultism
is conspicuous in the survivals of Alchemy and Astrology. Phrenology
represents a more recent pseudo-science, but one sufficiently
obsolete to be considered under the same head; as may also Palmistry,
which has relations both to an ancient form of divination and to a
more modern development after the manner of Physiognomy. The common
characteristic of these is their devotion to a practical end. Alchemy
occupies a somewhat distinct position. The original alchemists sought
the secret of converting the baser metals into gold, in itself a
sufficiently alluring and human occupation. There is no reason why
such a problem should assume an occult aspect, except the sufficient
one that ordinary procedures have not proved capable to effect the
desired end. It is a proverbial fault of ambitious inexperience to
attack valiantly large problems with endless confidence and sweeping
aspiration. It is well enough in shaping your ideas to hitch your
wagon to a star, yet the temporary utility of horses need not be
overlooked; but shooting arrows at the stars is apt to prove an idle
pastime. If we are willing to forget for the moment that the same
development of logic and experiment that makes possible the mental
and material equipment of the modern chemist, makes impossible his
consideration of the alchemist's search, we may note how far the
inherent constitution of the elements, to say nothing of their
possible transmutation, has eluded his most ultimate analysis.
How immeasurably further it was removed from the grasp of the
alchemist can hardly be expressed. But this is a scientific and not
an occult view of the matter; it was not by progressive training
in marksmanship that the occultist hoped to send his arrows to the
stars. His was a mystic search for the magical transmutation, the
elixir of life or the philosopher's stone. One might suppose that,
once the world has agreed that these ends are past finding out,
the alchemist, like the maker of stone arrow-heads, would have
found his occupation gone and have left no successor. His modern
representative, however, is an interesting and by no means extinct
species. He seems to flourish in France, but may be found in Germany,
in England, and in this country. He is rarely a pure alchemist
(although so recently as 1854 one of them offered to manufacture gold
for the French mint), but represents the pure type of occultist.
He calls himself a Rosicrucian; he establishes a University of the
Higher Studies, and becomes a professor of Hermetic Philosophy. His
thought is mystic, and symbolism has an endless fascination for
him. The recondite significance of numbers, extravagant analogies
of correspondence, the traditional hidden meanings of the Kabbalah,
fairly intoxicate him; and verbose accounts of momentous relations
and of unintelligible discoveries run riot in his writings. His
science is not a mere Chemistry, but a Hyper-Chemistry; his
transmutations are no longer material, but assume a spiritual aspect.
Like all adept followers of an esoteric belief, he must stand apart
from his fellow-men; he must cultivate the higher "psychic" powers,
so that eventually he may be able by the mere action of his will to
cause the atoms to group themselves into gold.
The modern alchemist is apt to be a general occultist; he may be also
an astrologer or a magnetist or a theosophist. But he is foremost
an ardent enthusiast for exclusive and unusual lore--not the common
and superficial possessions of misguided democratic science. He goes
through the forms of study, remains superior to the baser practical
ends of life, and finds his reward in the self-satisfaction of
exclusive wisdom. In Paris, at least, he forms part of a rather
respectable _salon_, speaking socially, or a "company of educated
charlatans," speaking scientifically. His class does not constitute a
large proportion of modern occultists, but they present a prominent
form of its intellectual temperament. "There are also people," says
Mr. Lang, "who so dislike our detention in the prison-house of old
unvarying laws that their bias is in favor of anything which may tend
to prove that science in her contemporary mood is not infallible. As
the Frenchman did not care what sort of a scheme he invested money
in, provided that it annoys the English, so many persons do not
care what they invest belief in, provided that it irritates men of
science." Of such is the kingdom of alchemists and their brethren.
VI
Astrology, Phrenology, Physiognomy, and Palmistry have in common
a search for positive knowledge whereby to regulate the affairs
of life, to foretell the future, to comprehend one's destiny
and capabilities. They aim to secure success, or at least to be
forearmed against failure by being forewarned. This is a natural,
a practical, and in no essential way an occult desire. It becomes
occult, or, more accurately, superstitious, when it is satisfied by
appeals to relations and influences which do not exist, and by false
interpretation of what may be admitted as measurably and vaguely
true and about equally important. When not engaged in their usual
occupation of building most startling superstructures on the most
insecure foundations, practical occultists are like Dr. Holmes's
katydid, "saying an undisputed thing in such a solemn way." They
will not hearken to the experience of the ages that success cannot
be secured nor character read by discovering their unreal or mystic
stigmata; they will not learn from physiology and psychology that
the mental capabilities, the moral and emotional endowment of an
individual are not stamped on his body in such a way that they may
be revealed by half an hour's use of the calipers and tape-measure;
they will not listen when science and common sense unite in teaching
that the knowledge of mental powers is not such as may be applied
by rule of thumb to individual cases, but that, like much other
valuable knowledge, it proceeds by the exercise of sound judgment,
and must as a rule rest content with suggestive generalizations and
imperfectly established correlations. An educated man with wholesome
interests and a vigorous logical sense can consider a possible
science of character and the means of aiding its advance without
danger and with some profit. But this meat is sheer poison to those
who are usually attracted to this type of speculations, while it
offers to the unscrupulous charlatan a most convenient net to spread
for the unwary. In so far as these occult mariners, the astrologists
and phrenologists _et id genus omne_, are sincere, and in so far
represent superstition rather than commercial fraud, they simply
ignore, through obstinacy or ignorance, the lighthouses and charts
and the other aids to modern navigation, and persist in steering
their craft by an occult compass. In some cases they are professedly
setting out, not for any harbor marked on terrestrial maps, but
their expedition is for the golden fleece or for the apples of the
Hesperides; and with loud-voiced advertisements of their skill as
pilots, they proceed to form stock companies for the promotion of
their several enterprises and to dispose of the shares to credulous
speculators.
It would be a profitless task to review the alleged data of
Astrology or Phrenology or Palmistry, except for the illustrations
which they readily yield of the nature of the conceptions and of
the logic which command a certain popular interest and acceptance.
The interest in these notions is, as Mr. Lang argues about ghosts
and rappings and bogles, in how they come to be believed, rather
than in how much or how little they chance to be true. It must be
remembered also that our present interest is in the occult factors
of these composite systems; they each contain other factors,--in
part incorporations of vague and distorted scientific truths, in
part dogmatic overstatement of results of observation, which, if
reduced to the proportions warranted by definite evidence, dissolve
into insignificance or intangibility, in part plausible or specious
argumentation, and in still greater part mere fanciful assertion. And
if we proceed to examine the professed evidence for the facts and
laws and principles (_sit venia verbis_) that pervade Astrology or
Phrenology or Palmistry or dream-interpretation, or beliefs of that
ilk, we find the flimsiest kind of texture, that will hardly bear
examination, and holds together only so long as it is kept secluded
from the light of day. Far-fetched analogy, baseless assertion, the
uncritical assimilation of popular superstitions, a great deal of
prophecy after the event (it is wonderful how clearly the astrologer
finds the indications of Napoleon's career in his horoscope, or the
phrenologist reads them in the Napoleonic cranial protuberances),
much fanciful elaboration of detail, ringing the variations on a
sufficiently complex and non-demonstrable proposition, cultivating
a convenient vagueness of expression, together with an apologetic
skill in providing for and explaining exceptions, the courage
to ignore failure and the shrewdness to profit by coincidences
and half-assimilated smatterings of science, and with it all an
insensibility to the moral and intellectual demands of the logical
decalogue,--and you have the skeleton, which, clothed with one
flesh, becomes Astrology, and with another Phrenology, and with
another Palmistry or Solar Biology or Descriptive Mentality or what
not. Such pseudo-sciences thrive upon that widespread and intense
craving for practical guidance of our individual affairs, which is
not satisfied with judicious applications of general principles, with
due consideration of the probabilities and uncertainties of human
life, but demands an impossible and precise revelation. Not all that
passes for, and in a way is knowledge, is or is likely soon to become
scientific; and when a peasant parades in an academic gown the result
is likely to be a caricature.
VII
To achieve fortune, to judge well and command one's fellow-men, to
foretell and control the future, to be wise in worldly lore, are
natural objects of human desire; but still another is essential to
happiness. Whether we attempt to procure these good fortunes by
going early to bed and early to rise, or by more occult procedures,
we wish to be healthy as well as wealthy and wise. The maintenance
of health and the perpetuity of youth were not absent from the
mediæval occultist's search, and formed an essential part of the
benefits to be conferred by the elixir of life and the philosopher's
stone. A series of superstitions and extravagant systems are
conspicuous in the antecedents and the by-paths of the history of
medicine, and are related to it much as astrology is to astronomy,
or alchemy to chemistry; and because medicine in part remains and
to previous generations was conspicuously an empirical art rather
than a science, it offers great opportunity for practical error
and misapplied partial knowledge. It is not necessary to go back
to early civilizations or to primitive peoples, among whom the
medicine-man and the priest were one and alike appealing to occult
powers, nor to early theories of disease which beheld in insanity
the obsession of demons and resorted to exorcism to cast them out;
it is not necessary to consider the various personages who acquired
notoriety as healers by laying on of hands or by appeal to faith,
or who, like Mesmer, introduced the system of animal magnetism, or,
like some of his followers, sought directions for healing from the
clairvoyant dicta of somnambules; it is not necessary to ransack
folk-lore superstitions and popular remedies for the treatment of
disease; for the modern forms of "irregular" healing offer sufficient
illustrations of occult methods of escaping the ills that flesh is
heir to.
The existence of a special term for a medical impostor is doubtless
the result of the prevalence of the class thus named; but quackery
and occult medicine, though mutually overlapping, can by no means be
held accountable for one another's failings. Many forms of quackery
proceed on the basis of superstitions or fanciful or exaggerated
notions containing occult elements, but for the present purpose it
is wise to limit attention to those in which this occult factor is
distinctive; for medical quackery in its larger relations is neither
modern nor occult. Occult healing takes its distinctive character
from the theory underlying the practice rather than from the nature
of the practice. It is not so much what is done, as why it is done,
or pretended to be done or not done, that determines its occult
character. A factor of prominence in modern occult healing is indeed
one that in other forms characterized many of its predecessors, and
was rarely wholly absent from the connection between the procedure
and the result; this is the mental factor, which may be called upon
to give character to a theory of disease, or be utilized consciously
or unconsciously as a curative principle. It is not implied that
"mental medicine" is necessarily and intrinsically occult, but only
that the general trend of modern occult notions regarding disease
may be best portrayed in certain typical forms of "psychic" healing.
The legitimate recognition of the importance of mental conditions
in health and disease is one of the results of the union of modern
psychology and modern medicine. An exaggerated and extravagant as
well as pretentious and illogical overstatement and misstatement of
this principle may properly be considered as occult.
VIII
Among such systems there is one which by its momentary prominence
overshadows all others; and for this reason, as well as for its
more explicit or rather more extended statement of principles, must
be accorded special attention: I need hardly say that I refer to
that egregious misnomer, Christian Science. This system is said
to have been discovered by, or revealed to, Mrs. Mary Baker Glover
Eddy in 1866. Several of its most distinctive positions (without
their religious setting) are to be found in the writings, and were
used in the practice of Mr. or Dr. P. P. Quimby (1802-1866), whom
Mrs. Eddy professionally consulted shortly before she began her own
propagandum. On its theoretical side, the system presents a series
of quasi-metaphysical principles and also a professed interpretation
of the Scriptures; on its practical side, it offers a means of
curing or avoiding disease, and includes under disease also what
is more generally described as sin and misfortune. With Christian
Science as a religious movement I shall not directly deal; I wish,
however, to point out that this assumption of a religious aspect
finds a parallel in Spiritualism and Theosophy, and doubtless forms
one of the most potent reasons for the success of these occult
movements. It would be a most dangerous principle to admit that the
treatment of disease and the right to ignore hygiene can become the
perquisite of any religious faith. It would be equally unwarranted
to permit the principles which are responsible for such beliefs to
take shelter behind the ramparts of religious tolerance, for the
essential principles of Christian Science do not constitute a form of
Christianity any more than they constitute a science; but, in so far
as they do not altogether elude description, pertain to the domain
over which medicine, physiology, and psychology hold sway. As David
Harum, in speaking of his church-going habits, characteristically
explains, "the one I stay away from when I don't go 's the
Presbyteriun," so the doctrines which Christian Science "stays
away from," are those over which recognized departments of academic
learning have the authority to decide.
Mrs. Eddy's _magnum opus_, serving at once as the text-book of the
"science" and as a revised version of the Scriptures, "Science and
Health, with Key to the Scriptures," has been circulated to the
extent of one hundred and seventy thousand copies. I shall not
give an account of this book, nor subject its more tangible tenets
to a logical review; I must be content to recommend its pages as
suggestive reading for the student of the modern occult, and to
set forth in the credentials of quotation marks some of the dicta
concerning disease. Yet it may be due to the author, or mouthpiece,
of this system, to begin by citing what are declared to be its
fundamental tenets, even if their connection with what is built upon
them is far from evident.
"The fundamental propositions of Christian Science are
summarized in the four following, to me, _self-evident_
propositions. Even if read backward, these propositions
will be found to agree in statement and proof:--
"1. God is All in all.
"2. God is good. Good is Mind.
"3. God, Spirit, being all, nothing is matter.
"4. Life, God, omnipotent Good, deny death, evil,
sin, disease--Disease, sin, evil, death, deny Good,
omnipotent God, Life."
"What is termed disease does not exist." "Matter has no
being." "All is mind." "Matter is but the subjective
state of what is here termed _mortal mind_." "All
disease is the result of education, and can carry
its ill effects no farther than mortal mind maps out
the way." "The fear of dissevered bodily members,
or a belief in such a possibility, is reflected on
the body, in the shape of headache, fractured bones,
dislocated joints, and so on, as directly as shame
is seen rising to the cheek. This human error about
physical wounds and colics is part and parcel of
the delusion that matter can feel and see, having
sensation and substance." "Insanity implies belief in
a diseased brain, while physical ailments (so-called)
arise from belief that some other portions of the
body are deranged.... A bunion would produce insanity
as perceptible as that produced by congestion of the
brain, were it not that mortal mind calls the bunion
an unconscious portion of the body. Reverse this
belief and the results would be different." "We weep
because others weep, we yawn because they yawn, and
we have small-pox because others have it; but mortal
mind, not matter, contains and carries the infection."
"A Christian Scientist never gives medicine, never
recommends hygiene, never manipulates." "Anatomy,
Physiology, Treatises on Health, sustained by what is
termed material law, are the husbandmen of sickness
and disease." "You can even educate a healthy horse
so far in physiology that he will take cold without
his blanket." "If exposure to a draught of air while
in a state of perspiration is followed by chills, dry
cough, influenza, congestive symptoms in the lungs, or
hints of inflammatory rheumatism, your Mind-remedy is
safe and sure. If you are a Christian Scientist, such
symptoms will not follow from the exposure; but if
you believe in laws of matter and their fatal effects
when transgressed, you are not fit to conduct your own
case or to destroy the bad effects of belief. When the
fear subsides and the conviction abides that you have
broken no law, neither rheumatism, consumption, nor
any other disease will ever result from exposure to
the weather." "Destroy fear and you end the fever."
"To prevent disease or cure it mentally let spirit
destroy the dream of sense. If you wish to heal by
argument, find the type of the ailment, get its name,
and array your mental plea against the physical. Argue
with the patient (mentally, not audibly) that he has
no disease, and conform the argument to the evidence.
Mentally insist that health is the everlasting fact,
and sickness the temporal falsity. Then realize the
presence of health, and the corporeal senses will
respond, so be it." "My publications alone heal more
sickness than an unconscientious student can begin to
reach." "The quotients, when numbers have been divided
by a fixed rule, are not more unquestionable than the
scientific tests I have made of the effects of truth
upon the sick." "I am never mistaken in my scientific
diagnosis of disease." "Outside of Christian Science
all is vague and hypothetical, the opposite of Truth."
"Outside Christian Science all is error."
Surely this is a remarkable product of mortal mind! It would perhaps
be an interesting _tour de force_, though hardly so entertaining as
"Alice in Wonderland," to construct a universe on the assertions
and hypotheses which Christian Science presents; but it would have
less resemblance to the world we know than has Alice's wonderland.
For any person for whom logic and evidence are something more real
than ghosts or myths, the feat must always be relegated to the airy
realm of the imagination, and must not be brought in contact with
earthly realities. And yet the extravagance of Mrs. Eddy's book, its
superb disdain of vulgar fact, its transcendental self-confidence,
its solemn assumption that reiteration and variation of assertion
somehow spontaneously generate proof or self-evidence, its shrewd
assimilation of a theological flavor, its occasional successes in
producing a presentable travesty of scientific truth,--all these
distinctions may be found in many a dust-covered volume, that
represents the intensity of conviction of some equally enthusiastic
and equally inspired occultist, but one less successful in securing a
chorus to echo his refrain.
The temptation is strong not to dismiss "Eddyism" without
illustrating the peculiar structures under which, in an effort to be
consistent, it is forced to take shelter. Since disease is always
of purely mental origin, it follows that disease and its symptoms
cannot ensue without the conscious coöperation of the patient;
since "Christian Science divests material drugs of their imaginary
power," it follows that the labels on the bottles that stand on the
druggist's shelves are correspondingly meaningless. And it becomes
an interesting problem to inquire how the consensus of mortal mind
came about that associates one set of symptoms with prussic acid,
and another with alcohol, and another with quinine. Inhaling oxygen
or common air would prepare one for the surgeon's knife, and prussic
acid or alcohol have no more effect than water, if only a congress of
nations were to pronounce the former to be anæsthetic and promulgate
a decree that the latter be harmless. Christian Science does not
flinch from this position. "If a dose of poison is swallowed through
mistake and the patient dies, even though physician and patient are
expecting favorable results, does belief, you ask, cause this death?
Even so, and as directly as if the poison had been intentionally
taken. In such cases a few persons believe the potion swallowed by
the patient to be harmless; but the vast majority of mankind, though
they know nothing of this particular case and this special person,
believe the arsenic, the strychnine, or whatever the drug used, to
be poisonous, for it has been set down as a poison by mortal mind.
The consequence is that the result is controlled by the majority of
opinions outside, not by the infinitesimal minority of opinions in
the sick chamber." But why should the opinions of οἱ πολλοί [Greek:
hoi polloi] be of influence in such a case, and the enlightened
minorities be sufficient to effect the marvelous cures in all the
other cases? Christian Scientists do not take cold in draughts in
spite of the contrary opinions or illusions of misguided majorities.
The logical Christian Scientist concludes that he need not eat, "for
the truth is food does not affect the life of man;" and yet at once
renounces his faith by adding, "but it would be foolish to venture
beyond our present understanding, foolish to stop eating, until
we gain more goodness and a clearer comprehension of the living
God." And the mental physician, to be consistent, must be a mental
surgeon also; and not plead that, "Until the advancing age admits the
efficacy and supremacy of mind, it is better to leave the adjustment
of broken bones and dislocations to the fingers of surgeons."
But it is unprofitable to consider the failings and absurdities of
any occult system in its encounters with actual science and actual
fact. It is simply as a real and prominent menace to rationality that
these doctrines naturally attract consideration. Regarding them as
illustrations of present-day occult beliefs, we are naturally tempted
to inquire what measure of (perverted) truth they may contain; but
the more worthy question is, How do such perversions come to find
so large a company of "supporting listeners"? For to any one who
can read and be convinced by the sequence of words of this system,
ordinary logic has no power, and to him the world of reality brings
no message. No form of the modern occult antagonizes the foundations
of science so brusquely as this one. The possibility of science rests
on the thorough and absolute distinction between the subjective
and the objective. In what measure a man loses the power to draw
this distinction clearly, and as other men do, in that measure he
becomes irrational or insane. The objective exists; and no amount of
thinking it away or thinking it differently will change it. That is
what is understood by ultimate scientific truth; something that will
endure unmodified by passing ways of viewing it, open to every one's
verification who comes equipped with the proper means to verify,--a
permanent objective, to be ascertained by careful logical inquiry,
not to be determined by subjective opinion. Logic is the language of
science; Christian Science and what sane men call science can never
communicate because they do not speak the same language.
IX
It would be unfortunate to emphasize the popular preëminence of
Christian Science at a cost of the neglect of the significance of the
many other forms of "drugless healing," which bid for public favor
by appeal to ignorance and to occult and superstitious instincts.
Some are allied to Christian Science, and like it assimilate their
cult to a religious movement; others are unmistakably the attempts
of charlatans to lure the credulous by noisy advertisements of
newly discovered and scientifically indorsed systems of "psychic
force," or of some personal "ism." For many purposes it would be
unjust to group together such various systems, which in the nature
of things must include sinner and saint, the misguided sincere, the
half-believers who think "there may be something in it," or "that
it is worth a trial," along with scheming quacks and adepts in
commercial fraud. They illustrate the many and various roads traveled
in the search for health, by pilgrims who are dissatisfied with the
highways over which medical science pursues its steadfast though it
may be devious course. Among them there is plausible exaggeration and
ignorant perversion and dishonest libel of the relations that bind
together body and mind. Among the several schisms from the "Mother
Church of Christian Science" there is one that claims to be the
"rational phase of the mental healing doctrine," that acknowledges
the reality of disease and the incurability of serious organic
disorders, and resents any connection with the "half-fanatical
personality worship" (of Mrs. Eddy) as quite as foreign to its
tenets as would be the views of the "Free Religious Association" to
the "Pope of Rome." "Divine Healing" exhibits its success in one
notable instance, in the establishment of a school and college, a
bank, a land and investment association, a printing and publishing
office, and sundry divine healing homes; and this prosperity is now
to be extended by the foundation of a city or colony of converts,
who shall be united by the common bond of faith in divine healing
as transmitted in the personal power of their leader. The official
organ of this movement announces that the personification of their
faith "makes her religion a business and conducts herself upon
sound business principles;" their leader publicly boasts of his vast
financial returns. With emphatic protest on the part of each that
he alone holds the key to salvation, and that his system is quite
original and unlike any other, comes the procession of Metaphysical
Healer and Mind-Curist and Viticulturist and Magnetic Healer and
Astrological Health Guide and Phrenopathist and Medical Clairvoyant
and Esoteric Vibrationist and Psychic Scientist and Mesmerist and
Occultist. Some use or abuse the manipulations of hypnotism; others
claim the power to concentrate the magnetism of the air and to excite
the vital fluids by arousing the proper mental vibrations, or by some
equally lucid and demonstrable procedure; some advertise magnetic
cups, and positive and negative powders, and absent treatment by
outputs of "psychic force," and countless other imposing devices.
In truth, they form a motley crew, and with their "Colleges of Fine
Forces," and "Psychic Research Companies," offering diplomas and
degrees for a three weeks' course of study or the reading of a book,
represent the slums of the occult. An account of their methods is
likely to be of as much interest to the student of fraud as to the
student of opinion.
There can be no doubt that many of these systems have been stimulated
into life or into renewed vigor by the success of Christian Science;
this is particularly noticeable in the introduction of absent
treatment as a plank in their diverse platforms. This ingenious
method of restoring the health of their patients and their own
exchequers appealed to all the band of healing occultists from
Spiritualist to Vibrationist, as easily adaptable to their several
systems. In much the same way Mesmer, more than a hundred years ago,
administered to the practice which had exhausted the capacity of
his personal attention, by magnetizing trees and selling magnetized
water. The absent treatment represents the occult extension movement;
and unencumbered by the hampering restrictions of physical forces,
superior even to wireless telegraphy, carries its influence into the
remotest homes. From ocean to ocean, and from North to South, these
absent healers set apart some hour of the day, when they mentally
convey their healing word to the scattered members of their flock.
On the payment of a small fee you are made acquainted with the
"soul-communion time-table" for your longitude, and may know when
to meet the healing vibrations as they pass by. Others disdain any
such temporal details and assure a cure merely on payment of the
fee; the healer will know sympathetically when and how to transmit
the curative impulses. Poverty and bad habits as well as disease
readily succumb to the magic of the absent treatment. Such an
hysterical edict as this is hardly extreme or unusual: "Join the
Success Circle.... The Centre of that Circle is my omnipotent WORD.
Daily I speak it. Its vibrations radiate more and more powerfully day
by day.... As the sun sends out vibrations ... so my WORD radiates
Success to 10,000 lives as easily as to one."
It is impossible to appreciate fully the extravagances of these
occult healers unless one makes a sufficient sacrifice of time
and patience to read over a considerable sample of the periodical
publications with which American occultism fairly teems. And when
one has accomplished this task he is still at sea to account for
the readers and believers who support these various systems, so
undreamt of in our philosophy. It would really seem that there is
no combination of ideas too absurd to fail entirely of a following.
Carlyle, without special provocation, concluded that there were about
forty million persons in England, mostly fools; what would have been
his comment in the face of this vast and universal array of human
folly! If it be urged in rejoinder that beneath all this rubbish
heap a true jewel lies buried, that the wonderful cures and the
practical success of these various systems indicate their dependence
upon an essential and valuable factor in the cure of disease and the
formation of habits, it is possible with reservation to assent, and
with emphasis to demur. Such success, in so far as it is rightly
reported, exemplifies the truly remarkable function of the mental
factor in the control of normal as of disordered physiological
functions. This truth has been recognized and utilized in unobtrusive
ways for many generations, and within recent years has received
substantial elaboration from carefully conducted experiments and
observations. Specifically, the therapeutic action of suggestion,
both in its more usual forms and as hypnotic suggestion, has shown
to what unexpected extent such action may proceed in susceptible
individuals. The well-informed and capable physician requires no
instruction on this point; his medical education furnishes him with
the means of determining the symptoms of true organic disorder, of
functional derangement, and of the modifications of these under the
more or less unconscious interference of an unfortunate nervous
system. It is quite as human for the physician as for other mortals
to err; and there is doubtless as wide a range among them, as among
other pursuits, of ability, tact, and insight. "But when all is
said and done," the fundamental fact remains that the utilization
of the mental factor in the alleviation of disease will be best
administered by those who are specifically trained in the knowledge
of bodily and of mental symptoms of disease. Such application of an
established scientific principle may prove to be a jewel of worth
in the hands of him who knows how to cut and set it. The difference
between truth and error, between science and superstition, between
what is beneficent to mankind and what is pernicious, frequently lies
in the interpretation and the spirit as much as, or more than, in
the fact. The utilization of mental influences in health and disease
becomes the one or the other according to the wisdom and the truth
and the insight into the real relations of things, that guide its
application. As far removed as chemistry from alchemy, as astronomy
from astrology, as the doctrine of the localization of function
in the brain from phrenology, as hypnotic suggestion from animal
magnetism, are the crude and perverse notions of Christian Scientist
or Metaphysical Healer removed from the rational application of the
influence of the mind over the body.
X
The growth and development of the occult presents an interesting
problem in the psychology of belief. The motives that induce the
will to believe in the several doctrines that have been passed
in review are certainly not more easy to detect and to describe
than would be the case in reference to the many other general
problems--philosophical, scientific, religious, social, political,
or educational--on which the right to an opinion is accepted as an
inalienable heritage of humanity or at least of democracy. Professor
James tells us that often "our faith is faith in some one else's
faith, and in the greatest matters this is most the case." Certainly
the waves of popularity of one cult and another reflect the potent
influence of contagion in the formation of opinion and the guidance
of conduct. When we look upon the popular delusions of the past
through the achromatic glasses which historical remoteness from
present conditions enables us to adjust to our eyes, we marvel that
good and great men could have been so grossly misled, that obvious
relations and fallacies could have been so stupidly overlooked,
that worthless and prejudiced evidence could have been accepted as
sound and significant. But the opinions to which we incline are all
colored o'er with the deep tinge of emotional reality, which is the
living expression of our interest in them or our inclination toward
them. What they require is a more vigorous infusion of the pale cast
of thought; for the problem of the occult and the temptations to
belief which it holds out are such as can be met only by a sturdy
application of a critical logic. Only as logical thoroughness comes
to prevail over superficial plausibility, as beliefs come to be
formed and evidence estimated according to their intrinsic value
rather than according to their emotional acceptability, will the
propagandum of the occult meet with greater resistance and aversion.
The fixation of belief proceeds under the influence both of general
and of special forces; the formation of a belief is at once a
personal and a social reaction--a reaction to the evidence which
recorded and personal experiences present, and to the current beliefs
of our environment. To an equal extent is the reaction determined
by the temperament of the reagent. And although the resulting
individual beliefs, however complex, are not matters of chance nor
are their causes altogether past finding out, yet some of their
contributing factors are so vague and so inaccessible that they
are most profitably considered as specific results of more or less
clearly discerned general principles; and in many respects there is
more valid interest in the general principles than in the particular
results. It is interesting, and it may be profitable, to investigate
why this area is wooded with oak and that with maple, but it is
somewhat idle to speculate why this particular tree happens to be
a maple rather than an oak, even if it chances to stand on our own
property, and to have an interest to us beyond all other trees.
Among the more tangible tendencies that in various ways lead to the
occult there is distinguishable what may be termed the intensely
personal temperament,--the mental attitude that absorbs knowledge
only when dissolved in an all-pervading personal medium; the attitude
that finds a paramount significance in the personal interpretation
of experiences, and reacts to massive and extensive generalizations
most vaguely and impotently; the attitude that offers a weak and
verbal assent to scientific principles and to the realities of
nature, but inwardly cherishes an intense belief in the personal
purport of the order of events, and earnestly seeks for a precise
explanation of individual happenings. "The chronic belief of
mankind," says Professor James, "that events may happen for the
sake of their personal significance is an abomination." It is this
chronic mental habit that broods upon the problem of subjective
experiences, and is ready to recognize in signs and omens the guiding
principle of rationality; not that this is always done designedly and
superstitiously, but the underlying bent obscures the consideration
of experience in any other than a personal light, and obstructs that
illumination of the concrete by the generic, which constitutes an
indispensable factor in the growth of wholesome thought. The victim
of this unfortunate habit will remain logically unfit to survive the
struggle against the occult. Only in so far as he succeeds in getting
away from his personal perspective will he be able to appreciate
the true status of the problem which enlists his interest. Above
all is it necessary to subordinate explicit individual explanations
to the general illumination of well-established principles. It may
be interesting to note that the partaking of mince-pie at evening
induces bad dreams, but it is hardly profitable to speculate deeply
why my dream took the form of a leering demon with the impolite habit
of squatting on my chest. The stuff that dreams are made of is not
susceptible of that type of analysis. The most generous allowance
must be made for coincidences and irrelevancies, and it must be
constantly remembered that the obscure phenomena of psychology,
and, indeed, the phenomena of more thoroughly established and
intrinsically more definite sciences, cannot be expected to pass
the test of detailed and concrete combinations of circumstances. In
other classes of knowledge the temptation to demand such explicit
explanations of observations and experiences is not so strong,
because of the absence of an equally strong personal interest; but
clearly this does not affect the logical status of the problem.
The reply to this argument I can readily anticipate; and I confess
that my admiration of Hamlet is somewhat dulled by reason of that
ill-advised remark to Horatio about there being more things in heaven
and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophies. The occultist
always seizes upon that citation to refute the scientist. He prints
it as his motto on his books and journals, and regards it as a slow
poison that will in time effect the destruction of the rabble of
scientists, and reveal the truth of his own Psycho-Harmonic Science
or Heliocentric Astrology. It is one thing to be open-minded, and to
realize the incompleteness of scientific knowledge, and to appreciate
how often what was ignored by one generation has become the science
of the next; and it is a very different thing to be impressed with
coincidences and dreams and premonitions, and to regard them as
giving the keynote to the conceptions of nature and reality, and
to look upon science as a misdirected effort. Such differences of
attitude depend frequently upon a difference of temperament as well
as upon intellectual discernment. The man or the woman who flies to
the things not dreamt of in our philosophy quite commonly does not
understand the things which our philosophy very creditably explains.
The two types of mind are different, and, as Professor James
expresses it, "the scientific-academic mind and the feminine-mystical
mind shy from each other's facts just as they fly from each other's
temper and spirit."
Certain special influences combine with these fundamental differences
of attitude to favor the spread of belief in the occult; and of these
the character of the beliefs as of the believers furnishes some
evidence. At various stages of the discussion I have referred to
the deceptive nature of the argument by analogy; to the dominating
sympathy with a conclusion, and the resulting assimilation and
overestimation of apparent evidence in its favor; to the frequent
failure to understand that the formation of valid opinion and the
interpretation of evidence in any field of inquiry require somewhat
of expert training and special aptitude, obviously so in technical
matters, but only moderately less so in matters misleadingly
regarded as general; to bias and superstition, to the weakness
that bends easily to the influences of contagion, to unfortunate
educational limitations and perversions, and, not the least, to a
defective grounding in the nature of scientific fact and proof.
The mystery attaching to the behavior of the magnet led Mesmer
to call his curative influence "animal magnetism,"--a conception
that still prevails among latter-day occultists. The principle of
sympathetic vibration, in obedience to which a tuning-fork takes up
the vibrations of another in unison with it, is violently transferred
to imaginary brain vibrations and to still more imaginary telepathic
currents. The X-ray and wireless telegraphy are certain to be
utilized in corroboration of unproven modes of mental action, and
will be regarded as furnishing the key to clairvoyance and rapport;
just as well-known electrical phenomena have given rise to the
notions of positive and negative temperaments and mediumistic polar
attraction and repulsion. All this results from the unwarranted
and absurd application of analogies; for analogies, even when
appropriate, are little more than suggestive or corroborative of
relations or conceptions which owe their main support to other and
more sturdy evidence. Analogy under careful supervision may make a
useful apprentice, but endless havoc results when the servant plays
the part of the master.
No better illustrations could be desired of the effects of mental
prepossession and the resulting distortion of evidence and of logical
insight than those afforded by the career of Spiritualism and that
of Christian Science. In both these movements the assimilation
of a religious trend has been of inestimable importance to their
dissemination. Surely it is not merely or mainly the evidences
obtainable in the séance chamber, nor the irresistible accumulation
of cures by argument and thought-healings, that account for the
organized gatherings of Spiritualists and the costly temples and
thriving congregations of Christ Scientist. It is the presentation
of a practical doctrine of immortality and of the spiritual nature
of disease in conjunction with an accepted religious system, that
is responsible for these vast results. The "Key to the Scriptures"
has immeasurably reinforced the "Science and Health," and brought
believers to a new form of Christianity who never would have
been converted to a new system of medicine presented on purely
intellectual grounds. Rationality is doubtless a characteristic
tendency of humanity, but logicality is an acquired possession,
and one by no means firmly established in the race at large. So
long as we are reproved by the discipline of nature, and that
rather promptly, we tend to act in accordance with the established
relations of things; that is rationality. But the recognition of
the more remote connections between antecedent and consequent, and
the development of habits of thought which shall lead to reliable
conclusions in complex situations; and again, the ability to
distinguish between the plausible and the true, the firmness to
support principle in the face of paradox and seeming nonconformity,
to think clearly and consistently in the absence of the practical
reproof of nature--that is logicality. It is only as the result
of a prolonged and conscientious training, aided by an extensive
experience and by a knowledge of the historical experience of the
race, that the inherent rational tendencies develop into established
logical habits and principles of belief. For many this development
remains stunted or arrested; and they continue as children of a
larger growth, leaning much on others, rarely venturing abroad alone,
and wisely confining their excursions to familiar ground. When they
become possessed with the desire to travel among other cultures,
their lack of appreciation of the sights which their journeys bring
before them gives to their reports the same degree of reliability and
value as attaches to the much ridiculed comments of the philistine
_nouveaux riches_.
The survey of the modern occult makes it seem quite utopian to look
forward to the day when the occult shall have disappeared, and the
lion and the lamb shall feed and grow strong on the same nourishment.
Doubtless new forms and phases of the occult will arise to take
the place of the old as their popularity declines; and the world
will be the more interesting and more characteristically a human
dwelling-place for containing all sorts and conditions of minds. None
the less, it is the plain duty and privilege of each generation to
utilize every opportunity to dispel error and superstition, and to
oppose the dissemination of irrational beliefs. It is particularly
the obligation of the torch-bearers of science to illuminate the
path of progress, and to transmit the light to their successors with
undiminished power and brilliancy; the flame must burn both as a
beacon-light to guide the wayfarer along the highways of advance, and
as a warning against the will-o'-the-wisps that shine seductively in
the by-ways. The safest and most efficient antidote to the spread
of the pernicious tendencies inherent in the occult lies in the
cultivation of a wholesome and whole-souled interest in the genuine
and profitable problems of nature and of life, and in the cultivation
with it of a steadfast adherence to common sense, that results in
a right perspective of the significance and value of things. These
qualities, fortunately for our forefathers, were not reserved to
be the exclusive prerogative of the modern; and, fortunately for
posterity, are likely to remain characteristic of the scientific and
antagonistic to the occult.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Spiritualism is here considered only in its general bearings upon
modern conceptions of the occult; any consideration of the special
phenomena presented under its auspices or of the influences which
contribute to a belief in its tenets would lead too far afield. The
topic is separately considered from a different point of view in a
later essay.
[2] To prevent misunderstanding it is well to repeat that I am
speaking of the general average of thorough-going Spiritualists. The
fact that a few mediums have engaged the attention of scientifically
minded investigators has no bearing on the motives which lead
most persons to make a professional call on a medium, or to join
a circle. The further fact that these investigators have at times
found themselves baffled by the medium's performances and that a few
of them have announced their readiness to accept the spiritualistic
hypothesis, is of importance in some aspects, but does not determine
the general trend of the spiritualistic movement in the direction in
which it is considered in the present discussion.
THE PROBLEMS OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH
I
The division of the sciences reflects the diversity of human
interests; it represents the economical adaptation of organized
thought to the conditions of reality; and it likewise recognizes the
intrinsically and objectively distinct realms and aspects, in which
and under which phenomena occur. It is obvious that the sciences
were shaped by human needs; that physics and chemistry and geology
and biology and psychology do not constitute independent departments
of nature's régime, but only so many aspects of complex natural
activities; that a cross-section of the composite happenings of a
cosmic moment would reveal an endlessly heterogeneous concomitance of
diverse forms of energy acting upon diverse types of material; that,
as we confine our attention somewhat arbitrarily to one or another
component of the aggregate, we become physicists, or chemists, or
geologists, or biologists, or psychologists; that, indeed, Nature is
all things to all men. There is, furthermore, a community of spirit
between the several sciences, as there is a logical unity of method
and purpose within the realm of each. However ignorant they may be
of one another's facts, the chemist and the psychologist readily
appreciate one another's purposes, and find a bond of sympathy in the
pursuit of a commonly inspired though differently applied method.
The search for objective truth, the extension of the realm of law
and regularity, the expansion and organization of the army of facts
constantly marshaled and reviewed and made ready for service, the
ever widening development of principles and the furthering of a
deeper insight into their significance,--these are ideals for the
advancement of science, far easier of expression than of execution,
but the clear and accepted formulation of which itself attests a
highly developed stage of accurate thought. A clear-cut conception of
the purposes and methods of scientific investigation and of the scope
of the several sciences is a dearly bought product of generations of
well-directed, as also of misdirected, effort. The path of progress
leading to this achievement has been tortuous and indirect; there
has been much expenditure of energy that resulted merely in marking
time, in going through the movements of locomotion but with no
advance, in following a false trail, or, through a loss of the sense
of direction, in coming back after a circuitous march to an earlier
starting-point. It is easy, when a certain height is reached, to
look down and back, and see how much more readily the ascent might
have been accomplished; but it is a very different matter to form a
successful plan for attaining the next higher commanding point. It is
inevitable that there shall be differences of opinion as to course
and manœuvre, and errors of judgment of commission and omission; but
such diversity is quite consistent with an underlying coöperation
and singleness of purpose. It is in the inspiration and in the
execution of that purpose that science becomes differentiated from
the unscientific and non-scientific.
Between the organized effort and well-recognized plan of action of
science and the chaotic movements of the untutored mind, there is a
marked contrast. The savage, like the child, constantly meets with
the unexpected; every experience lying outside his narrow beaten
track stirs him with a shock and often fills him with fear--the
handmaid of ignorance. He is apt to picture nature as a fearful
monster, and to people the world with tyrannical beings. Step by
step the region of the known expands, and suggests the nature of the
unknown; men expect, they foresee, they predict. The apparent chaos
of mutually inimical forces gives way to the profound harmony of
unifying law. And yet the unknown and the borderland that separates
it from the known are always near by, to tempt curiosity and the
spirit of adventure.
The problem here to be considered relates to the attitude which may
most properly and profitably be taken with regard to the outlying
phenomena of the mind. Are they outcasts, to be treated in a spirit
of charity and forbearance? Are they the true owners of the land,
driven off, like the Indian before the white man, by the relentless
march of civilization to a prescribed reservation? Are they the
unjustly deposed and rightful heirs, soon to be restored to their
kingdom by a fairer and more searching examination of their title? Or
are they, gypsy-like, of obscure origin, surviving in a civilization
which they are in but not of, attempting to eke out an uncertain
existence by peddling relics of antiquated lore to the curious and
the credulous?
II
The current usage of the term "Psychical Research" takes its meaning
from the Society for Psychical Research, founded in England in
1882. The original programme of the society involved a systematic
investigation of "that large group of debatable phenomena designated
by such terms as mesmeric, psychical, and Spiritualistic." "From the
recorded testimony of many competent witnesses," it is urged, "there
appears to be, amidst much delusion and deception, an important
body of remarkable phenomena, which are _prima facie_ inexplicable
on any generally recognized hypothesis, and which, if incontestably
established, would be of the highest possible value." The work
of investigation of these "residual phenomena" was intrusted to
six committees, who were to inquire severally into "the nature
and extent of any influence which may be exerted by one mind upon
another, apart from any generally recognized mode of perception;"
into hypnotism, the so-called mesmeric trance, clairvoyance, and
other allied phenomena; to undertake a revision of Reichenbach's
researches with reference to discovering whether his "sensitives"
possessed "any power of perception beyond a highly exalted
sensibility of the recognized sensory organs;" to investigate the
reports of apparitions at the moment of death, and of houses reputed
to be haunted; to inquire into the causes and general laws of the
phenomena of Spiritualism; and to collect material relative to the
history of these subjects. It is the investigation of these topics
from the point of view prevalent in the publications of this Society
that constitutes the definition of Psychical Research. This phrase,
which has come into prominence within less than a score of years,
has no simple or familiar synonym; it must not be interpreted by the
combined connotation of its component words, but must be accepted as
the technical equivalent of the trend and content of a certain type
of investigation of obscure phenomena or alleged phenomena, in most
of which psychological factors are prominent.
If the term may at all be brought within the circle of the sciences,
it certainly there assumes a somewhat unique position. It naturally
becomes the analogue, or it may be the rival of Psychology; yet its
precise status and its logical relations to other departments of
scientific research are far from obvious. The modern conception of
Psychology is generously comprehensive; it encompasses the endlessly
variable and complex processes of human mentality; it pursues with
enthusiasm the study of developmental processes of intelligence in
childhood, in the animal world, in the unfoldment of the race; it
studies, for their own value, the aberrant and pathological forms
of mental action, and brings these into relation with, and thus
illuminates the comprehension of the normal. It forms affiliations
with physiology and biology and medicine, with philosophy and logic
and ethics, with anthropology and sociology and folk-lore; it borrows
freely from their materials, and attempts to interpret the materials
thus borrowed from the psychological point of view and to infuse into
them its distinctive spirit. Surely Psychical Research should be able
to find a nook in so commodious a home; if the problems of Psychical
Research are legitimate members of the psychological family, some
provision should be possible for their reception within the old
homestead. Nor does this group of problems represent a difference of
school, in some such way as the homœopathists represent a secession
from the regular school of medicine; nor can it be regarded as the
special study of the unusual and the abnormal in the sphere of mind,
and thus stand in the relation which teratology or pathology bears
to physiology and anatomy: for in that event it would constitute
a simple division of Abnormal Psychology, and although Psychical
Research has close alliance with the latter, it cannot be, and is
unwilling to be regarded as a subordinate portion of that domain.
From a survey of the literature of Psychical Research one might
readily draw the inference that whereas Psychology studies the
recognized and explicable phases of mental phenomena, Psychical
Research is occupied with the disputed and mysterious. One might also
conclude that whereas Psychology is concerned with the phenomena
commonly associated with mental activities and their variation
under normal as also under unusual and pathological circumstances,
Psychical Research is interested in the demonstration of supernormal
faculties, and in the establishment of forms of mentality that
diverge from and transcend those with which every-day humanity
is permitted to become familiar; and that, moreover, in some of
its excursions Psychical Research does not limit itself to mental
manifestations, but investigates undiscovered forms of physical
energy, and seriously considers whether behind and beyond the world
of phenomena there is another and a different world, in which the
established order and the mental and material laws of this planet
do not obtain. But the unwarranted character, not to say absurdity,
of such a differentiation or classification is at once apparent,
if we attempt to carry it over into other departments of science.
Speculations in regard to the constitution of the earth's centre
or as to the future of our planet, if legitimate in character, are
as readily incorporable into geology as the consideration of more
definite and better known phenomena; biologists recognize that there
are mythical as well as anomalous portions of their domain, but do
not consider that freaks of nature either destroy the validity of
anatomical and physiological principles, or demand a totally distinct
and transcendent organization or method for their study. The chemist
may become interested in the examination of what was really done
when it was supposed that other metals were converted into gold; the
physicist may become interested in the applications of electricity
and magnetism, of optical reflections and images in the production
of stage illusions; but the conception of chemistry and of physics
naturally embraces considerations of the growth, the errors, and
the applications of these sciences. And while these comparisons
do not furnish a complete parallel to the relation that seems to
pertain between Psychology and Psychical Research, yet it is as
true in the one case as in the others, that the differentiation of
a group of problems on the basis of unusualness of occurrence, of
mysteriousness of origin, of doubtful authenticity, or of apparent
paradoxical or transcendent character, is as illogical as it is
unnecessary. The legitimate problems of Psychical Research are
equally and necessarily genuine problems of Psychology, that require
no special designation. They need not be especially important, nor
interesting, nor profitable, nor well comprehended problems of
Psychology, but they belong there if they are scientific problems
at all. The objection to Psychical Research is not a verbal one;
it is an objection to the separation of a class of problems from
their natural habitat, an objection to the violent transplanting
of a growth from its own environment. It is a protest against the
notion that while the psychologist may be listened to with respect
and authority in one portion of his topic, the layman and the member
of the Society for Psychical Research are equally or more competent
to pronounce judgments in a closely allied field. It is a protest
against the view that for the comprehension of such processes as
sensation and perception a course in Psychology may be useful, but
that telepathy may be established by any moderately intelligent but
not specially informed percipient and agent; or that the study of
hallucinations is indeed a complex and difficult subject, but haunted
houses, and phantasms of the living, offer a proper occupation for a
leisure hour. All this is wrong and absurd; and yet it is hardly an
exaggeration to declare that a majority of those who profess a deep
interest in, and express an opinion about the one group of topics,
would be surprised to have demanded of them a familiarity with the
data of Psychology as a prerequisite to an intelligent coöperation in
Psychical Research. If the problems of Psychical Research, or that
portion of the problems in which investigation seems profitable, are
ever to be illuminated and exhibited in an intelligible form, it
will only come about when they are investigated by the same methods
and in the same spirit as are other psychological problems, when
they are studied in connection with and as a part of other general
problems of normal and abnormal Psychology. Whether this is done
under the auspices of a society or in the psychological laboratories
of universities is, of course, a detail of no importance. It is
important, however, what the trend, and the spirit, and the method,
and the purpose of the investigation may be; as it is equally
important, what may be the training, and the capabilities, and
the resources, and the originality, and the scholarship of the
investigators.
Is the "psychical researcher" then merely a psychologist gone astray?
Is he a mere dilettante, an amateur collector of curious specimens,
or is he something very different from a psychologist? He is
doubtless one or the other or all of these. He may be a psychologist
in the truest and best sense of the word; and as all psychologists
have their special interests, so his may be centred in the group of
phenomena which have been unwisely separated from their _milieu_, and
have been inaptly termed "Psychical Research." I am ready not only to
admit but to emphasize that a considerable portion of the influential
contributors to Psychical Research are animated by as truly
scientific motives, and carry on their work with as much devotion
and ability, with as careful a logical acumen, with as shrewd
comprehension of the dangers and difficulties of their topic, as
characterize the labors of any other field of psychological endeavor.
But this statement can by no means be extended to all; nor does it
at all militate against the opinion that many of those to whom it
does apply, subscribe to illogical and pernicious conclusions, and
indirectly encourage a most unfortunate attitude in others.
III
Approaching the matter next from a descriptive point of view, it
becomes pertinent to inquire what are the actual interests which
give vitality to Psychical Research, which support the investigator
in his laborious and tedious collection and compilation of cases,
which provide the membership for the Society for Psychical Research,
and the still wider circle of interested readers, which induce so
many correspondents to record long and painstaking accounts of
their peculiar "psychical" experiences, which make the discussion
of these matters a favorite topic of conversation. That these
interests are diverse is obvious; yet they fall naturally into a
few groups or types, of which the occult interest is probably the
most widespread. This, in its pronounced form, proceeds upon a
suppressed or acknowledged conviction that the world which science
reveals is but a torso of reality; that its very head--that which
gives significance and expression to the whole--may be missing,
and can only be restored from isolated fragments, themselves to be
found by rare good fortune. The key to the riddle of existence is
to be sought in the personal significance of events; in moments of
great stress and strain, in critical emergencies when communication
between individuals deeply concerned must be established though the
heavens fall, it is claimed that the heavens _do_ occasionally
fall, that the laws of earth are transcended, and the phantasms of
the dying are telepathically wafted to the sentient consciousness
of the interested kinsman or friend. Apparitions and presentiments
are interpreted as mystic symbols of the order of events, which cast
their shadows before or coincidently with them. The intelligence of
the departed, likewise, is discerned in these manifestations; and
through haunted houses and séance chambers, through the inspired
utterances of entranced mediums, messages are revealed that indicate
conclusively the impossibility of their transmission through ordinary
channels, or, it may be, their unmistakable "spiritual" origin. The
supernormal, transcendent, undiscovered world of the occult shines
through, though fitfully and visible only to those who have eyes to
see, the commonplace, constrained phenomena of earth-bound reality.
Variable as may be the formulation and trend of this interest,
yet in some form this suspicion or quasi-belief (for which the
term "occult" seems appropriate) that there are things undreamt of
in our philosophy, that these residual phenomena are profoundly
significant and afford a glimpse of the great unknown, as well as of
the fallibility and the poverty of scientific conceptions, furnishes
a very considerable _clientèle_ of Psychical Research. The why
and wherefore of this inclination need not here be discussed; its
prevalence is unmistakable. And though it appears now in a crude
and superstitious guise, and again in a more refined and critical
attitude, and more rarely is unwillingly assumed as the only possible
alternative in the face of striking personal and other evidence, yet
there is a sufficient community of belief in these several positions
to warrant their inclusion in a common though variable type. As
applied to Psychical Research, it is important neither to generalize
from the worst nor from the best expressions of this occult interest,
but to appreciate its range of distribution amid the diversity of
temperament and endowment.
As the occult interest recedes to an obscure position in the
background, and as the foreground and middle distance come to be
suffused with the light of critical discernment and of the scientific
spirit of inquiry, the "psychical researcher" approximates to the
psychological point of view. This essentially psychological interest
is necessarily a strong one in some of the distinctive problems
of Psychical Research, and often mingles with other interests to
form a curious composite. It may be a morbid, an uninformed, a
misguided, a dilettante interest, but its psychological character
may be noted without implication of any further comment of
approval or disapproval. Favorably interpreted, this psychological
interest is an interest in the intrinsic nature and analysis of
mental processes,--an interest in tracing the various threads that
compose the twisted strands of consciousness, in following the
kaleidoscopic transformations wrought by attention and association,
in observing the play of habit, the subtle processes of illusion and
misinterpretation, the unexpected intrusion of the subconscious,
and likewise in the pursuit of these as exemplified in concrete
instances; among others, in such alleged phenomena as are commonly
described as "mesmeric, psychical, and Spiritualistic."
While this interest may be combined with the occult interest, the
two are not really congenial and are in essence antagonistic. We are
all rational only in spots; and many a "psychical researcher" pursues
some of his investigations under the guidance of a scientifically
psychological interest, while in other directions the occult interest
takes the helm. The analysis of the contrast between the two may be
helpful in realizing more fully the divergences of Psychology and
Psychical Research. The "psychical researcher" wishes to prove or
to disprove something; with regard to this or that phenomenon he
wishes to know "what there is in it," and is accordingly attracted to
phenomena which seem to have something mysterious in them. As soon as
he succeeds in finding a consistent and commonplace explanation for
a group of phenomena, his main curiosity is satisfied, and he takes
to pastures new. When once he has shown that theosophic marvels are
the result of trickery and collusion, then the physical appearances
of Theosophy have been _explained_. It has been demonstrated that
there is "nothing in them," that is, nothing transcendental. The
verdict is given, and the court passes on to the next case. But the
psychologist's interest in how Mme. Blavatsky performed her astral
manifestations was always a very subordinate and incidental one; the
logical scientist, whether he happened to be physicist or biologist
or psychologist, was quite convinced that Mme. Blavatsky had not
discovered the means of carrying ponderables by unseen agencies
from "China to Peru" (which, by the way, would, if possible, be a
matter for the physicist and not at all for the psychologist to
investigate), any more than she had been able to discover the secret
of immortality (which would in turn be a biological discovery), or
had been able to leave her body in New York, while her "astral" soul
inspected what was going on in India (which might indeed be regarded
as a psychological feat). The psychological problem of Theosophy, so
far as there is one, is of a different type; it takes up the inquiry
as to how such marvelous pretensions come to be believed, by what
influences conviction is formed and doctrines spread. It contributes
an incident or an apt illustration to the psychology of belief, or to
the social psychology of contagion. The psychologist is interested
in the illustration which such a movement affords of the action of
certain mental processes and influences; and his interest persists,
whether there is presumably "something in it," or not. The resulting
difference in attitude between the psychologist and the "psychical
researcher" is indeed fundamental, and even more so in principle than
in practical issue.
It is desirable but not easy to find parallel illustrations of this
difference in attitude in other than psychological discussions; but
perhaps the following may be pertinent. If the widespread interest in
the North Pole were merely that in the possibility of its furnishing
the key to the mystery of the northward-turning magnet, and were at
once to disappear upon the removal of the mystery, such an interest
would be quite parallel to that of the "psychic researcher;" but the
interest of the true physicist in any physical phenomenon which in
the future may be demonstrated to exist at the North Pole would be a
persistent one, and one depending for its value on the illustration
thus revealed, not of mystery but of recognized physical principles.
Furthermore, be it observed that however valuable may be the physical
facts obtainable by a polar expedition, there is no overwhelming
obligation resting upon every physicist to desert his laboratory and
embark for the farthest north; but that such expeditions are decided
by considerations of general interest, expediency, and importance.
There is no obligation resting upon the physicist any more than
upon the psychologist to make large sacrifices for the pursuit of
ill-defined residual phenomena, and certainly not for the refutal of
far-fetched theories and suggested supernatural notions. Physicist
and psychologist alike contribute most to the advancement of their
science by an open-minded but systematic pursuit of definite,
significant, and logically fashioned problems.
Let it not be inferred from the emphasis placed upon this contrast
that Psychical Research is in itself to be condemned or to be
regarded as useless. Not at all; only in many aspects it is not
psychological, and the psychologist is under no obligation to find an
interest in, nor to occupy himself with, this aspect of things, if
his general trend does not happen to point that way. The physicist
may be called upon with equal propriety to aid in many inquiries
which the Society for Psychical Research has undertaken. Among
the early records of the Society appears an account of a man who
presented himself with an iron ring on his arm, far too small to have
been slipped over his hand, and who seemed to imply that possibly the
spirits put it there, or that it came on through some supernatural
agency. This was regarded as a proper case for the Society for
Psychical Research to examine. If it could have been demonstrated
that the ring reached its position through the exercise of the will
of some living persons or spirits, the phenomenon, I suppose, would
in some sense be psychological; if it were demonstrated that it
came transported through the fourth dimension of space, it might be
termed physical. But in reality it was probably physiological, for
there was evidence that it was by the effects of etherization that
the hand was contracted and that the ring was forced over it. Surely
it is most absurd to designate such an inquiry, however interesting
and proper it may be regarded, Psychical Research. It certainly is
a highly commendable function for a society to take upon itself
the investigation of such claims as theosophy or spiritualism put
forward, whenever movements of this type are likely to develop into
psychic epidemics or to prove a social menace. Any authoritative body
that will exhibit the absurdity of such claims, and expose the true
_modus operandi_ of the manifestations, will perform an important
civic function. Such a function was performed by the Royal Commission
of 1784, in exposing the vain pretensions and the insidious dangers
of animal magnetism; Mr. Hodgson's investigations of theosophy, the
Seybert Commission's report on spiritualism, are both able and useful
contributions of the same type; and, at present, an authoritative
statement regarding the theoretical absurdity and the practical
dangers of Christian Science might prove efficacious. Such special
investigations represent the practical application of science to
concrete conditions and problems; they are woefully misnamed, and
their significance is likely to be misinterpreted, when they are
presented as Psychical Research, and are grouped along with other
problems of a totally different nature.
I shall next touch briefly upon other diverse yet allied interests
in Psychical Research, which may serve to illustrate further the
various avenues of approach to this heterogeneous group of problems.
I shall speak of these as the explanatory, the investigative, and
the anthropological interests. The first is satisfied with finding
out how alleged marvels are really performed; it takes up the
physical phenomena of spiritualism or theosophy; it investigates
conjuring tricks; it discovers the origin of noises in haunted
houses; it ferrets out the means whereby mediums obtain knowledge
of their sitters' private affairs. This is proper work for experts
in prestidigitation and for detectives,--not for all such, for to
be successful, the conjurer and the detective must have special
knowledge and fitness for this branch of the trade. While the
facts thus gathered may be useful as illustrative material to the
psychologist, they form no essential part of his profession; nor is
there any special reason why he should be best suited to determine
the technical _modus operandi_ of such manifestations. That some
psychologists with a strong interest in this type of phenomena might
properly coöperate in such an investigation, if they chose, is too
obvious to merit remark; but to trace out and expose trickery cannot
be imposed upon the burdensome duties of the psychologist.
With a certain type of "psychical researcher" this explanatory
interest is the dominant one; and by dispelling error and replacing
false notions by true ones he may perform a useful service to
the community. The explanatory interest is quite certain to be
supplemented by the investigative, and that because the latter soon
becomes necessary to the former. While the one is concerned with the
explanation and description of the actual marvels accomplished, the
other must consider also what is reported and what is believed to
have been accomplished. The mechanism of a trick, whether brought
forward as evidence of spiritualism or not, when clearly exhibited,
explains the trick; a loose board under the roof, or the reflection
from a lustrous surface, may at once reveal how mysterious noises
and lights were really produced. But one must go farther to account
for the recognition of relatives in the form of the medium covered
with flimsy drapery, for the automatic spelling out of messages,
or for the successes of guessing experiments. These two interests
thus proceed hand in hand and furnish valuable material which the
psychologist is ready to interpret and to utilize; for the study
of how false beliefs spread, of how deception proceeds, teems with
points of psychological significance. This, however, is by no means
a unique characteristic of Psychical Research; there are also
interesting psychological points in such diverse occupations as the
actor's profession, in juggling and tricks of skill, in advertising,
in religions revivals, etc. It is highly desirable that the materials
thus gathered should be psychologically utilized, and it is equally
desirable that such material should be collected. Many valuable
studies in Psychical Research, which owe their origin not to a
truly psychological interest but to this general explanatory and
investigative interest, have incidentally brought to light material
of great suggestiveness for the psychologist, and material which
quite possibly would not otherwise have been discovered. I am more
than willing to contribute whatever I can to the maintenance of a
Coöperative Psychological Investigation Society which shall stand
ready to take up the investigation of any phenomena which promise
to yield data of psychological interest; which shall, however, keep
far removed from any phase of the transcendental or the occult;
which shall not feel itself under any obligation to _disprove_
any improbable or absurd hypothesis which this or that seeker for
notoriety may choose to put forward; which shall not be dominated
merely by the spirit of finding out whether there is "anything in"
one movement or another, but will simply stand ready to supplement
the work of the academic laboratories by undertaking, in the same
spirit, a special form of investigation, which, under existing
circumstances, such laboratories or their individual directors cannot
expediently undertake.
The anthropological interest, above referred to, is to my mind a
most valid one, and is best represented in Mr. Andrew Lang's volume,
"Cock Lane and Common Sense." Mr. Lang there examines the stories
of ghosts and apparitions, and clairvoyance, and spiritual knocks
and raps, and strange influences, and haunted places, not at all
for determining how little or how much these things are true, but
how they come to be believed in. How is it that the same tale is
told, the same powers credited, the same manifestations produced,
in evidence of the supernatural? In savage as well as in ancient
magic, in the stories current in former centuries as well as in our
own day and generation, there is a pronounced generic similarity.
There is certainly as strong an interest in the investigation of the
growth and distribution of these beliefs as of the other clusters
of belief which anthropology and folk-lore consider. And, moreover,
recently acquired knowledge of hypnotic and automatic phenomena, of
hyperæsthesia and nervous disease, shed much light on the obscure
tales of the past, and assist the comprehension of how such beliefs
could have originated. In brief, Mr. Lang outlines the programme for
a "Comparative Psychical Research," and tells us that "we follow the
stream of fable, as we track a burn to its head, and it leads us
into shy and strange scenes of human life, haunted by very fearful
wild fowl, and rarely visited, save by the credulous. There may be
entertainment here, and, to the student of his species, there may
be instruction." Part of the instruction will consist in gaining an
increased familiarity with the psychological conditions which produce
and foster these narratives and beliefs, and with their social and
traditional significance; in concluding, with Mr. Lang, "that the
psychological conditions which begat the ancient narratives produce
the new legends."
IV
Thus far, our attention has been centred upon the _tendenz_, the
basis of interest, and the affiliations of Psychical Research.
It will be well to turn to a consideration of the content of the
problems. Inasmuch as the term represents a convenient but arbitrary
designation of a heterogeneous group of phenomena, we are prepared
to find that the data of the several problems thus collected
will be as diverse as their methods of study. We may begin with
the group of problems which might properly be considered in the
chapter of Abnormal Psychology that is devoted to the milder forms
of aberrant or unusual mental phenomena. The study of hypnotism
occupies a prominent place in Psychology and in Psychical Research.
The remarkable exhibitions of extreme suggestibility, particularly
the hyperæsthesia thus inducible, and again the illumination of
the subconscious thereby effected, have brought about a realizing
sense of how fearfully and wonderfully we are made. Between savage
priest and doctor, and Delphic oracle, and mediæval ascetic, and
magnetic somnambule, and inspirational medium, there is an irregular
connection in their entrance into a trance-like condition involving a
readjustment of the strata of consciousness and of the distribution
of authority in the hierarchy of the nervous centres. This was and
remains one of the gateways to the land of marvel and mystery. The
importance of hypnotism in Psychology is in its use, both as a method
of exhibiting the relations of processes not otherwise accessible
to experiment, and as a demonstration of the actual possibilities
of suggestion in health and disease. The hypnotic phenomena are
intrinsically interesting and valuable as contributions to the
natural history of mentality; the hypnotic method of study offers the
experimental psychologist the opportunity to apply his most potent
aid to research in precisely that field of inquiry in which the
experimental methods of ordinary consciousness are least available.
In this domain, the psychologist and the "psychical researcher"
proceed most amicably; and yet their purposes and points of view lead
them frequently to part company, although it may be only for a brief
_au revoir_. When the "psychical researcher" leaves the main highway
to track a possible "telepathic" hypnotic subject, or one who, while
hypnotized, is sensitive to the magnetic current, or who experiences
the characteristic effects of drugs applied in sealed vials to the
back of the neck, or who falls into the hypnotic condition when
handling a "magnetized" doll,--the psychologist is apt to decline the
invitation to join in the pursuit. I should advise him, however, to
go along for the sake of the excellent illustrations thus obtainable
of the effects of unconscious suggestion. From the time of the
first serious investigation of these phenomena up to the present,
unconscious suggestion has been one of the most potent influences
for the production of alleged marvels and pseudo-phenomena. All the
series of experiments brought forward at irregular intervals during
the past century to establish supernormal sensibilities have depended
for their apparent success (apart from trickery) upon unconscious
suggestion of the operators, combined with the shrewd assimilation
of the desired or expected result on the part of the subjects.
The transposition of the senses discovered by Pétetin (1787), the
hypnotized subjects who in Braid's day (1850) proved the location
of the phrenological organs by the appropriateness of their actions
when certain parts of the head were pressed, the sensitiveness to
magnets and hermetically sealed drugs brought forward by Reichenbach
(1845), and by Bourru and Burot (1885), and Dr. Luys's (1890)
absurd trifling with puppets, and probably, too, Charcot's sharp
differentiation of distinct hypnotic conditions (1882),--all furnish
illustrations of the subtle possibilities of unconscious suggestion.
Besides adorning an interesting psychological tale, they point a
moral to the intending investigator, and open his eyes to the extreme
caution necessary to exclude this source of error, and to realize the
ever-present possibility that, in spite of the sterilizing apparatus
and the other equipments of modern research, the germs of this
insidious form of delusion may have been unwittingly introduced.
The application of our knowledge of hypnotism to the explanation
of alleged supernormal and unusual sensibilities is particularly
interesting to the "psychical researcher"; the general enlargement
of our knowledge of these conditions, irrespective of such an
application, represents the aim of the psychologist. The latter may
indeed cite Mr. Lang's dictum that "science is only concerned with
truth, not with the mischievous inferences which people may draw from
truth," as an excuse for his own declination to coöperate in the
correction of such mischievous inferences. But the civic conscience
of the psychologist may convince him that the removal of error is
often an indispensable requisite to the dissemination of truth.
The study of the subconscious or the subliminal consciousness, of
multiple personality, of mental automatisms, of involuntary actions,
of induced visualizations, of sporadic hallucinations, may be cited
as further illustrations of topics interesting to the "psychical
researcher" for their bearings upon the apparent transcendence of
the normal, and to the psychologist for illustrations of important
groups of mental processes and relations. I must refer to the general
literature for descriptions of these several phenomena; the subtle
connection between one hypnotic condition and the next, bridging
over a period of normal consciousness with complete forgetfulness
of the hypnotic consciousness; the still more subtle evidence for
the latency of impressions thus revivable by an appeal to the
subconscious; the elaboration, in trance experiences, of these nether
world phenomena into organized personalities, which in the remarkable
case reported by Professor Flournoy expanded from a personification
of Marie Antoinette to that of a Martian revisiting Mars, describing
Martian scenery and customs, and writing in Martian language, and
again to the reincarnation of a Hindu princess of four centuries
ago; the affiliation of these cases to those of spontaneous loss
of personality in actual life, like that of the Rev. Ansel Bourne,
related by Professor James; the automatic writings performed by
hypnotic subjects and by persons in normal conditions; the power to
induce visions by "crystal gazing," and auditory hallucinations by
"shell-hearing"; the census of hallucinations, together with the
very important series of observations relative to the psychology
of deception,--these represent the more truly psychological
contributions of psychologists and "psychical researchers" to their
common domain.
The place which the explanation of spiritualistic and theosophic
manifestations occupies in Psychical Research has already been noted;
that of ghosts and rappings and haunted houses and _poltergeists_ is
quite similar. Not wholly yet measurably different is the status
of the study of hallucinations, presentiments, and previsions or
premonitions. In this entire group of phenomena, the interests of
Psychology and of Psychical Research are in the main distinct. This
is readily illustrated with reference to the study of hallucinations.
These are interesting to the psychologist quite in the same sense
as any other natural product of psycho-physiological action; the
prevalence of hallucinations under fairly normal conditions presents
one out of a large number of interesting details, and forms a proper
investigation for the Society for Psychical Research. Their census
of hallucinations hardly bears out the conclusions which have
been drawn therefrom, but contains much interesting information.
When, however, the emphasis of the investigation is placed upon
"veridical" hallucinations, and the establishment of the conclusion
that so many more of these hallucinations and presentiments "come
true," or have a mysterious significance, than chance would allow,
then the psychological interest is quite obscured by an interest
of a totally different character. A "veridical" hallucination has
little psychological pertinence; for it is equally interesting
psychologically whether it happens to come true or not. The bearing
of the hallucination upon or its origin in some of the occupations
of normal waking life; the possibility of its interpretation as
a peculiar retroactive illusion of memory, as Professor Royce
has suggested for some cases; its significance as an unconscious
perception of the shadow already present, not yet visible to
consciousness, but coming before the event,--such are significant
characteristics of hallucinations. The results of the study of
hallucinations may likewise be applied to a determination of their
relation to the sum total of the sequences of consciousness that
constitute our mental life; but there is only a most incidental
psychological interest in the apparently personally significant or
"veridical" aspect of the phenomena. And furthermore, whether they
are truly "veridical" or only seemingly so; whether, in other words,
there is evidence enough in quality and quantity to make it a proper
scientific inquiry as to the existence of a cause-and-effect-like
relation between presentiment and issue,--this is a logical inquiry,
although one which, along with other factors, includes psychological
considerations.
We here naturally approach what has, on the whole, formed the most
conspicuous problem of Psychical Research--that associated with the
term "telepathy." It will contribute to clearness of distinction to
consider separately the question, whether the evidence accumulated
in any wise justifies the conclusion, that there exists a form of
communication occasionally going on between mind and mind apart
from the recognized channels of sensation. This, too, is a strictly
logical question, and is so presented in the following essay. We
are here concerned with the status of telepathy in its relation to
Psychology and Psychical Research; this it is possible to indicate
briefly. First, if there really exist this extra-normal, fitful
and occasional, uncertain and sporadic form of communication,
and if it can be conceived of in psychological terms, it forms
an interesting, possibly even a momentous contribution to our
knowledge of mental processes. In the present status of the alleged
conditions of operations of telepathy, it will hardly modify
seriously the direction or scope of the development of Psychology.
It being unnecessary to cross bridges before coming to them, it may
be sufficient to observe that up to the present there exists no
decided prospect either of the demonstration of the reality of this
process or of its psychological formulation; and far less either of
its inclusion within the science of Psychology, or of its practical
utilization. When the day comes when the incontestable establishment
of telepathy, as indeed of any totally novel contribution to
Psychology, shall require a revision of psychological principles,
Psychology will certainly have to be revised. What, then, many will
retort, can be more important for the psychologist than to devote
himself to the investigation of telepathy, to decide whether his
Psychology needs reconstruction or not? The answer is near at hand:
there is no obligation upon any science to reconstruct its basal
principles whenever it is suggested that these are incorrect or
inadequate. It is not the suggestion of their inadequacy that is
significant, but the concrete facts and evidence available to prove
their inadequacy. If a new view can establish itself by its logical
cogency and displace an accepted doctrine, if new facts, adequately
established, make necessary a revision of current generalizations,
no scientist and no science will protest. The present status of
telepathy is simply not a formidable candidate for this distinction.
That the evidence brought forward in proof of telepathy, similarly
to that adduced for "veridical hallucinations," is capable of
psychological interpretation, and also contains interesting
illustrations of obscure and subtle mental processes, becomes evident
to the discerning student, and merits an extended demonstration. It
is in the pursuit of such a demonstration that the psychologist turns
to the records of "phantasms of the living," and of experimental
thought-transference, thereby adding to an already significant and
extensive collection of material illustrative of the influences
of the undercurrents of thought-processes. Yet it is by no means
urged that this is the only phase of utility which the study of
telepathy holds out. That any one who is convinced of his ability to
demonstrate telepathy is free to follow his conviction, will not be
disputed; that in the course of his investigations he may succeed
in revealing the presence of unrecognized forms of mental action,
it would be mere dogmatism to deny. Two things, however, should be
clearly understood; the first, that his data cannot claim serious
attention before they are strong in their validity, and extensive
in their scope, and consistently significant in their structure;
then, and not before, are they ready for the crucible of scientific
logic, from which they may or may not emerge as standard metal,
to be stamped and circulated as accepted coin of the realm. The
second point relates to the status of the obligation to disprove the
telepathic position. This is more often a question of expediency than
of right. If the obligation can readily be discharged, it is usually
desirable to do so, for the reason that the removal of actual error
and misconception is often one of the methods of advancing science;
but there is no burden of disproof resting upon the scientist.
V
That the proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research
contain valuable material in creditable quantity is evident to
any unprejudiced reader; in many ways they are neither so bad nor
so good as they are painted to be. That "psychical researchers,"
though pursuing their labors with different motives, have in one
direction and another contributed to the advance of Psychology, I
have attempted to make clear. Furthermore, the activity of this
Society has been prominent in making the borderland of science
of to-day present a far more hopeful aspect than ever before. It
has substituted definiteness of statement, careful examination,
recognition of sources of error, close adherence to as carefully
authenticated fact as is attainable, for loose and extravagant
speculation, for bare assertion and obscuring irrelevancy. It has
made possible a scientific statement and a definiteness of conception
of problems, even where its proposed solution of them may be thought
misleading or inadequate. But in my opinion the debit side of the
ledger far outbalances the credit side. The influence which Psychical
Research has cast in favor of the occult, the enrollment under a
common protective authority of the credulous and the superstitious,
and the believers in mystery and in the personal significance of
things, is but one of the evils which must be laid at its door.
Equally pernicious is the distorted conception, which the prominence
of Psychical Research has scattered broadcast, of the purposes and
methods of Psychology. The status of that science has suffered, its
representatives have been misunderstood, its advancement has been
hampered, its appreciation by the public at large has been weakened
and wrongly estimated, by reason of the popularity of the unfortunate
aspects of Psychical Research, and of its confusion with them.
Whatever in the publications of Psychical Research seems to favor
mystery and to substantiate supernormal powers is readily absorbed,
and its bearings fancifully interpreted and exaggerated; the more
critical and successfully explanatory papers meet with a less
extended and less sensational reception. Unless most wisely directed
Psychical Research is likely, by not letting the right hand know what
the left hand is doing, to foster the undesirable propensities of
human nature as rapidly as it antagonizes them. Like indiscriminate
almsgiving, it has the possibilities of affording relief and of
making paupers at the same time. Particularly by the unwarranted
acceptance of telepathy as a reality or as a working hypothesis, and
the still more unwarranted use of this highly hypothetical process
as a means of explaining more complex and obscure phenomena, has
it defeated one of the most important purposes which it might have
served.
The popular as well as the more critical acceptance of Psychical
Research, both of the term and of the conceptions associated with
it, has disseminated a totally false estimate on the part of the
public at large of the scope and purposes of modern Psychology;
and has quite possibly given an unfortunate twist to the trend of
recent psychological thought. The right appreciation of scientific
aims and ideals by the intelligent and influential public has come
to be almost indispensable to the favorable advancement of science.
Psychology can less afford than many another science to dispense
with this helpful influence; and no science can remain unaffected by
persistent misinterpretation of its true end and aims. If Psychical
Research is to continue in its present temper, it becomes essential
to have it clearly understood just how far its purposes and spirit
are, and how much farther they are not, in accord with the purposes
and the spirit of Psychology. The optimistic psychologist anticipates
the day when he will no longer be regarded, either in high life or
in low life, as a collector of ghost stories or an investigator of
mediums. The disuse of the unfortunate term "Psychical Research," and
far more, the modification of the conceptions animating this type of
investigation, the pursuit of its more intrinsically psychological
problems in a more truly psychological spirit, and perhaps, most
of all, the disassociation of the term "Psychology" from the
undesirable and irrelevant connotations of Psychical Research, are
all consummations devoutly to be desired.
THE LOGIC OF MENTAL TELEGRAPHY
What will be pronounced strange or curious is largely determined by
the range and composition of the common body of knowledge to whose
laws and uniformities the phenomena in question apparently fail to
conform. What is passing strange to one generation may become easily
intelligible to the next. We all have eyes that see not for all but
a limited range of facts and views; and we unconsciously fill out
the blind-spots of our mental retinæ according to the habits and
acquisitions of the surrounding areas. We observe and record what
interests us; and this interest is in turn the outcome of a greater
or lesser endowment, knowledge, and training. A new observation
requires, as a rule, not a new sense-organ or an additional faculty,
nor even more powerful or novel apparatus, but an insight into
the significance of quite lowly and frequent things. Most of the
appearances of the earth's crust, which the modern geologist so
intelligently describes, were just as patent centuries ago as now;
what we have added is the body of knowledge that makes men look for
such facts and gives them a meaning. And although "the heir of all
the ages," we can hardly presume to have investigated more than a
modest portion of our potential inheritance; future generations
will doubtless acquire interests and points of view which will
enable them to fill some of the many gaps in our knowledge, to find
a meaning in what we perchance ignore or regard as trivial, and to
reduce to order and consistency what to us seems strange or curious
or unintelligible. And future generations, by virtue of a broader
perspective and a deeper insight, may give little heed to what we
look upon as significant,--much as we pronounce irrelevant and
superstitious the minute observances whereby primitive folk strive to
attract the good fortunes and to avoid the dangers of human existence.
I
The possibility of the transference of thought, apart from the
recognized channels of sensation, has been too frequently discussed,
with the suppressed or unconscious assumption that our knowledge
of the means whereby we ordinarily and normally, consciously and
unconsciously, convey to others some notion of what is passing in our
own minds, is comprehensive and exhaustive. Nothing could be farther
from the truth. Whenever a mode of perception, no matter how limited
or apparently trivial, has been thoroughly investigated, there have
been discovered, or at least suggested, unrecognized possibilities
of its use and development. And no result of experimental inquiry is
more constantly illustrated than the extent to which inferences from
sensations and the exercise of faculties may proceed without arousing
consciousness of their existence. Many color-blind persons remain
quite ignorant of their defect; and it was only after the description
of his own notable deficiencies by Dalton (in 1794) that the general
prevalence of color-blindness became recognized. The fact that a
portion of every one's retina is as blind as his finger-tip escaped
observation until about two centuries ago; and this because the
normal use of our eyes does not present the conditions of its easy
detection; and for a like reason we persistently refuse to see the
double images that are constantly formed upon our retinæ. With the
same unconsciousness that we receive sensations and draw inferences
from them, do we give to others indications of what is going on in
our minds, and read between their words and under their expressions
what "half reveals and half conceals the thoughts that lie within."
It is important to emphasize the serious limitations as yet attaching
to our knowledge of the detailed possibilities of normal perception
and inference, in order to realize the corresponding hesitancy with
which we should regard any series of facts, no matter how apparently
inexplicable, as evidence of a supernormal kind of mental telegraphy.
A further principle important in this connection, and one which is
likewise borne out by experimental inquiry, is the general similarity
in our mental machinery in matters great and small, and the resulting
frequency with which similar trains of thought may be carried on
by different persons as the outcome of similar but independent
brain-functioning. There is a natural tendency to exaggerate the
individuality of our own ways of thought and expression; and yet but
little reflection is necessary to suggest how easily this fond belief
may be at least partially delusive. In certain lines of thought,
such as mathematics, we should regard it as strange if two thinkers,
starting with the premises determined by the problem in hand, should
not reach the same conclusion; in others, such as economic or
political questions, we observe the preponderance of evidence in one
direction, and yet can appreciate the grounds of a contrary opinion;
and while in still other cases we regard the verdict as a matter of
taste or of individual preference, it may be questioned whether this
is so unmotived or lawless a process as is commonly assumed. While
we properly expect more mental community in certain lines than in
others, we have good grounds for believing that it exists everywhere
and only awaits the proper modes of investigation to reveal it in
its full extent and significance. With the marvelously increased
facilities for the dissemination and transportation of thought, the
range of such mental community is certain to be correspondingly
extended. Coincidences arising from the bringing together of widely
separated and apparently unrelated happenings are sure to multiply,
when the means of bringing them together are so vastly increased.
Each man's world is enlarged by the enlargement of the whole. It
becomes possible for him to come into relation with infinitely more
persons and events, and the resulting coincidences are nowadays more
likely to be noticed and recorded.
If we consider the logical ease with which the successful solution of
one portion of a problem suggests the next step; how imperceptibly
and yet effectively sentiments and points of view and the spirit
of the time are disseminated; how many persons there are in this
busily reflective era occupied with similar thoughts and schemes,
and how readily they may come into communication; how many are
anxiously studying the popular taste and demand to determine what
literary venture or mechanical invention is likely to be timely and
successful; how the possession of a common inheritance, patriotic
interests, education, literature, political arena, social usages,
newspaper intelligence, household conveniences, and the endless
everyday factors of our complex, richly detailed existence all
contribute to our common life,--shall we wonder that some two
or half a dozen intellects should give expression to similar
thoughts at nearly the same time? Would it not be infinitely more
wonderful if such coincidences did not constantly occur? In the more
original contributions to literature, science, and inventions, such
thought-correspondences should be rarer; and certainly this is true.
Contrast the number of striking similarities in the higher walks of
literature and science with those that occur in small inventions.
Hardly a day passes without the coincidence of two persons thinking
of devices for accomplishing the same purposes, so essentially
similar that patents could not be given to both. It is certainly not
difficult to understand why several different patterns of typewriting
machines should be invented nearly simultaneously, and it would
not be altogether mysterious if, at the first, two inventors had
independently reached the idea of a writing-machine at nearly the
same time. The experience of offering an article to an editor and
receiving a reply to the effect that another article dealing with a
similar topic in a similar way was already awaiting the compositor
is not unusual. It is true that these coincidences are of a minor
order, but it seems desirable to emphasize the frequency of these
minor forms in order to suggest the law-abiding character of the
rarer or the more striking forms; for this is just what the normal
distribution of such phenomena would lead us to expect.
It would be pleasant to believe that the application of the doctrine
of chances to problems of this character is quite generally
recognized; but this recognition is so often accompanied by the
feeling that the law very clearly applies to all cases but the
one that happens to be under discussion, that I fear the belief
is unwarranted. Moreover, the notion seems to prevail that these
coincidences should occur with equal frequency to all persons;
while, in fact, the law of probability provides for the most various
distribution among individuals. However, the attempt, and it may be
the sincere attempt, to apply proper conceptions of probability and
improbability to such problems often fails, because of an unfortunate
mental attitude which presents, with an outward acquiescence in
the objective view of the problem, an inward conviction in which
the subjective interpretation is really dominant; for this and
other reasons, this objective method of viewing the matter, however
pertinent, is not the most important.
II
One of the most deplorable attitudes towards the borderland phenomena
of which mental telegraphy or telepathy forms a type, is that which
insists upon an exact and detailed explanation of concrete personal
experiences, and regards these as so essentially peculiar that it
refuses to consider them in connection with the many other instances
of the same class, without reference to which a rational explanation
is unattainable. This tendency, to insist that the laws of science
shall be precisely and in detail applicable to individual experiences
possessing a personal interest for us, has wrought much havoc; it has
contributed to superstition, fostered pseudo-science, and encouraged
charlatanism. To antagonize this tendency it is necessary to insist
upon the statistical nature of the inquiry. We should certainly be
familiar in this statistic-filled age with the law-abiding character
of individual happenings when considered in large groups. So many
types of facts depending upon individual and heterogeneous motives
shoot together and form curves of surprising regularity; the number
of marriages or of misdirected letters, the falsification of ages or
the distribution of heights of individuals, and countless other items
that in individual cases seem accidental, or capricious, or due to
a host of minute and unaccountable factors, none the less present
a striking statistical regularity. The owners of a gaming-table,
counting upon the statistical regularity of the accidental, are
assured of a steady income; they are interested long enough to obtain
an extensive view of the fluctuations, and to see the law that guides
the whole. Not so the individual player; he is interested only in
that particular portion of the game in which his money is at stake.
He detects mysterious laws of fortune and freaks of luck; sees in a
series of coincidences or momentary successes the proofs of his pet
schemes, and dismisses the general doctrine of chances with disdain,
because it is not obviously applicable to his case. This influences
the losers as well as the winners; both are absorbed in their own
minute portions of the game, and forget that the law makes distinct
provision for temporary losses and gains, great and small, but is
as indifferent to the times and order of such occurrences as to the
personality of those affected.
The distinction between the individual and the statistical aspect of
a problem may be further illustrated in the much-discussed question
of the differences in brain characteristics of men and women.
When the claimants for woman's equality point to the acknowledged
inability of an anatomist to determine whether a particular brain
belonged to a man or a woman as conclusive evidence of their
contention, they unconsciously assume that the problem is capable
of determination in the individual specimen. A sounder logic would
insure greater caution. The differences in question may be certainly
established and typical, and yet depend upon statistical, not upon
individual data. Give the anatomist a goodly number of fairly
selected brains and tell him that all the women's brains are in
one group, and all the men's brains in another, and he will tell
you which group is feminine, which masculine; and this more than
offsets his failure in the former test. It establishes a statistical
regularity. Individually we may argue that many women of our
acquaintance have larger heads than the men; that the English, are
not taller than the French, because the Frenchmen we have chanced to
meet have been quite as tall as the Englishmen of our acquaintance;
that the laws of chance do not apply to the gaming-table, because
on that basis we should have come out even and not as losers; and
that coincidences cannot explain our strange mental experiences,
because they are altogether too peculiar and too frequent. It is only
in the most complete stages and in the more definite realms that
knowledge becomes applicable accurately and definitely to individual
cases. For the present it is well if, with such abstruse or rather
indefinite material, we can glimpse the statistical regularity of
the entire group of phenomena, trace here and there the possible or
probable application of general principles, and refuse to allow our
opinions to be disarranged by rather startling individual cases. The
explanation of these, however interesting they may be to ourselves
or entertaining to others, is not the test of our knowledge of the
subject.
I pick up a stone, and with a peculiar turn of the hand throw it from
me; probably no student of mechanics can exactly calculate the course
of that projectile,--nor is it worth while. What he can do is to show
what laws are obeyed by ideal projectiles, ideally thrown under ideal
conditions, and how far the more important practical cases tend to
agree with or diverge from these conditions. It is unfair to test his
science by its minute applicability to our special experiences.
When the problems involved in mental telegraphy come to be generally
viewed under the guidance of a sound logic, the outlook will be
hopeful that the whole domain will gradually acquire definite order;
and that its devotees, after appreciating the statistical regularity
of the phenomena, will come to the conclusion that much of the
energy and ability now expended in a search for the explanation of
complex and necessarily indefinite individual cases, is on the whole
unprofitable. With an infinite time and an infinite capacity it might
be profitable to study all things; but, at present, sanity consists
in the maintenance of a proper perspective of the relative importance
of the affairs of the intellectual and the practical life. It may
be that the man who puzzles day and night over some trivial mystery
expends as much brain energy as a great intellectual benefactor of
mankind; but the world does not equally cherish the two.
III
It becomes important in the further consideration of coincidences
to emphasize the great opportunity presented in their description
for error, for defective observation, for neglect of details,
for exaggeration of the degree of correspondence; and equally
demonstrable is the slight amount of such error or mal-observation
that is all-sufficient to convert a plain fact into a mystery.
Consider the disfigurement that a simple tale undergoes as it passes
from mouth to mouth; the forgetfulness of important details and the
introduction of imaginary ones, exhibited upon the witness stand; the
almost universal tendency to substitute inferences from sensations
and observations for the actual occurrences; and add to these the
striking results of experimental inquiry in this direction--for
example, the divergences between the accounts of sleight-of-hand
performances or spiritualistic séances and what really occurred--and
it becomes less difficult to understand why we so often fail to
apply general principles to individual cases. The cases cannot be
explained as they are recorded, because as recorded they do not
furnish the essential points upon which the explanation hinges. The
narrator may be confident that the points of the story are correctly
observed, that all the details are given; and yet this feeling of
confidence is by no means to be trusted. It is quite possible that
the points that would shed most light on the problem are too trivial
to attract attention; a slightly imperfect connection as effectively
breaks the circuit and cuts off the possibility of illumination as
a more serious disturbance. After the explanation is given or the
gap supplied or the break discovered, we often wonder how we could
have failed to detect the source of the mystery; but before we know
what to observe and what to record and what to be on our guard
against, the possibility of error is extremely great, far greater
than most of us would be willing to make allowance for; and the
strict demonstration as also the refutation of a proposed explanation
becomes correspondingly difficult.
IV
I turn to another point, in some respects the most important of all;
I refer to the readiness with which we interpret as the remarkable
frequency of coincidences what is due to a strong interest in a given
direction. Inasmuch as we observe what interests us, a recently
acquired interest will lead to new observations--that is, new to
us, however familiar they may be to others. Take up the study of
almost any topic that appeals to human curiosity, and it takes no
prophet to predict that within a short time some portion of your
reading or your conversation, or some accidental information,
will unexpectedly reveal a bearing on the precise subject of your
study, often supplying a gap which it would have been most difficult
otherwise to fill; but surely this does not mean that all the world
has become telepathically aware of your needs and proceeded to attend
to them. Some years ago I became interested in cases of extreme
longevity, particularly of centenarianism, and for some months
every conversation seemed to lead to this topic, and every magazine
and newspaper offered some new item about old people. Nowadays
my interest is transferred to other themes; but the paragrapher
continues quite creditably to meet my present wants, and the
centenarians have vanished. When I am writing about coincidences, I
become keen to observe them; such for example as this: I was reading
for the second time an article on "Mental Telegraphy" (by Mark Twain
in "Harper's Monthly Magazine," December, 1891); I was occupied with
what is there described as a most wonderful coincidence, the nearly
simultaneous origination by the author and by Mr. William H. Wright
of a similar literary venture,--when I happened to take my eyes from
the page and saw on my desk a visiting-card bearing the name, "W. H.
Wright." It was not the same W. H. Wright, but a gentleman whom I had
met for the first time a few hours before, and have not seen since.
Had I not been especially interested in this article and its subject,
the identity of the names would certainly have escaped my attention,
and there would have been no coincidence to record. Quite apropos
both of coincidences and of their dependence upon personal interest,
I find recorded in a current magazine the experience of one who
became enthusiastically interested in thoroughbred cats: "Strangely
enough--for it is a thing which is recurrently strange--I, who had
rarely seen any printed matter relating to cats, now found the word
in every newspaper. Adopting a new interest is like starting a
snowball; as long as it moves, it gathers other particles to itself."
It is only necessary to become deeply interested in coincidences,
to look about with eyes open and eager to detect them, in order to
discover them on all sides; resolve to record all that come to hand,
and they seem to multiply until you can regard yourself and your
friends as providentially favored in this direction. If your calling
develops a taste for matters of this kind,--for example, if you are a
writer, with a keen sense for the literary possibilities and dramatic
effects of such coincidences, or if you are of an imaginative turn
of mind with a pronounced or a vague yearning for the interesting or
the unusual; if you have a more generous or more persistent endowment
of the day-dreaming, fantastic, self-dramatization of adolescence,
that is half unreal and yet half externalized in the vividness of
youthful fancy,--is it strange that you should meet with more of
these "psychic experiences" than your prosaic neighbor whose thoughts
and aspirations are turned to quite other channels, and to whom
an account of your experiences might even prove tiresome? If you
cultivate the habit of having presentiments, and of regarding them
as significant, is it strange that they should become more and more
frequent, and that among the many, some should be vaguely suggestive,
or even directly corroborative of actual occurrences?
The frequent coincidences, which form so influential a factor in
disseminating an inclination towards such an hypothesis as telepathy,
are doubtless largely the result of an interest in these experiences.
This interest is very natural and proper, and when estimated at its
true value is certainly harmless; it may indeed contribute material
worthy of record for the student of mental phenomena,--or it may
give spice to the matter-of-fact incidents of a workaday existence.
To many minds, however, the temptation to magnify this interest
into a significant portion of one's mental life, to invest it with
a serious power to shape belief and to guide conduct, is unusually
strong, in some cases almost irresistible. It is this tendency
that is essentially antagonistic to a logical view and therefore
to a scientific study of these irregular mental incidents; it is
this tendency that is responsible for much of the spurious and the
unwholesome interest in the problems of mental telegraphy.
It would naturally be expected that the nature and subject-matter of
the more frequent types of coincidences and presentiments would throw
some light upon their origin, and would in some measure reinforce the
general position above taken. We should expect that such coincidences
would relate to persons and affairs that are frequently in our
thoughts, and that similarities of thought and presentiments based
upon them should occur among persons intimately acquainted with one
another's thought-habits, at least in regard to that line of thought
to which the coincidence relates; these expectations are fairly
well borne out by the facts. It is a commonplace observation that
presentiments and unusual psychic experiences most frequently relate
to those who are dear to us, or in whom we have a momentarily strong
interest; that they deal with events which we have anxiously dreaded
or desired, or with matters over which we have puzzled or worried;
and again, that they occur under conditions of emotional strain,
excitement, or anxiety. In brief, they deal with what is frequently
in our minds or what more or less unconsciously furnishes the general
emotional and intellectual background which gives character to our
mood and to our associations of ideas. I need hardly add that it is
the more successful and striking coincidences that we remember and
record, and the others that are quickly forgotten. Moreover, so large
a share of mental operations of the type in question takes place in
the region of the subconscious, that our recollection of what has
occupied our thoughts is by no means a final authority. Occasionally
we detect these subconscious similarities of mental operations,
when after a silence the same question or thought shapes itself on
the lips of two speakers at the same time; and here again, are not
many of those who give utterance to the same thoughts, or finish one
another's sentences, intimate companions in the walks of life? Is it
strange that in the daily intercourse with a congenial spirit, they
should have absorbed enough of one another's mental processes to
anticipate, now and then, a step in their association of ideas?
Still another factor that figures somewhat in coincidences
relates to events which are sooner or later very likely or quite
certain to occur, and in which the coincidence is confined to
the close simultaneity of the action on the part of two or more
persons concerned. The crossing of letters is easily the best
illustration of this type of occurrence which has the semblance
of thought-communication. It is so easy to fall into the habit of
delaying all delayable matters as long as possible that it must
frequently happen that your own sense of duty is aroused and your
correspondent's patience is exhausted at nearly the same time. If A
is to hear from B, or B from A, within a period not very definite
but still reasonably limited, every day's delay makes it more and
more probable that their letters will cross. The same consideration
applies to other affairs of daily life; we delay a matter of business
and are just about to attend to it when the other party concerned
comes to us, or we delay offering some social attention until just as
we are about to do so it is asked of us; and so on. In brief, we find
not only in sickness and death, in family ties and friendships, in
travel and adventure, but also in the special and in the complicated
interests of our civilized life an abundant opportunity for
coincidences; and we find that their frequency is clearly related to
the commonness of the event, and to its familiarity and closeness of
relation to our habits of thought.
V
Reviewing the arguments which have been presented, we find a tendency
to underestimate the possibilities of expression and communication
through the normal channels of the senses and the subtle inferences
based upon them, and also an insufficient appreciation of the
unrecognized but by no means supernormal capabilities, which
special and unusual susceptibility or training of these same powers
of interpretation and thought-revelation may bring about; we find,
further, a prevalent underestimation of the generic and at times the
specific similarity of the products of our several diverse and yet
homogeneous mental equipments, and with it a lack of consideration
of the greatly increased facilities for such mental community
afforded by modern conditions of rapid transit and rapid sharing
of the common benefits of civilization. We find a misconception of
the nature of the application of the doctrine of chances to mental
coincidences, which brings about an apparent recognition but an
intrinsic belittling of the rôle which chance really plays in the
evidence advanced for telepathy; we find that this error is probably
due to an unfortunate, intensely individual view of the problem,
which insists upon an explanation of personal experiences, and
disregards the essentially impersonal and statistical nature of the
inquiry. This unfair attitude (which is equally unfair if applied
to other and more exact data) renders difficult, if not impossible,
a just appreciation of the theoretical aspect of the problem and
of the application of theory to practice. We find, furthermore,
that the recorded data are likely to involve an unusual degree of
unreliability owing to such natural psychological tendencies as
defective observation, exaggeration, preconception, and the ordinary
limitations and failings of humanity; nor is any serious amount of
such neglect needed to bridge the gap between intelligible fact and
unintelligible mystery. Finally, it is not sufficiently borne in mind
that the data are in large part created by the subjective attitude of
expectation and interest in such experiences, and that the nature
of the more frequent coincidences furnishes satisfactory evidence
of their natural relations to dominant interests and occupations.
The concordant suggestion from these various considerations is that
a very large part of the experiences offered in evidence of mental
telegraphy, finds a much more natural and more consistent explanation
when viewed as the complex and irregular results of types of mental
processes included within the legitimate and recognized domain of
psychology. There is no desire to overlook the loose and distant
connection that often pertains between the general considerations
and the particular phenomena here relevant; on the contrary, this
lack of explicit and intimate connection is a logical characteristic
of the relation of theory to practice in dealing with such complex
and irregular material, and is likely for a long time to remain so.
A more properly cultivated logical sense will bring about a more
satisfactory appreciation of and a greater intellectual content with
this aspect of the problem; it will be recognized that it is wiser to
make the best of actual though admittedly unsatisfactory conditions
than to fly to evils that we know not of.
VI
I therefore regard the inclination towards a telepathic hypothesis
as the result of a defective logical attitude, which in turn may be
regarded as the outcome of a natural but unfortunate psychological
tendency. In considering the question, "What is the proper inference
to be drawn from the accumulated data apparently suggestive of
'communication between mind and mind otherwise than through the
known channels of the senses'?" we are considering a logical
problem--a problem of considerable difficulty, not one to be entered
upon without deliberation and preparation. In considering the
question, "How is it that such evidence is readily accepted as proof
of telepathy? How is it that this hypothesis is favored above others
intrinsically no less improbable?" we are likewise entering upon a
complex problem, but one that is psychological in scope and nature.
It is to a more fundamental consideration of these questions that we
now turn.
I have based my discussion of mental telegraphy almost wholly upon
the occurrence of coincidences (using that term not as the equivalent
wholly of chance occurrences, but including suggestive or interesting
conjunctions of circumstances in general), for the reason that
coincidences--both those of a commonplace character and those that
seem to possess a striking personal significance--have prepared the
popular mind for the acceptance of the telepathic hypothesis, and
still constitute the most formidable array of evidence presented
for that hypothesis. The other class of evidence to be considered
is the experimental, which may be said to include as its most
distinctive type the results of tests in which intentional attempts
at mental telegraphy were made under definite conditions and usually
with specially selected subjects; and as another type, the precise
verification and registration of presentiments and peculiar and
startling "psychic experiences" with reference to their coincidence
with death, accidents, and other serious events in life. It may be
admitted that the experimental data are equally worthy with the
others of a logical analysis, and indeed that they present in some
respects different and more favorable conditions for the application
of such an analysis. In general, however (and I desire to confine
this discussion to the general principles involved and not to the
analysis of special cases), the considerations that determine the
logical value, or the lack of it, of the one type of evidence are
applicable without undue modification to the other. Nor do I consider
that the experimental data have seriously modified the logical status
of the problem as a whole; nor that they have, except in relatively
few cases, been of themselves sufficient to make converts to a
belief in telepathy. They have undoubtedly very much strengthened
and disseminated that belief; but this implies that a favorable
disposition to the belief was already present. It is because it
seems to me that the presence of this favorable disposition, albeit
in suppressed or half-acknowledged form, is in most cases due to
some phase of the argument from coincidences, that I have made it
central in my discussion. I must not fail to point out, however,
that experiments in thought-transference have one important, and
that a logical, advantage over observations of coincidences; this is
the possibility which they present of quite accurately allowing for
the effect of chance. In coincidences the estimate of chance as the
source of the conjunction of events is frequently, if not always, a
matter of complex judgment over which serious differences of opinion
will occur. Some of the published quantitative estimates made by
serious and able students of such problems, of the probabilities
that certain coincidences have been due to chance have been
pronounced altogether wide of the mark and even absurd by others. In
experiments arranged with due precautions there can be no uncertainty
on this point; the proportion of successes, that is, of striking
coincidences, may be calculated. If the actual number of chance
coincidences appreciably exceeds the calculated proportion, and if
the theory on which the calculation was based corresponds to the
actual conditions, then the results were not due to chance alone. But
whether they were due to fraud, or to some unconscious transference
of indications, or to telepathy, or to spirit influence, or to
interference of the devil, or to the fact that the participants in
the experiment were born when the stars and planets presented certain
conjunctions, or to the existence of a totally unrecognized form of
mental vibrations,--all these are mere hypotheses which may be strong
or weak or absurd, according to their power to really account for
the results, to their concordance with the sum total of scientific
knowledge in this field and with the logical principles guiding the
formation of scientific hypotheses. To jump from the conclusion that
the results are not due to chance to the conclusion that they are
due to telepathy, is no whit more absurd than the position of the
astrologer, or the spiritualistic explanation of conjuring tricks.
That there is something in these results to be explained is admitted;
whether the results have been obtained and recorded in such a way
as to contain the clue to their explanation cannot be affirmed;
whether our present state of knowledge enables us to explain them may
be argued pro and con; whether they are worth serious attention is
also a debatable question; but none of these conditions warrants a
resort to the telepathic hypothesis. That hypothesis as all others
must be weighed in the logical balance without prepossession, and
with full realization of the possibility, that "general appearances
suspicious," or "not proven," or a complete suspension of judgment,
may be among the present verdicts.
VII
So far as the strength and weakness of the arguments for mental
telegraphy depend upon the perspective of value attached to the
various data and to the conditions under which these have been
gathered, I have presented my estimate and indicated the burden of
my conclusions. But I am aware that I may have laid myself open to
the charge--which will be brought not by the advocates of telepathy,
but by its most emphatic opponents--of a neglect of consideration of
the general logical status of telepathy as a germane and legitimate
hypothesis. That the hypothesis of telepathy when carefully
interpreted is capable, if not of explaining the data, at least of
being fitted without undue straining to a large portion of the data,
may be claimed with some plausibility; that I regard the hypothesis
as unwarranted and unnecessary has been made sufficiently clear. But
what if the hypothesis is not a legitimate one, not one which the
methods and spirit of science can properly or profitably consider? If
this be the case, it would seem superfluous to consider whether the
hypothesis is warranted by the data or capable of explaining them.
That it is the policy of science to allow the utmost latitude of
opinion and theory and to interpret the possible in an unprejudiced
and liberal spirit will readily be conceded. That it is equally
the policy of science to demand of all claimants for recognition
authentic credentials framed in accordance with the laws of logic and
the principles of evidence and probability, is sometimes overlooked.
Science cannot possibly consider all hypotheses, but only legitimate
ones. To explain coincidences and the success of experiments in
thought-transference by assuming that there is a demon, whose
special business it is to make people have uncanny feelings when
their relatives in distant places are dying or in danger, and to
suggest to the guesser what is in the mind of the party of the second
part in the experiment, is certainly not an hypothesis worthy of
consideration by science; and incidentally be it noted that this
hypothesis may be successfully shaped to fit the facts, and cannot
be definitely disproved. Some absurd hypotheses may be readily
disproved and others not; but are scientists really called upon to
disprove them? There recently fell under my observation a claim for
the theory that when persons felt an unaccountable aversion for one
another, either at once or after a time of friendship, it was due to
their opposite horoscopic natures, and it would be found that their
birthdays were not far from six months apart, that is, nearly as
far apart as they possibly could be. Divorces, breaches of promise,
family feuds, and antipathies at first sight could thus be accounted
for. Now, it would involve no very burdensome undertaking to disprove
this theory; but I should not expect a cordial approval of my efforts
on the part of my colleagues if I carried through the investigation.
The hypothesis is unscientific, or even anti-scientific, and its
examination unnecessary and unprofitable. Yet it is not always
possible to render so decisive a verdict; and in the present case,
while I incline to the belief that the hypothesis of telepathy is,
as usually advanced and in essence, an illegitimate one, I still
regard it as possible that in the future some modification of this
hypothesis may be framed, which will bring it within the scope of a
liberal conception of the scientific. It is important to make this
attitude perfectly clear: if telepathy means the hypothesis of a
new force, that is, the assumption of an as yet uncomprehended mode
of the output of energy, subject rigorously to the physical bonds
of material causation which make possible a rational conception of
psycho-physiological processes; and if, further, some one will put
forth a rational conception of how this assumed action can take place
apart from the exercise of the senses, I am prepared to admit that
this hypothesis is (not sound, or strong, or in accordance with the
facts, or capable of explaining the facts, or warranted by the facts,
but) one which it is legitimate, though perhaps not profitable, to
consider. If, however, telepathy is put forward as a totally new and
peculiar kind of action, which is quite unrelated to the ordinary
forces with which our senses and scientific observation acquaint
us, and which is not subject to the limitations of the material
world of causation; if telepathy is supposed to reveal to us a world
beyond or behind or mysteriously intertwined with the phenomena of
this world,--a world in which events happen not in accordance with
the established physical laws, but for their personal significance
even in defiance of those laws,--then it becomes impossible for
the scientist to consider this hypothesis without abandoning his
fundamental conceptions of law and science.
My defense, therefore, for not beginning and possibly confining
this discussion to the question of the scientific legitimacy
of the telepathic hypothesis is that, in the present status of
opinion, it does not seem to me hopeful to influence belief by
such a presentation. It seems to me a far more practical step to
present the unwarranted character of the hypothesis and its logical
insufficiencies as a means of influencing those who had been, or were
likely to be, impressed by coincidences and death-warning experiences
and guessing experiments. And, moreover, it is necessary, so long
as such experiences have a strong hold on the popular imagination
and shape the popular conceptions of the nature both of mental
processes and of the field of psychology, to portray as well as
may be the natural explanation and significance of the phenomena,
and to indicate the general trend of the conceptions under which
they may be profitably viewed; and this, even though it be but
measurably possible to apply general principles to special cases.
This step is an essential part of the logical task here attempted.
Under other circumstances it would have been advisable, as it always
would be proper, to determine the legitimacy of an hypothesis before
considering it as worthy of detailed examination on other counts. But
here, as is frequently the case, it is a condition and not one of our
own choosing that confronts us.
VIII
What is the logical conclusion to be drawn from the data offerable
in evidence of some supersensory form of thought-transference,
and whence the disposition to believe in the existence of such a
procedure?--these remain the central questions of the discussion.
As to the former, I can say no more in dismissing the topic than
that to me the phenomena represent a complex conglomerate, in which
imperfectly recognized modes of sense-action, hyperæsthesia and
hysteria, fraud, conscious and unconscious, chance, collusion,
similarity of mental processes, an expectant interest in
presentiments and a belief in their significance, nervousness and ill
health, illusions of memory, hallucinations, suggestion, contagion,
and other elements enter into the composition; while defective
observation, falsification of memory, forgetfulness of details, bias
and prepossession, suggestion from others, lack of training and of
a proper investigative temperament, further invalidate and confuse
the records of what is supposed to have been observed. Many of the
reported facts are not facts at all; others are too distortedly and
too deficiently reported to be either intelligible or suggestive;
some are accurately observed and properly recorded, and these
sometimes contain a probable suggestion of their natural explanation,
sometimes must be put down as chance, and more often must be left
unexplained. To call this absence of an explanation telepathy is
surely no advance; to pose this hypothetic process as the _modus
operandi_ of any result that can be even remotely and contingently
otherwise accounted for seems superfluous; to actually use this
hypothesis to account for still more obscure and more indefinite and
less clearly established phenomena is a most egregious logical sin.
As to the natural tendency to believe in telepathy, it may be
regarded as part of the anthropocentric and egocentric view of
the universe and its happenings, and as an exemplification of the
persistence of the mystical view of mundane events,--both of which
are dominant in primitive philosophy, remain conspicuous wherever
superstition still has a hold, flourish in pseudo-science and in
esoteric cults, and will probably never become wholly obsolete.
Mr. Clodd's remarks concerning the general notions underlying
"sympathetic magic" may be applied to the bias in favor of the
telepathic theory: "The general idea has only to be decked in another
garb to fit the frame of mind which still reserves some pet sphere
of nature for the operation of the special and the arbitrary."
However difficult it may be to realize fully and in detail that the
objective order of things is not arranged for our several personal
benefits, that conclusion is inevitably forced upon us by a true
insight into the inexorable logic of events, and harmonizes with the
reflections of our more logical moods. Whatever tide there may be
in human affairs is largely of our own making; there is nothing to
mark the flood except our own judgment and insight. We may select
and arrange and adapt circumstances according to our needs, but the
selection is made by us and not for us: "We must _take_ the current
when it serves." Some effort is necessary, some schooling must be
gone through with, to enforce this attitude and to give it the
practical effectiveness of a living conviction. The attitude of
conformity with current belief, the easy acceptance of the plausible,
the avoidance of careful and questioning analysis, are far more
inviting and less exacting than the regulation of belief by the logic
of matured principles. The strenuous life has quite as important a
mission in intellectual as in practical affairs. It will be a decided
advance when it becomes generally acknowledged that the discussion of
such an hypothesis as telepathy presupposes an intimate acquaintance
not merely with the facts concerned, but with the logical aspects of
their interpretation; that the probability of forming a sound opinion
on such matters is measured not by the fervor of the interest in
them, but by the intellectual requisites necessary to steer one's way
among the intricacies and dangers of such an expedition. No persons
are more deeply interested in the successful issue of a voyage than
the passengers; but this interest does not qualify them to form an
intelligent opinion upon the proper direction of the machinery or
the setting of the course,--much less does it fit them to take an
active part in the actual navigation. Yet there are always those
who confidently criticise the actions of captain and pilot, and
are anxious to display their ability to form opinions of their own
in regard to the intricate navigation over nature's highways. The
most efficient antidote to the too ready inclination towards the
popular or the superficial interpretation of the phenomena involved
in mental telegraphy is doubtless the cultivation of the logical
vigor and prudence so frequently referred to; and next to this is an
appreciation of the marvelous complexity and unfathomable subtlety of
mental operations.
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF DECEPTION
The saying that appearances are deceptive is an inheritance from
ancient times; to Oriental and to Greek philosophers the illusory
nature of the knowledge furnished by the senses was a frequent and
a fertile theme of contemplation and discussion. The same problem
stands open to the psychologist of to-day; but, profiting by the
specialization of learning and the advance of technical science, he
can give it a more comprehensive as well as a more practical answer.
The physiological activities underlying sense-perception are now
fairly well understood; the experimental method has extended its
domain over the field of mental phenomena; and in many ways have we
become more expert in addressing our queries to the sphinx, Nature,
so as to force a reply. To outline the position of modern psychology
with reference to this interesting problem of deception is the object
of the present essay.
I
In a sense-impression we recognize a primitive element in the
acquisition of knowledge. The deprivation of a sense even under most
favorable circumstances leaves some traces of an incomplete mental
development. This is due, not to the mere sense-impressions that the
organ furnishes, but to the perception and coördination of these
by inferential processes of a more complex nature. It is not the
eye of the eagle, but the brain directing the human eye, that leads
to intellectual supremacy. Physiology recognizes this distinction
as one between lower and higher brain-centres. A man may have his
retina or his optic nerve injured, and so be blind in the ordinary
sense of the word. He is prevented from acquiring further knowledge
by this avenue; but, unless he become blind in early childhood, he
will retain a memory for visual images, will be able more or less
clearly to imagine pictorially the appearances of objects from verbal
descriptions, and in the free roamings of his dream fancy will live
in a world in which blindness i
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