II

To make things seem more wonderful than they are, to possess

knowledge and exhibit power beyond the ken of the multitude, has

exercised a fascination upon the human mind in all its stages of

development. The primitive conjuring of the ancient priest or of the

savage medicine-man, the long tradition of Oriental legerdemain,

and the stage performances of the modern prestidigitateur are

all connected with deep-seated human instincts. It has even been

suggested[3] that the mimicry and death-feigning instincts of

animals, though essentially biological in type, are yet related to

the psychological instincts of deception which make their first clear

appearance in the higher animals and assume a distinctive position

in the psychological equipment of childhood. The conjuring tricks or

paradoxes which apparently contradict or rise superior to ordinary

experience, furnish the most various types of illustration of the

psychology of deception. Whether presented as miracle by priest or

by thaumaturgist or by expounder of the black art, or presented

as proof of spirit agency by the modern spiritualistic medium or

his less pretentious predecessors, or by the stage performer for

entertainment, the analysis of what was actually done, and the

accounts of what the spectators saw or believed that they saw,

illuminate with striking brilliancy the _modus operandi_ of the

processes whereby appearance takes the semblance of reality and

observation is shrewdly led astray. The conjurer thus becomes a

suggester and an actor, not a mere exhibitor of his manipulative

skill.

As our present purpose is to investigate the nature of real

deception, of the formation of false beliefs which may in turn lead

to unwise action, it will be well to note that even such elementary

forms of sense-deceptions as those just noted may fall under this

head. No one allowed the use of his eyes will ever believe that the

pea held between the crossed fingers is really double, but children

often think that a spoon half immersed in water is really bent.

Primitive peoples believe that the moon really grows smaller as it

rises above the horizon; and the ancients could count sufficiently

upon the ignorance of the people, to make use of mirrors and other

stage devices for revealing the power of the gods. The ability to

correct such errors depends solely upon the possession of certain

knowledge or of a confidence in its existence.

Continuing with deceptions dependent upon exceptional external

arrangements, we may find in conjuring tricks simple and complex

illustrations in great perfection. When wine is turned into water,

when two half-dollars are rolled into one, when a box into which an

article has just been placed is immediately opened and found to be

empty, when a handkerchief is torn and made whole again, when the

performer drives a nail through his finger, when a coin suddenly

appears out of space at the end of a wand, when a card which you have

just assured yourself is the ace of hearts on second view is the

king of spades, when a bowl filled with water in which goldfish are

swimming is produced from under a handkerchief, when a child rests

horizontally in mid-air supported only on one elbow,--you are misled

or mystified or deceived in so far as you are unaware that the wine

was potassium permanganate and sulphuric acid, and was clarified

by sodium hyposulphite; that the one half-dollar is hollow and the

solid one fits into it; that the box has a double bottom controlled

by a secret spring; that the real handkerchief was not torn but

another substituted for it; that the nail has been replaced by one

that fits around the finger; that the wand is hollow, and a spring

controls the appearance or withdrawal of a split coin at its other

end; that one half of the card is printed on a flap which, by falling

down, shows another aspect; that the bowl covered with a rubber cap

was secreted under the coat of the performer; that the child wears

a steel suit fitted with joints that lock and become rigid. All

these are technical devices which amuse us by the ingenuity of their

construction, and, though they may be most baffling, provoke about

the same type of mental interest as does a puzzle or an automaton.

Ignorance of this technical knowledge or lack of confidence in its

existence may convert these devices into real deceptions by changing

the mental attitude of the spectator. However, the plausibility of

such performances depends so much upon their general presentation

that they seldom rely for their effectiveness solely upon the

objective appearances presented. They are given a dramatic setting,

or put forward as examples of newly discovered forces or of magical

control; and this makes them far more effective than this bare

account would suggest.

Asking the reader, then, to bear in mind the very great number

and ingenuity of such devices, and insisting once more that the

only complete safeguard against being misled by them to the extent

of forming false conceptions of their _modus operandi_, is the

acquisition of the purely technical knowledge that underlies their

success, I shall cite in detail a trick combining illustrations

of several of the principles to be discussed. Several rings are

collected from the audience upon the performer's wand; he takes the

rings back to the stage and throws them upon a platter; a pistol

is needed, and is handed to the performer from behind the scenes;

with conspicuous indifference he hammers the precious trinkets until

they fit into the pistol. A chest is hanging on a nail at the side

of the stage; the pistol is fired at this chest, which is thereupon

taken down and placed upon a table towards the rear of the stage.

The chest is unlocked and found to contain a second chest; this is

unlocked and contains a third this a fourth. As the chests emerge

they are placed upon the table; and now from the fourth chest there

comes a fifth, which the performer carries to the front of the stage

and shows to contain bonbons around each of which is tied one of the

rings taken from the audience. The effect is most startling. This is

the appearance of the trick from the audience. Now let us consider

what really takes place. In the hand holding the wand are as many

brass rings as are to be collected. In walking back to the stage the

genuine rings are allowed to slip off the wand and the false rings

to take their places. This excites no suspicion, as the walking back

to the stage is obviously necessary, and never impresses one as part

of the performance. The pistol is not ready upon the stage, but must

be gone for; and as the assistant hands the performer the pistol,

the latter transfers to the assistant the true rings. The hammering

of the false rings is now deliberately undertaken, thus giving the

assistant ample time to tie the true rings to the bonbons; and, while

all attention is concentrated upon the firing of the pistol, the

assistant unobtrusively pushes a small table on to the rear of the

stage. This table has a small fringe hanging about it, certainly

an insignificant detail, but none the less worth noting. The chests

are now opened, and, after having shown the audience that the second

chest comes out of the first, the third out of the second, and so on,

the performer can very readily and quickly draw the last, smallest

chest from a groove _under_ the table, where it was concealed by

the aforesaid fringe, and bring it forward as though it _had come_

out of the next larger chest; this smallest chest is opened and the

trick is accomplished. So thoroughly convinced is the observer by the

correctness of his first three inferences that the last box came out

of the one before it, that I venture to say this explanation does not

occur to one person in many thousand, and that most of the audience

would have been willing to affirm on oath that they saw the last box

so emerge. The psychology of the process, then, consists in inducing

the spectator to draw the natural inference, which, in this case, it

has been carefully arranged shall be a wrong one.

Deception becomes real according to the skill with which the

conditions of reality are imitated. The dexterity and training of

the professional conjurer are measured by the fidelity with which he

mimics the movements which are supposed to be done. The life-likeness

of the movement with which the late Hermann could take up an

imaginary orange with both hands from a table (the orange was really

let down in a trap on the table as the hands were placed over it),

and carry it over to another table where it mysteriously disappeared

or passed through a hat, was quite irresistible. Equally so was his

palming, or his production of objects from his person, or out of the

air, or in out-of-the-way places. The mimetic movements accompanying

these actions were so vividly realistic, the misdirection of the

attention was so perfect, as to produce a complete hallucination of

the appearance of objects from places from which they never emerged.

When this was preceded by an actual sleight-of-hand movement, a true

hallucination resulted; for example, in the trick of the flying

cards which were skilfully thrown to all parts of the auditorium, a

card was occasionally thrown which seemed to disappear mysteriously

in mid-air; but in reality no card had been thrown but only the

movements of throwing it imitated. A rabbit was tossed up in the air

two or three times, and then disappeared at the report of a pistol;

in reality the rabbit was not tossed at all on the last apparent

throw, but was slipped into the hollow of the table.[4]

The more closely the conditions that lead to correct inferences in

ordinary experiences are imitated, the more successful will be the

illusion; and a useful principle of conjuring illusions is to _first

actually do_ that which you _afterward_ wish the audience to _believe

that you continue to do_. Thus, when coins are caught in mid-air

and thrown into a hat, a few are really thrown in; but the others

are palmed in the hand holding the hat, and allowed to fall when

the other hand makes the appropriate movements. Some of the rings

to be mysteriously linked together are given to the audience for

examination and found to contain no opening, the audience at once

concluding that the rings which the performer retains are precisely

like them. In general, to gain the confidence of the person to be

deceived is the first step alike in sleight-of-hand and in criminal

fraud.