II

But all this accounts for only part of the problem. To convict every

medium of fraud is not a complete explanation of the appearance which

this belief presented in its most characteristic form some decades

ago, and still presents. It remains to account for the great success

of the movement; for the fact that so many have been deceived and so

few have really understood; to show why we are to believe the Seybert

Commission, and not credit the countless miracle-mongers. This is

psychologically the most interesting portion of the problem, and has

been very successfully treated by Mrs. Sidgwick, Mr. Hodgson, and Mr.

Davey, of the Society for Psychical Research.

There is a very broadspread notion that anybody can go to a

spiritualistic séance and give a reliable opinion as to whether

what he or she may chance to see is explicable as conjuring or

not. Especially where the right to one's opinion is regarded as a

corollary to the right of liberty, does this notion prevail. It is

probably not an exaggeration to maintain that most such claimants are

about as competent to form a trustworthy opinion on such a subject as

they are to pronounce upon the genuineness of a Syriac manuscript.

The matter is in some aspects as much a technical acquisition as is

the diagnosticating of a disease. It is not at all to the discredit

of any one's powers of observation or intellectual acumen to be

deceived by the performances of a conjurer; and the same holds true

of the professional part of mediumistic phenomena. Until this homely

but salutary truth is impressed with all its importance upon all

intending investigators, there is little hope of bringing about a

proper attitude towards these and kindred phenomena. We believe that

there will be an eclipse of the moon when the astronomer so predicts,

not because we can calculate the time or even understand how the

astronomer does it, but because that is a technical acquisition which

he has learned and we have not; and so with a thousand other and more

humble facts of daily life. Spiritualism, to a large extent, comes

under the same category; and observers who have acquainted themselves

with the possibilities of conjuring and the natural history of

deception, who by their training and endowment have fitted themselves

to be competent judges of such alleged ultra-physical facts--these

persons have the same right to our confidence and respect as a body

of chemists or physicians on a question within their province. It by

no means follows that all scientists are fitted for an investigation

of this kind, nor that all laymen are not; it does follow that a body

of trained and able observers, who are aware of the possibilities of

faulty observation and of the tendency to substitute hasty inference

for fact, who know something about deception as a psychological

characteristic, who have acquired or call to their aid the technical

requisites for such an investigation, are better fitted to carry it

to a logical outcome than are others, equally distinguished in other

directions and equally able, if you will, but who have not these

special qualifications. It follows that it is not fair for you to

set up what you think you have seen as overthrowing their authority;

even if you happen to be an unprejudiced and accurate observer and

have weighed the probability of your observations being vitiated by

one or other of the many sources of error in such observation, it is

only a small fact, though of course one worthy of notice. There is no

good reason why the average man should set so much store by his own

impressions of sense, when the fallibility of other witnesses is so

readily demonstrable.

Whatever of seeming dogmatism there is in this view is removed by the

experimental demonstration furnished by Messrs. Hodgson and Davey,

that the kind and amount of mal-observation and faulty description

which an average observer will introduce into the account of a

performance such as the medium gives, is amply sufficient to account

for the divergence between his report of the performance and what

really occurred. The success of a large class of tricks depends

upon diverting the observer's attention from the points of real

importance, and in leading him to draw inferences perfectly valid

under ordinary circumstances but entirely wrong in the particular

case. It must be constantly remembered that the judging powers are

at a great disadvantage in observing such performances, and that

it is a kind of judgment in which they have little practice. In

the intercourse of daily life a certain amount of good faith and

of confidence in the straightforwardness of the doings of others

prevents us from exercising that close scrutiny and suspicion here

necessary. We know that most of our neighbors have neither the

intention nor the sharpness to deceive us, and do not live on the

principle of the detective, who regards every one as dishonest

until proven to be otherwise. This attitude of extreme suspicion is

indispensable in dealing with the phenomena now under discussion.

It follows, therefore, that the layman cannot serve as a pilot for

himself or for others in such troubled waters. This, however, if duly

recognized, need not be a matter of concern. "This unpreparedness

and inobservancy of mind in the presence of a conjurer," says Mr.

Hodgson, is not "a thing of which any one who is not familiar with

the tricks already need be ashamed." Even a professional may be

nonplussed by a medium's performance, if he have no experience in the

special kind of sleight-of-hand required for the trick. This is the

experience of Mr. Harry Kellar; he at first declared himself unable

to explain slate-writing as a trick, but now can repeat the process

in a variety of ways, and with far greater skill than is shown by the

mediums. We may therefore approach Mr. Davey's investigation with

the assurance that, in all probability, we too should have failed

to detect what was really done, and should have rendered quite as

erroneous account of what we saw as did his actual sitters; and

according to our training and temperament we should have drawn our

several conclusions, and all of them variously wide of the mark.

Mr. Davey (who, by the way, was at one time deceived almost into

conversion by spiritualistic phenomena, and who, before he took up

the matter seriously, recorded his conviction that "the idea of

trickery or jugglery in slate-writing communications is quite out

of the question") was an expert amateur conjurer, and repeated the

slate-writing performances of such as Englinton with at least equal

skill. He arranged with Mr. Hodgson to give sittings to several

ladies and gentlemen, on the condition that they send him detailed

written accounts of what they had seen. He did not pose as a medium

nor accept a fee, but simply said that he had something to show

which his sitters were to explain as best they could, and with due

consideration of trickery as a possible mode of explanation. The

"medium" has here a decided advantage over Mr. Davey, because his

sitters come to him with a mental attitude that entertains, however

remotely, the possibility of witnessing something supernatural;

and this difference is sufficient to create an adjustment of the

powers of observation less fitted to detect trickery than if the

performer refrains from announcing himself as the go-between of the

supernatural. This is well illustrated in the reports of Mr. Davey's

sitters; for a few friends who were told beforehand that they were

to witness a sleight-of-hand performance, or were strongly led to

believe it such, made much less of a marvel of the performance than

those who had not been thus enlightened. "Nevertheless" (I am citing

from Mr. Podmore's résumé), "the effect produced was such that a

well-known professional conjurer expressed his complete inability

to explain the results by trickery; that no one of his sitters ever

detected his _modus operandi_; that most were completely baffled,

or took refuge in the supposition of a new form of electricity,

or 'a powerful magnetic force used in double manner: (1) a force

of attraction, and (2) that of repulsion'; and that more than

one spiritualist ascribed the phenomena to occult agency, and

regarded--perhaps still regard--Mr. Davey as a renegade medium."

Mr. Davey's performances, _as described_ by many of his sitters,

like the descriptions of the performances of many a medium, are

marvelous enough to demand the hypothesis of occult agency: "Writing

between a conjurer's own slates in a way quite inexplicable to

the conjurer; writing upon slates locked and carefully guarded by

witnesses; writing upon slates held by the witnesses firmly against

the under-surface of the table; writing upon slates held by the

witnesses above the table; answers to questions written secretly in

locked slates; correct quotations appearing on guarded slates from

books chosen by the witnesses at random, and sometimes mentally,

the books not touched by the 'medium'; writing in different colors

mentally chosen by the witnesses, covering the whole side of one

of their own slates; messages in languages unknown to the medium,

including a message in German, for which only a mental request had

been made, and a letter in Japanese in a double slate locked and

sealed by the witness; the date of a coin placed by the witness in a

sealed envelope correctly written in a locked slate upon the table,

the envelope remaining intact; a word written between slates screwed

together and also corded and sealed together, the word being chosen

by the witness after the slates were fastened by himself, etc.,

etc. And yet, though 'autographic' fragments of pencil were 'heard'

weaving mysterious messages between and under and over slates, and

fragments of chalk were seen moving about under a tumbler placed

above the table in full view, none of the sitters witnessed that best

phenomenon, _Mr. Davey writing_."

It must not be supposed that the errors of mal-description and

lapse of memory thus committed are at all serious in themselves; on

the contrary, they are mostly such as would be entirely pardonable

in ordinary matters. Mr. Hodgson places them in four classes. In

the first, the observer _interpolates_ a fact which really did not

happen, but which he was led to believe had occurred; he records that

he examined the slate, when he really did not. Secondly, for similar

causes, he _substitutes_ one statement for another closely like it;

he says he examined the slate minutely, when he really only did so

hastily. Thirdly, he _transposes_ the order in which the events

happened, making the examination of the slate occur at a later period

than when it really took place. Lastly, he _omits_ certain details

which he was carefully led to consider trivial, but which really

were most important. Such slight lapses as these are sufficient

to make a marvel of a clever piece of conjuring; add to this the

increased temptations for mal-observation afforded by the dim light

and mysterious surroundings of the medium, as well as by the

sympathetic attitude of the sitters, and the wide divergence between

the miraculous narratives of spiritualists and the homely deceptions

which they are intended to describe, is no longer a mystery.

It cannot be too strongly insisted upon how slight may be the clue

that holds the key to the explanation, how easy it is to overlook

it, how mysterious the performance becomes without it. It may be the

difference between placing the slate in a given position and starting

to do so when the hand of the medium naturally comes forward to

receive it; it may depend upon whether the slates were examined just

before or just after a certain detail in the performance which was

carefully not made prominent; it may depend upon the difficulty of

really seeing a quick and unexpected sleight-of-hand movement on the

part of a skilled performer; it may depend upon whether the question

asked was really of your own choosing, or was deftly led up to; it

may depend upon a score of other equally insignificant details upon

which the assurance of the average person, that such mal-observation

or misdescription did not occur, is almost worthless. These are

some of the slighter factors in the case; there may be much more

serious ones which lead not merely to exaggeration but to elaborate

falsification and distortion of truth, and to the emphatic assertion

of the most extravagant miracles, coupled usually with the assurance

that there was no possibility or room for deception. Mr. Davey's

performance was relatively a matter-of-fact test with critical and

intelligent sitters; hence we should expect the divergence between

report and reality to be far less serious than when the question

at issue is the demonstration of the supernatural by an appeal

to the religious fervor and to the emotional susceptibilities of

would-be believers and sympathetic propagandists. I shall return

to this difference of attitude in discussing the prepossession

in favor of the belief in Spiritualism; for the present, it is

sufficient to notice that under the most favorable combination of

circumstances--that is, an able, educated, and experienced observer

witnessing a definite performance in a calm, critical mood, and

carefully preparing a written account of his observations--the

difference between actual fact and the testimony of the witness is

still considerable, and the divergence often upon essential points.

We are accordingly justified in making allowance for double or treble

or a hundredfold more serious divergence between fact and report,

when we pass to decidedly less favorable conditions, such as those of

the ordinary spiritualistic test or séance; for these surely present

conditions least conducive to accuracy of observation or of record.

It is seldom that so direct and forcible an application of

experimental results to actual mental experiences occurring under

familiar circumstances can be made, as is the case in regard to

this noteworthy investigation of Messrs. Hodgson and Davey. This

investigation, almost at one stroke, throws a blinding light upon

the entire field of the phenomena; accounting in large part for the

vast aggregate of testimony in favor of miracles by actual witnesses,

demonstrating the readiness with which we may unwittingly deceive

ourselves by false observation and others by lapses of memory, as

to what we actually witnessed; and again presenting the nature of

these fallible characteristics of sense-perception and memory, of

inference and judgment, so strikingly and tangibly as to serve as

a classic illustration for the psychologist. The practical import

of these considerations has been quite generally disregarded by

upholders of the spiritualistic hypothesis, and has by no means been

fully appreciated by those who lay claim to an opinion upon the

significance of spiritualistic manifestations, and who discuss the

psychological questions which they involve.

It is pertinent to add that after Mr. Davey's death, Mr. Hodgson

felt free to publish a precise account of what Mr. Davey actually

did during the slate-writing séances.[7] The description from before

the footlights may thus be compared with the account from behind the

scenes; and although verbal accounts must always be weak and lack

the realistic touch of the _mise en scène_, yet this account makes

possible a kinetoscopic reproduction, as it were, of the original

sitting; we may observe the point at which the several sitters

committed their faults of defective observation or report; we may

examine at leisure the several steps in the performance which the

eyes overlooked in the hasty single glimpse afforded by the sitting

itself; we may attend to details which in the original sitting

reached only the outlying and evanescent phases of consciousness.

But, on the whole, the psychological comprehension of the "séance"

was sufficiently manifest without this disclosure of the _modus

operandi_; the disclosure has its value, however, in removing the

possibility of certain forms of criticism of the results, in

presenting data by which the specific nature of mal-observation may

be more concretely studied, and in convincing the more obstinate and

skeptical of how natural it is to err in matters beyond the range of

one's intimate experience.

A corroborative illustration of the subjective contribution to

deceptions of this type--the part that "always comes out of our

head," in Professor James's phrase--is furnished by M. Binet's series

of photographs, taken at the rate of ten or twelve per second, of the

hands of the performer during a sleight-of-hand performance; for the

photographs do not show the essential illusion which the eyes seem to

see, but which is really supplied by the fixed interpretative habits

of the spectators.

The conclusion thus experimentally arrived at by Messrs. Hodgson

and Davey is reinforced by other investigators. After witnessing a

séance that was merely a series of the simplest and most glaringly

evident tricks, Mrs. Sidgwick was expected to have had all her doubts

entirely removed, and was assured that what she had seen was better

than the materializations at Paris. "Experiences like this make one

feel how misleading the accounts of some completely honest witnesses

may be; for the materializations in Paris were those which the Comte

de Bullet had with Firman, where near relatives of the Count were

believed constantly to appear, and which are among the most wonderful

recorded in spiritualistic literature. And, after all, it appears

that these marvelous séances were no better than this miserable

personation by Haxby."

The Seybert Commission finds that "with every possible desire on the

part of spiritualists to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing

but the truth, concerning marvelous phenomena, it is extremely

difficult to do so. Be it distinctly understood that we do not for an

instant impute willful perversion of the truth. All that we mean is

that, for two reasons, it is likely that the marvels of spiritualism

will be, by believers in them, incorrectly and insufficiently

reported. The first reason is to be found in the mental condition of

the observer; if he be excited or deeply moved, his account cannot

but be affected, and essential details will surely be distorted.

For a second reason, note how hard it is to give a truthful account

of any common, everyday occurrence. The difficulty is increased a

hundredfold when what we would tell partakes of the wonderful. Who

can truthfully describe a juggler's trick? Who would hesitate to

affirm that a watch, which never left the eyesight for an instant,

was broken by the juggler on an anvil; or that a handkerchief was

burned before our eyes? We all know the juggler does not break the

watch, and does not burn the handkerchief. We watched most closely

the juggler's right hand, while the trick was done with his left. The

one minute circumstance has been omitted that would have converted

the trick into no-trick. It is likely to be the same in the accounts

of the most wonderful phenomena of spiritualism."

If we desire a concrete instance of this omission of an important

detail, we may turn once more to Dr. Furness's narrative. Certain

highly intelligent observers had described to him the marvelous

accomplishments of a Boston medium; and this is his own account:

"There are two tables in the room of séance, at one of which sits the

medium, at the other, the visitor. The visitor at his table writes

his question in pencil at the top of a long slip of paper, and,

after folding over several times the portion of the slip on which

his question is written, gums it down with mucilage and hands it to

the medium, who thereupon places on the folded and gummed portion

his left hand, and in a few minutes with his right hand writes down

answers to the concealed questions; these answers are marvels of

pertinency, and prove beyond a cavil the clairvoyant or spiritual

powers of the medium." Dr. Furness went to the medium, prepared his

slip of paper about as described, and thus continues: "As soon as he

took his seat, and laid the strip on his table before him, I rose and

approached the table so as to keep my paper still in sight; _the row

of books entirely intercepted my view of it_. The medium instantly

motioned to me to return to my seat, and, I think, told me to do so.

I obeyed, and as I did so could not repress a profound sigh. Why had

no one ever told me of that row of books?"