with skepticism. They live their intellectually clean lives, dwell in
safe, comfortable houses of the intellect and move on well-paved
educational streets, and never see or hear anything of those
inhabitants of the intellectual slums. If ever a letter like those
which pour in hundreds to the desk of the psychologist were to stray
into their mail, they would feel sure that they had to do with a
lunatic who belongs in an asylum under a physician's care. They have
no idea that not only their furnaceman and washwoman, but also their
tailor and their watchmaker, or perhaps the teacher of their children,
and, if they examine more carefully, three of their last dinner
guests, are strolling for hours or for a night, or living for seasons,
if not for a lifetime, in that world of superstition and
anti-intellectual mentality. Such people are not ill; they are
personally not even cranks; they are simply confused and unable to
live an ordered intellectual life. Their character and temperament and
their personality in every other respect may be faultless, but their
ideas are chaotic. They bring together the contradictory and make
contrasts out of the identical, and, far from any sound religious
belief or any true metaphysical philosophy, they simply mix any
mystical whims into the groups of thought which civilization has
brought into systematic order. Instead of trying to learn, they are
always longing for some illegitimate intellectual profit; they are
always trying to pick the pocket of the absolute.
It is not difficult to recognize the social conditions from which this
tendency springs. The fundamental one, after all, is the widely spread
lack of respect for the expert. Such a lack easily results from
democratic life, as democracy encourages the belief that every one can
judge about everything and can decide from his own resources what
ought to be thought and what ought to be done. Yet no one can claim
that it is truly a part of democracy itself and that the democratic
spirit would suffer if this view were suppressed. On the contrary,
democracy can never be fully successful and can never be carried
through in consistent purity until this greatest danger of the
democratic spirit of society is completely overcome and repressed by
an honest respect for the expert and a willing subordination of
judgment to his better knowledge. Another condition which makes our
country a favourite playground for fantastic vagaries is the strong
emphasis on the material sides of life, on business and business
success. The result is a kind of contrast effect. As the surface of
such a rushing business life lacks everything which would satisfy the
deeper longings of the soul, the effort to create an inner world is
readily pushed to mystical extremes in which all contact with the
practical world is lost, and finally all solid knowledge disregarded
and caricatured. The newspapers have their great share, too. Any
absurdity which a crank anywhere in the world brings forth is heralded
with a joy in the sensational impossibilities which must devastate the
mind of the naïve reader.
But whatever the sources of this prevailing superstition may be, there
ought to be no disagreement about its intellectual sinfulness and its
danger to society. We see some alarming consequences in the growth of
the revolt against scientific medicine. Millions of good Americans do
not want to know anything about physicians who have devoted their
lives to the study of medicine, but prefer any quack or humbug, any
healer or mystic. Yet for a queer reason the case of the treatment of
diseases shows the ruinous results of this social procedure very
slowly. Every scientific physician knows that many diseases can be
cured by autosuggestion in emotional excitement, and if this belief in
the quack produces the excitement and the suggestion, the patient may
really be cured, not on account but in spite of the quack who treats
him. The whole misery of this antimedical movement is therefore
somewhat veiled and alleviated. But this is not so in the fields of
real culture and knowledge. The belief in the absurdities there has
not even an autosuggestive value. It is simply destructive to the life
of civilized society. It is absurd for us to put our best energies to
work to build up a splendid system of education for the youth of the
whole nation, and at the same time to allow its structure to be
undermined by the millionfold intellectual depravity.
Of course it may be difficult to say what ought to be done. I feel
sure that society ought to suppress with relentless energy all those
parlours of the astrologists and palmists, of the scientific mediums
and spiritualists, of the quacks and prophets. Their announcements by
signs or in the public press ought to be stopped, and ought to be
treated by the postal department of the government as the
advertisements of other fraudulent enterprises are treated. A large
rôle in the campaign would have to be played by the newspapers, but
their best help would be rendered by negative action, by not
publishing anything of a superstitious and mystical type. The most
important part of the fight, however, is to recognize the danger
clearly, to acknowledge it frankly, and to see with open eyes how
alarmingly the evil has grown around us. No one will fancy that any
social schemes can be sufficient to bring superstition to an end, any
more than any one can expect that the present fight against city vice
will forever put a stop to sexual immorality. But that surely cannot
be an argument for giving up the battle against the moral perversities
of metropolitan life. The fact that we cannot be entirely successful
ought still less to be an argument for any leniency with the
intellectual perversities and the infectious diseases the germs of
which are disseminated in our world of honest culture by the
inhabitants of the cultural underworld.
IV
THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE
The harmony and soundness of society depend upon its inner unity of
mind. Social organization does not mean only an external fitting
together, but an internal equality of mind. Men must understand one
another in order to form a social unit, and such understanding
certainly means more than using the same words and the same grammar.
They must be able to grasp other men's point of view, they must have a
common world in which to work, and this demands that they mould the
world in the same forms of thought. If one calls green what another
calls sour, and one feels as noise what another feels as toothache,
they cannot enter into a social group. Yet it is no less confusing and
no less antisocial if the world which one sees as a system of causes
and effects is to another a realm of capricious, causeless, zigzag
happenings. The mental links which join society are threatened if some
live with their thoughts in a world of order and natural law, and
others in a mystical chaos.
This has nothing to do with differences of opinion. Society profits
from contrasting views, from discussion and struggle. The opposing
parties in a real debate understand each other well and are working
with the same logic and the same desire for order of thought. This
contrast between order and mysticism has still less to do with the
difference of knowledge and belief in a higher religious and
philosophical sense. There is no real antagonism between science and
religion, between experience and philosophical speculation. They point
to each other, they demand each other, and no social question is
involved when the interests of one man emphasize more the scholarly
search for scientific truth, and those of another concentrate
throughout his lifework on the emotional wisdom of religion. It is
quite different with mysticism and science; they are not two parties
of a debate on equal terms. They exclude each other, as the mystic
projects his feeling interests into those objects which the scientist
tries to analyze and to understand as effects of causes. Nothing is a
safer test of the cultural development of a society than the instinct
for the difference between religion and superstition. Mysticism is a
systematized superstition. It never undermines the true interests of
society more than when it goes to work with pseudo-scientific tools.
Its most repellent form, that of sheer spiritualism, has in recent
years declined somewhat, and the organizations for antilogical,
psychical research eke out a pitiable existence nowadays. But the
community of the silent or noisy believers in telepathy, mystical
foresight, clairvoyance, and wonder workers seems to increase.
The scientific psychologist might have a twofold contact with such
movements. His most natural interest is that of studying the mental
makeup of those who chase this will-o'-the-wisp. Their mental vagaries
and superstitious fancies are quite fascinating material for his
dissection. But for the interests of society an entirely different
effort is, after all, more consequential. The psychologist has no
right to avoid the trouble of examining conspicuous cases which
superficially seem to endorse the fantastic theories of the mentally
untrained. Such an investigation is his share, as indeed mental
occurrences generally stand in the centre of the alleged wonderful
facts. From this feeling of social responsibility some years ago I
approached the hysterical trickster, Madame Palladino, who had so much
inflamed the mystical imagination of the country, and from this
interest in the social aspect I undertook again recently a research
into the mental powers of Beulah Miller, who was well on the way to
bewilder the whole nation and thus to stir up the always latent mystic
inclinations of the community. It is a typical specimen of those cases
which can easily upset the loosely reasoning public and do tremendous
harm to the mental unity of the social organism. It seems worth while
to illuminate it in full detail.
Indeed, since the days when Madame Eusapia Palladino stirred the whole
country with her marvellous mystic powers, no case of psychical
mystery has engaged the interest of the nation as that of little
Beulah Miller in Warren, Rhode Island, has done. The story of her
wonderful performances has become a favourite feature of the Sunday
papers, and the small New England town for the first time in its long
history has been in the limelight. The reporters have made their
pilgrimages, and every one has returned bewildered and amazed. Here at
last the truth of telepathy was proved. Sworn affidavits of reliable
persons removed the last doubts; and I myself, with my long training
as a scientist, had to confess, when for the first time I had spent a
few hours with Beulah Miller, that I was as deeply startled and
overcome with wonder as I was after the first night with Eusapia
Palladino. Yet what a contrast! There the elderly, stout Italian woman
at a midnight hour, in dimly lighted rooms, in disreputable New York
quarters, where the palmists and mediums live in their world of sham
psychology, sitting in a trance state at a table surrounded by
spiritualistic believers who had to pay their entrance fees; here a
little, naïve, ten-year-old girl among her toys in the kitchen of her
parents' modest white cottage in a lovely country village! I never
felt a more uncanny, nerve-irritating atmosphere than in Palladino's
squalid quarters, and I do not remember more idyllic, peaceful
surroundings than when I sat between Beulah and her sister through
bright sunny mornings in their mother's home with their cat beside
them and the pet lamb coming into the room from the meadow. There
everything suggested fraud, and when at my second séance her foot was
caught behind the curtain and the whole humbug exposed, it was exactly
what I had expected. But here everything breathed sincerity and
naïveté and absence of fraud--yet my mere assurance cannot convince a
skeptic; we must examine the case carefully.
The claims are very simple: Here is a school child of ten years who is
able to read in the mind of any one present anything of which he is
thinking. If you take a card from a pack and look at it, and still
better if several people look at it, and best of all if her mother or
sister looks at it, too, Beulah will say at once which card it is,
although she may stand in the farthest corner of the room. She will
give you the date on any coin which you have in hand; in a book she
will tell you the particular word at which you are looking. Indeed, a
sworn affidavit reports still more surprising feats. Beulah gave
correctly the name of the reporter whom nobody else knew and the name
of the New York paper for which she is writing. At school she reads
words written on the blackboard with her back turned to it. At home
she knows what any visitor is hiding in his pocket.
The serious-minded man who is disgusted with spiritualistic charlatans
and their commercial humbug is naturally inclined here, too, at once
to offer the theory that all is fraud and that a detective would be
the right man to investigate the case. When the newspapers discovered
that I had begun to study the girl, I received from many sides letters
with suggestions to look for certain devices with which stage
performers carry out such tricks, such as marked cards and the
equipment of the magician. But whoever thinks of fraud here
misunderstands the whole situation. The psychical powers of Beulah
Miller were not brought before the public by the child or her family;
there was no desire for notoriety, and in spite of the very modest
circumstances in which this carpenter's family has to live, the facts
became known before any commercial possibility suggested itself.
The mother was startled by Beulah's psychical gifts because she
noticed two years ago that when the family was playing "Old Maid"
Beulah always knew in whose hands the dangerous queen was to be found.
Then they began to experiment with cards in the family circle, and her
ability to know of what the mother or the sister was thinking became
more and more interesting to them. Slowly her school friends began to
notice it, and children in the Sunday-school told the minister about
Beulah's queer mind-reading. All this time no newspaper had known
about it. One day the minister, when he passed the house, entered and
inquired whether those rumours were true. He had a little glass full
of honey in his pocket, and Beulah spelled the word honey at once. He
made some tests with coins, and every one was successful. This
minister, Rev. H. W. Watjen, told this to his friend Judge Mason, who
has lived in Warren for more than thirty years, and then both the
minister and the judge visited repeatedly the village where the
Millers live, performed a large number of experiments with cards and
coins and words, and became the friendly advisers of the mother, who
was still troubled by her doubt whether these supernatural gifts of
the child came from God or from the devil. Only through the agency of
these two well-known men, the Baptist minister and the judge, was the
public informed that a mysterious case existed in the neighbourhood of
Warren, and when the newspapers began to send their reporters and
strangers came to see the wonder, these two men decided who should see
the child. Of course, commercial propositions, invitations to give
performances on the vaudeville stage, soon began to pour in, but with
indignation the mother refused to listen to any such idea. Because of
my scientific interest in such psychological puzzles, the judge and
the minister turned to me to investigate the case. It is evident that
this whole social situation lacks every conceivable motive for fraud.
But this impression was strongly heightened by the behaviour of the
family and of the child during the study which I carried on in the
three weeks following. The mother, the twelve-year-old sister Gladys,
and Beulah herself were most willing to agree to anything which would
make the test difficult, and they themselves asked to have everything
tried with no member of the family in the room. Beulah was quite happy
to show her art under unaccustomed conditions like having her eyes
covered with thick bandages. When inadvertently some one turned a card
so that she could see it, she was the first to break out into childish
laughter at her having seen it. In short, everything indicated such
perfect sincerity, and the most careful examination yielded so
absolutely no trace of intentional fraud, that I can vouch for the
honesty of the intentions of all concerned in the experiments carried
on so far.
If fraud and humbug may certainly be excluded, the wiseacres will say
that the results must then have been a matter of chance coincidence.
No one can deny that chance may sometimes bring surprising results.
Dreams of far-distant accidents come true, and yet no one who
considers those millions of dreams which do not come true and which
therefore remain disregarded will acknowledge any prophetic power in
sleep. It may happen, if you are asked to call a name or a figure of
which another man is thinking, that you will strike the right one.
Moreover, recent experiments have shown that there is much natural
uniformity in the thoughts of men. Certain figures or names or things
more readily rush to the mind than others. Hence the chances that two
persons will be thinking of the same figure are much larger than would
appear from the mere calculation of probabilities. Yet even if we
make the largest possible concession to happy coincidences, there
cannot remain the slightest doubt that the experiments carried on
under standard conditions yielded results the correctness of which
endlessly surpasses any possible accidental outcome. We may take a
typical illustration: I drew cards which she could not possibly see,
while they were shown to the mother and sister sitting next to me,
Beulah sitting on the other side of the room. The first was a nine of
hearts; she said nine of hearts. The next was six of clubs, to which
she said first six of spades; when told it was not spades, she
answered clubs. The next was two of diamonds; her first figure was
four; when told that it was wrong, she corrected herself two, and
added diamonds. The next was nine of clubs, which she gave correctly;
seven of spades, she said at first seven of diamonds, then spades;
jack of spades, she gave correctly at once, and so on.
One other series: We had little cardboard squares on each of which was
a large single letter. I drew any three, put them into the cover of a
box, and while the mother, Gladys, and I were looking at the three
letters, Beulah, sitting beside us, looked at the ceiling. The first
were R-T-O. She said R-T-I. When told it was wrong, she added O. The
next were S-U-T; she gave S-U, and then wrongly R P Q, and finally T.
The next were N-A-R; she gave G N-A-S R. The following D-W-O she gave
D-W, but could not find the last letter. It is evident that every one
of the cards gave her fifty-two chances, and not more than one in
fifty-two would have been correct if it were only guessing, and as to
the letters, not more than one among twenty-six would have been chosen
correctly by chance. The given example demonstrates that of five cards
she gave three correctly, two half correctly, and those two mistakes
were rectified after the first wrong guess. The second experiment
demanded from her four times three letters. Of these twelve letters,
six were right at the first guess and five after one or two wrong
trials. Taking only this little list of card and letter experiments
together, we can say that the probabilities are only one to many
billions that such a result would ever come by chance.
Yet such correctness was not exceptional. On the contrary, I have no
series performed under these conditions which did not yield as
favourable an outcome as this. Some were even much more startling.
Once she gave six cards in succession correctly. It was no different
with word experiments. The printed word at which the sister and I
looked was stall; she spelled E S-T-O A-R I L-L. And when the word
was steam, she spelled L S-N K T-O A E-A-M; when it was glass, S G-L-R
A-S. Whenever a letter was wrong, she was told so and was allowed a
second or a third choice, but never more than three. It is evident
from these three illustrations that she gave the right letter in the
first place six times, and that the right letter was her second choice
four times, and her third choice three times, while no letter was
missed in three choices. Cases of this type again could never occur by
mere chance. The number of successful strokes in this last experiment
might be belittled by the claim that the last letters of the word were
guessed when the first letters had been found. But this was not the
case. First, even such a guess would have been chance. The word might
have been grave instead of grass, or star instead of stall. What is
much more important, however, is that a large number of other cases
proved that she was not aware of the words at all, but spelled the
letters without reference to their forming a word. Once I wrote
Chicago on a pad. The mother and sister gazed at the word, and Beulah
spelled correctly C-H-I-C-A-G, but made eight wrong efforts before she
found the closing O. In other cases, she did not notice that the word
was completed, and was trying to fish up still other letters from her
mind. Everything showed that the word as a word did not come to her
mind, but only the single letters. I leave entirely out of
consideration the marvels of mind-reading which were secured by the
judge and the minister, the male and female newspaper reporters,
before I took charge of the study of the case. I rely only on what I
saw and of which I took exact notes. I wrote down every wrong letter
and every wrong figure, and base my calculation only on this entirely
reliable material. Nevertheless, I must acknowledge it as a fact
beyond doubt that such results as I got regularly could never possibly
have been secured by mere coincidence and chance. As chance and fraud
are thus equally out of the question, we are obliged to seek for
another explanation.
There is one explanation which offers itself most readily: We saw that
in order to succeed, some one around her, preferably the mother and
sister, who stand nearest to her heart, have to know the words or the
cards. Those visual images must be in some one's mind, and she has the
unusual power of being able to read what is in the minds of those
others. Such an explanation even seems to some a very modest claim,
almost a kind of critical and skeptical view. The judge and the
minister, for instance, in accepting this idea of her mind-reading,
felt conservative, as through it they disclaimed any belief in
mysterious clairvoyance and telepathic powers. In the newspaper
stories, where the mysteries grew with the geographical distance from
Rhode Island, Beulah was said to be able to tell names or dates or
facts which no one present knew. It was asserted that she could give
the dates on the coins which any one had in his pocket without the
possessor himself knowing them, or that she could give a word in a
book on which some one was holding his finger without reading it. No
wonder that the public felt sure that she could just as well discover
secrets which no one knows and be aware of far-distant happenings. It
is only one step from this to the belief in a prophetic foresight of
what is to come. For most unthinking people, mind-reading leads in
this fashion over to the whole world of mysticism. In sharp contrast
to such vagaries, the critical observers like the judge and the
minister insisted that there was no trace of such prophetic gifts or
of such telepathic wonders to be found, and that everything resolves
itself simply into mere mind-reading. Some one in the neighbourhood
must have the idea in mind and must fixedly think of it. Only then
will it arise in Beulah's consciousness.