Part 10

Comrade Bell brought many arguments against my thesis, and this was a service, because it enables me to answer my critics in advance. First, what is the value of my memory? Can I be sure that it does not “accommodate itself too easily to the statement Sinclair wishes to believe?” My answer is that few of the important cases in the book rest upon my memory; they rest upon records written down at once. They rest upon drawings which were made according to a plan devised in advance, and then duly filed in envelopes numbered and dated. Also, my memory has been checked by my wife’s, who is a fanatic for accuracy, and has caused me torment, through a good part of our married life, by insisting upon going over my manuscripts and censoring every phrase. Also Bob and Dollie and my secretary have read this narrative, and checked the statements dealing with them.

Next objection, that I am “a man without scientific training.” The acceptance of that statement depends upon the definition of the word “scientific.” If it includes the social sciences, then I have had twenty-five years of very rigid training. I have made investigations and published statements, literally by thousands, which were criminal libels unless they were true and exact; yet I have never had any kind of libel suit brought against me in my life. As to the scientific value of the particular experiments described in this book, the reader can do his own judging, for they have been described in detail. I don’t see how scientific training could have increased our precautions. We have outlined our method to scientists, and none has suggested any change.

Next, the fact that in the past I have shown myself “naïve and credulous at times.” No doubt I have; but I have learned by such experiences, and I am not so naïve and credulous as when I was younger. Neither do I see how these qualities can play much part in the present matter. I surely know the conditions under which I made my drawings, and whether I had them under my eyes while my wife was making her drawings in another room; I know about the ones I sealed in envelopes, and which were never out of my sight. As for my wife, she certainly has nothing of the qualities of naïveté and credulity. She was raised in a family of lawyers, and was given the training and skeptical point of view of a woman of the world. “Trust people, but watch them,” was old Judge Kimbrough’s maxim; and following it too closely has almost made a pessimist of his daughter.

Next, that Craig is “in poor health.” That is true, but I do not see how it matters here. She has often been in pain, but it has never affected her judgment. She chose her own times for experimenting, when she felt in the mood, and her mind was always clear and keen for the job.

Next, “a husband and wife are a bad pair to make telepathic experiments. Living so much together, their common life does tend to make them think of the same thing at the same time.” This is true; but how does it account for the half-dozen successes with a brother-in-law, twenty or thirty with a secretary, and many with Jan? How does it account for the covers and jackets of books in which I had no interest, but which had come to me by chance, and which Craig had never even glanced at, so far as she remembers?

It is true that in the early days most of our drawings were of obvious things which lay about the house, scissors, table-forks, watches, chairs, telephones; so there was a better chance of guess work. How much chance, was determined by my son and his wife, who, hearing that Craig and I were trying telepathy experiments, decided to try a few also—without knowing anything about the technique. They also drew scissors, table-forks, watches, chairs, telephones, and such common objects. The only trouble was that when David tried to reproduce Betty’s drawings, he drew the chair where she had drawn the scissors, and drew the watch where she had drawn the table-fork, and so on. They did not get a single success.

I think that if you will go back and look over those drawings as a whole, you must admit that the objects were as varied as the imagination could make them. I do not see how any one could choose a set of objects less likely to be guessed than the series which I have numbered from 5 to 12—a bird’s nest full of eggs and surrounded by leaves, a spiked helmet, a desert palm-tree, a star with eight double points, a coconut palm, a puppy chasing a string, a flying bat, a Chinese mandarin, and a boy’s foot with a roller-skate on it. None of these objects has any relationship whatever to my life, or to Craig’s, or to our common life. To say that a wife can guess such a series, because she knows her husband’s mind so well, seems to me out of all reason.

Next, the point that some of the cases are not convincing by themselves. I am familiar with this method of argument, having encountered it with others of my books. Let me beg you to note that the cases are _not_ taken by themselves, but are taken as a whole. I can think, for example, of several ways by which Craig might have known that I had put my little paper of written notes into the pocket of my gray coat, or that I had left some medical apparatus under the bathtub at the office. She might have seen these things, and then have forgotten it, and her subconscious mind might have brought back to her the location of the objects, but failed to remind her of the previous seeing. If such cases had stood alone, I would not have thought it worth while to write this book.

The same thing applies to Craig’s production of German words. Having spent several weeks with me in Germany, and having known many Germans, she no doubt has German words in her subconscious mind. This also applies to certain dream cases. Any one who wants to can go through the book and pick out a score of cases which can be questioned on various grounds. Perhaps it would be wiser for me to cut out all except the strongest cases. But I rely upon your common sense, to realize that the strongest cases have caused me to write the book; and that the weaker ones are given for whatever additional light they may throw upon the problem.

If you want to deal fairly with the book, here is what you have to explain. How did it happen that at a certain agreed hour when Bob at Pasadena drew a table-fork and dated and signed the drawing, Craig in Long Beach wrote: “See a table-fork, nothing else,” and dated and signed her words? If you call this a coincidence, how are you going to account for the chair, and the watch, and the circle with the hole in the middle, and the sense of pain and fear, and the spreading black stain called blood, all reproduced under the same perfect conditions? I say that if you call all this coincidence, you are violating the laws of probability as we know them. I say that there are only two possible explanations,—either telepathy, or that my wife and her brother-in-law were hoaxing me.

But if you want to assume a hoax, you have to face the fact that my wife a few days later was reproducing a series of drawings which I made and kept in front of my eyes in a separate room from her, in such a position that she could not see them if she wanted to. If I thought it worth while, I could draw you a diagram of the place where she sat and the place where I sat, and convince you that neither mirrors, nor a hole in the wall, nor any other device would have enabled my wife to see my drawings, until I took them to her and compared them with her drawings. The only way you can account for that series of successes is to say that I am in on the hoax.

My good friend and comrade, Tom Bell, does not suggest that I am in it; but others may say it, so I will answer. Let me assure you, there is no reason in the world why I should take the field on behalf of the doctrine of telepathy—except my conviction that it has been proved. I don’t belong to any church which teaches telepathy. I don’t hold any doctrine which is helped by it. I don’t make any money by advocating or practicing it. There is no more reason why I should be concerned to vindicate telepathy, than there is for my coming out in support of the Catholic doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, or the Mormon doctrine of Urim and Thummim, or the Koreshan doctrine that the earth is a hollow sphere and we live on the inside of it.

I assure you I am as cold-blooded about the thing as a man can be. In fact, I don’t like to believe in telepathy, because I don’t know what to make of it, and I don’t know to what view of the universe it will lead me, and I would a whole lot rather give all my time to my muckraking job which I know by heart. I don’t expect to sell especially large quantities of this book; I am sure that by giving the same amount of time and energy to other books I have in mind, I could earn several times as much money. In short, there isn’t a thing in the world that leads me to this act, except the conviction which has been forced upon me that telepathy is real, and that loyalty to the nature of the universe makes it necessary for me to say so.

My friend and publisher Charles Boni thinks that I should write this book without protestations; taking a dignified position, sure that my readers will trust me. But as it happens, I have read, not merely the literature of psychic research, but also the literature in opposition to it, and I know the arguments advanced by persons who are unwilling to change their “fundamental notions.” It seems common sense to answer here the objections which are certain to be made.

I submitted this manuscript to the two leading psychologists of America, Morton Prince and William McDougall. Dr. Prince was taken by death before he found time to read it, but Professor McDougall read it, and has stated his reactions in the preface. In writing to me, he expressed the hope that my wife would be able to make some of these telepathy tests under the observation of well-known scientists. In replying, I assured him that my wife and I shared this hope; but whether it can ever be realized is a problem for the future. All Craig’s work so far has depended upon a state of complete peace and relaxation. As she has pointed out, it is a matter of “undivided concentration,” and even such disturbing things as light and noise are an interference. One friend who has tried to experiment lately at our instigation gave it up because of automobile horns in the street outside. She declared that these had never disturbed her before, but that the effort not to hear them when concentrating only caused her to concentrate on the horns, and so threatened to give her a case of “nerves.”

Whether Craig would be able to get the necessary state of mind in the presence of strangers, skeptical or possibly hostile, is a problem yet to be solved. Unless we are going to beg the question, we have to assume that telepathy may be a reality; and if it be a reality, then certainly what is in the other person’s mind makes a difference, and certainly it is a serious matter to ask a woman in delicate health to open her mind to the moods of strangers. Some day in the future Craig is going to make the test, but whether it succeeds or fails will not alter, so far as I am concerned, what has already happened in my presence.

Another of my friends who read the manuscript was Floyd Dell, and he thinks that readers of my books will wish to know to what extent, if any, my interest in the subject of telepathy is going to change my attitude to the struggle for social justice. To that I reply that I have been interested in psychic research for the past thirty-five years, ever since, as a youth, I met Minot J. Savage; but this has not kept me from believing ardently in the abolition of parasitism, exploitation, and war. While the telepathy experiments were going on I wrote “Boston,” a novel of some 325,000 words, in less than a year. While I am consulting with my friends about this manuscript, I am writing a novel, “Mountain City,” which I hope my Socialist friends will find of interest. The only discovery that can weaken my interest in the economic problem will be one which enables human beings to live without food, clothing, and shelter. But in the meantime, I see no reason why Socialists are required to be ignorant of psychology.

James Fuchs, another patient critic of my writings, thinks I appear naïve in this book, and should reveal some knowledge of the vast literature on the subject. My reason for not doing so is that very vastness; one would need several volumes to handle it. In the Proceedings of the American and British Societies for Psychical Research lies buried endless evidence on the subject; but scientific authority remains for the most part uninterested in that evidence, and would not be interested in my rehash of it. I have written this book to tell my readers and friends what I myself have seen with my own eyes. That is my job, and I leave the rest to others who are better qualified.

Fuchs reminds me that “umbilical sensory perception” is a well-known psychic phenomenon, and that Craig, in holding the drawings over her solar plexus, is repeating the method of Justinus Kerner (1786–1862), about whom you will find an article in the “Encyclopedia Britannica.” Craig knew about that from various sources, and some of her experiments were designed to test the explanation. I made eight drawings and laid them face down on the table by her couch, perhaps three feet from her head. I put them there while she was out of the room, and I sat and watched, to be sure she did not ever touch them. She lay on the couch and made some notes and drawings which reproduced the essential features of half a dozen of my drawings—all at once! So, if Craig has an umbilical eye, she must also have one in the side of her head which can see through several thicknesses of paper.

My daughter-in-law at that time also made suggestions which I accepted. She spoke for the new generation of radicals, saying: “The book aroused a storm of metaphysical speculation in my mind, and I could wax eloquent with slight provocation.” This is different from refusing to “abandon the fundamental notions on which my whole life has been based.”

_26_

One interesting point I observe: in any company where the subject of this manuscript is brought up, invariably some person declares that he or she has had such experiences. One lady, highly educated, assured me that she and her husband had developed telepathy to a point where it served them on a lonely ranch in the place of telegraph and telephone. Only a few days ago I met at luncheon Bruno Walter, orchestra leader, who had come from Germany to conduct concerts in the Hollywood Bowl. Mr. Walter narrated to me the incident which follows:

While conducting in some middle western city, he was a guest at a luncheon, and found himself becoming very ill. He explained matters to his host, who called a taxicab, but this cab did not arrive, and Mr. Walter, in great distress, took his hat and left the house, saying that he would look for a cab. Turning the corner of the street, he came upon his manager, driving a car, and hailed him. “A most fortunate accident!” exclaimed the sick man, but the manager assured him that it was no accident; about half an hour previously, the manager had been seized by an intense feeling that Mr. Walter was in trouble, and had been moved to get into his car and drive. He did not know where Mr. Walter had gone, but simply followed his impulse to drive in a certain direction.

Another incident, told me by Fremont Older, editor of the San Francisco _Call_, and a veteran fighter in the cause of social justice. Older had seen many demonstrations of telepathy, and was completely convinced of its reality. A friend of his, living on a ranch, employed a cook named Sam who had the gift, and agreed to give a demonstration for the Olders. Sam asked Older to get a book and wrap it in thick paper, and Sam would tell the name of the book and the author. Older went out to his car, but could find no book, only a folder of maps, which he wrapped in several thicknesses of paper. Sam put the package to his head, and after a minute or two said, “This is not a book, it is a map or something. Why don’t you get me a regular book?” So Older went to his car again and found a book belonging to his wife, and wrapped it with care and tied it. Sam put it to his head, and began to spell letters, and finally stated as follows: “Julia France and her Times, by Gertrude Atherton, published by the Macmillan Company.” This was correct. Sam added: “I get another name. What has Ernest Hopkins got to do with this book?” Older and his wife were dumbfounded; for the name was that of a member of the newspaper staff who had been asked to review the book, but Mrs. Older had taken the copy from him because at the last moment she wanted something to read on her trip.

As this book is going to the printer, my attention is called to the fact that Dr. Carl Bruck of Berlin has published a book entitled “Experimentelle Telepathie,” in which he reports a series of tests closely resembling those here described. The main difference is that he used hypnotized subjects, four different young men, as the recipients of his telepathic messages. He made drawings at home, and locked them in a large portfolio, which he placed in an adjoining room from the subject, two or three yards distant through a wall. He himself sat in front of the hypnotized subject, and concentrated upon “sending” one of the drawings. Under these conditions, in a total of 111 experiments, one-third were successful. The Berlin correspondent of the “Scientific American” reported these tests in the issue of May, 1924, where those interested may read the details, and inspect twelve of the drawings. The tests were conducted in the presence of various physicians and scientists; and I am interested in a recent comment on the matter by a German physician living in Mexico City: “Bruck’s work has gone almost wholly unnoticed.”

I say to scientific men, that such work deserves to be noticed. There is new knowledge here, close to the threshold, waiting for us; and we should not let ourselves be repelled by the seeming triviality of the phenomena, for it is well known that some of the greatest discoveries have come from the following up of just such trivial clews.

What did Benjamin Franklin have to go on when he brought the lightning down from the clouds on the string of a kite? Just a few hints, picked up in the course of the previous hundred years; a few traces of electricity noted by accident. The fact that you got a spark if you stroked a cat’s fur; the fact that you got the same kind of a spark by rubbing amber, and a bigger one by storing the energy in a glass jar lined with tinfoil—that was all men had as promise of the miracles of our time, dynamos and superpower, telegraph and telephone, x-ray surgery, radio, wireless, television, and new miracles just outside our door. If now it be a fact that there is a reality behind the notions of telepathy and clairvoyance, to which so many investigators are bearing testimony all over the world, who can set limits to what it may mean to the future? What new powers of the human mind, what ability to explore the past and future, the farthest deeps of space, and those deeps of our own minds, no less vast and marvelous?

To set limits to such possibilities is not to be scientific, it is merely to be foolish. The true scientist sets no limits to human powers, he merely asks that we verify our facts. This my wife and I have tried to do, and I think that, so far as concerns telepathy at least, we can claim success. We present here a mass of real evidence, and we shall not be troubled by any amount of ridicule from the ignorant. I tell you—and because it is so important, I put it in capital letters: TELEPATHY HAPPENS!

ADDENDUM

The following was originally published as Part I of Bulletin XVI of the Boston Society for Psychic Research in April, 1932. The figure numbers listed herein refer to the illustrations in _Mental Radio_, with the exception of Figures 147, 148, and 149 which appeared in the Bulletin only.

The author of the report was Dr. Walter Franklin Prince, Research Officer of the society. He was a doctor of divinity of the Methodist Episcopal Church and had been pastor of several churches. Later he retired and took up the work of the society. He died two years after this report appeared.

THE SINCLAIR EXPERIMENTS FOR TELEPATHY

About eighteen months ago I first opened a new book by the novelist Upton Sinclair, entitled _Mental Radio_, then newly issued. In 239 pages it outlined the story of the discovery and development of what purported to be a supernormal faculty possessed by his wife, and rehearsed a large number of experiments in which she seemed to have achieved a large and convincing percentage of successes as a telepathic “percipient,” the “agent” generally being Mr. Sinclair, but sometimes her brother-in-law or another person. I confess to misgivings as I began to read, first for the very reason that the writer is a novelist (unmindful of Wells and certain other writers of fiction who, nevertheless, have shown themselves capable of serious and even scientific thinking),[1] and secondly because I had suspected, rightly or wrongly, that once or twice in the past he had failed to discover the devices of certain clever professionals. To be sure, his wife was not a professional, and all the conditions could be under his own hand, but sometimes through sheer confidence people are deceived by their own relatives.

This, to be frank, was my initial attitude—one of cautious interrogation and alertness to find signs of credulity, failure to appreciate the possibilities of chance, or lack of data by which the calculus of chance coincidence could be determined. But as I read on and studied the reproductions of drawings it became more and more evident that something besides chance had operated, that the conditions of many of the experiments had been excellently devised, and that where the conditions were relaxed Mr. Sinclair had been quite aware of the fact and was candid enough to admit it. He stated that such relaxation did not increase the percentage of success, and it certainly so appeared from the examples given. He reported the total number of experiments, and estimated the percentages of successes, partial successes, and failures. In 290 experiments, he made these percentages: successes, approximately 23 per cent; partial successes, 53 per cent; failures, 24 per cent. He admitted that judges probably would not agree upon exactly the same ratios. In fact I personally think that certain examples which he did not publish are better than a few which he did, but have not yet found reason to quarrel with his general estimates.

After considerable study of the book, becoming interested beyond any expectation, I wrote to Mr. Sinclair, stating that I had become favorably impressed, and making the somewhat audacious proposal that he should send me all the original materials for a fresh study by the individual standards and through the particular methods of a professional investigator. One can think of several reasons which might make the most honest and confident man hesitant to assent to such a proposal, coming from one whom he had never seen, and who might for all he knew have a set of prejudices which after all would cause him to make a lawyer’s argument against the case. I was really surprised that the bundle of materials was sent as quickly as it could be gotten together.[2]