Part 15
10. _Agt._, three concentric triangles; _Per._, two wheels and over them the suggestion of some vehicle-body—only a line and two angles. Failure.
11. _Agt._, a “cat-tail,” its leaves by no means correctly drawn, but there is no doubt of its identity; _Per._, a drawing doubtfully marked “Dog’s head,” its ears, if such they are, also its muzzle, long and pointed, much resembling the upper halves of Mr. Sinclair’s cat-tail leaves. But remember Mrs. Sinclair’s “century plant” of No. 2 with its somewhat similar leaves and its central spike; remember especially the “candlestick” of No. 7, which so much resembles a cat-tail. (See Figs. 69a, 70, 70a.)
12. _Agt._, ten small circles arranged in rows, pyramidal fashion; _Per._ wrote only “Nothing except all the preceding ones come—too many at once—all past ones crowding in memory.” I wish she had stated which past one, if any, crowded most, and which came first. For it happens that her drawing for No. 2, so different from the impressions “a rooster” and “an elephant,” set down at the same time, also consisted of little circles, also in rows, but more in number and enclosed within an elliptical line.
13. _Agt._, a drinking-glass with double elliptic line at the top and small ellipse indicating the bottom; _Per._, double elliptic line above, same below with indefinite lines rising from the latter. The script is more significant: “Think of a saucer, then of a cup. It’s something in the kitchen. Too tired to see.” Pretty close. (See Figs. 72, 72a.)
The occurrence of so many correspondences, direct and oblique, among thirteen consecutive experiments constituting the entire series performed at one time, and these by mere accidental coincidence, is practically unthinkable.
Later Experiments by Professor William McDougall
In the main, this review has dealt only with the period covered by _Mental Radio_, although it has exhibited some experiments not illustrated or even mentioned therein. A few of the special tabulations have also included a part or all of the later tests made by Mr. and Mrs. Sinclair, to the number of more than a hundred, the materials of which are in my hands. When the tabulations have reached so far, the fact has been stated.
But it may be well to say something about tests made by Professor William McDougall during a sojourn in California, July-August, 1930. He examined the proofs of previous work and consented to write an introduction to _Mental Radio_, saying: “A refusal would imply on my part a lack either of courage or of due sense of scientific responsibility. * * * It is the duty of men of science to give whatever encouragement and sympathetic support may be possible to all amateurs who find themselves in a position to observe and carefully and honestly to study such phenomena. Mrs. Sinclair would seem to be one of the rare persons who have telepathic power in a marked degree and perhaps other supernormal powers. The experiments in telepathy, as reported in the pages of this book, were so remarkably successful as to rank among the very best hitherto reported. The degree of success and the conditions of experiment were such that we can reject them as conclusive evidence of some mode of communication not at present explicable in accepted scientific terms only by assuming that Mr. and Mrs. Sinclair either are grossly stupid, incompetent and careless persons, or have deliberately entered upon a conspiracy to deceive the public in a most heartless and reprehensible fashion.” As we have seen, the circle of conspirators would have to be enlarged to admit Mr. and Mrs. Irwin, for they vouched for an extraordinarily successful series of experiments at long distance. And it would have to be enlarged to include Professor McDougall himself, since he sent me the materials of his experiments, whose results, though inferior to many of the series of 1928 and 1929, yet show a ratio and quality of correspondence vastly beyond chance expectation. Remember that the 260 Guessing tests resulted in not one drawing which, being compared with the original, could possibly be regarded as a Success, and this by the independent verdicts of two judges. Of course, this does not mean that another set of 260 guesses would not show one Success or more than one, but it does show the great improbability that a particular drawing made by guess will correspond with the particular original enough so that it is possible to call it a Success. The 260 guess-drawings, according to one of the judges, showed 3 Partial Successes, 1 according to the other. Then say there was no Success and but 3 Partial Successes, and it is still unlikely that a particular drawing made in any short guess series will correspond with the particular original to the extent of being worthy of the title Success or Partial Success. On the basis of those 260 guesses we would be warranted in assuming that there would be about one-third of a likelihood of getting either a Success or a Partial Success in a series of 25. But another series of 260 guesses might be more fortunate, so call it an expectation of getting one. Professor McDougall had 25 experiments with Mrs. Sinclair.
On July 19th, “five cards drawn or chosen and sealed in envelope and thick paper at Santa Monica and presented in turn sealed to Mrs. S. at Long Beach.” Reproductions 1, 3 and 4 were failures. But agent’s No. 2 was a “prairie schooner” showing two wheels with spokes and a long black line crossing the wheels at their hubs and standing for both the bottom of the vehicle-body and the shafts in front, while the percipient drew (1) a wheel with spokes and a long black line running from the hub, and (2) a wheel-like shape without spokes, but the line extending far in one direction and passing through the hub and beyond the wheel a short way in the other direction, as in the original. Here we have a distinct Partial Success. Agent’s No. 5 was a postal-card picture of a part of Oxford, the most conspicuous feature in which is the tower of Magdalen College with pinnacles and high, narrow windows. The percipient made a drawing which anyone would recognize as a tower, with bristling short lines projecting upward from the top suggesting pinnacles, and high, narrow windows. The proportions of height and width are approximately correct. Below the lower window level are two parallel horizontal lines, which call attention to such lines in the original. This was drawn, however, while the percipient was holding agent’s No. 4, his No. 5, the tower, still being in his pocket. It looks like an anticipation. But when she arrived at No. 5 she wrote “Turret of a castle and trees,” and now she is right for the very original in hand, which does display, besides a river, a bridge and buildings, the conspicuous tower, and trees prominent in the picture. She added “Sword,” “Scissors,” and “Key,” which may possibly be erroneous impressions from the pinnacles. So we have here a striking result, worthy to be called a Success. I have again taken pains to go through all the originals and all the reproductions, 413 of each, and find that but once besides did an original represent a tower. It was the Eiffel Tower, and all will remember its tall, slender and tapering shape. The percipient’s drawing represented a long, slender and tapering cone—a Partial Success. And but once besides, among all 413 drawings, did the percipient present a tower. This was on the following August 16th, when, apparently as an experiment, the drawings were “done in a hurry” and no record made of the order. If compared with a particular one of the originals, the “tower top” is a Partial Success, but it probably was a Failure. So here we have the factors: out of 418 agent drawings two represent towers, and one results in a percipient Success, the other in a Partial Success; out of 418 percipient drawings two represent towers, and one is a Success, the other a Failure.
On July 20th Professor McDougall made 5 drawings “at one end of a long room, while Mrs. Sinclair tried to reproduce them at the other end.” The agent made what is supposed to be a stork, each foot furnished with three toes. The percipient made two long legs with three-toed feet, the legs extending from a curved line like the under side of a bird. Above and isolated is what looks like a crest, which the stork does not have. Partial Success. The 4th agent drawing is of a ringed target and a feathered arrow sticking in it, the barb not visible. The percipient drawing is practically the feathered part of the shaft. Partial Success. The 5th agent drawing shows a drum-like object with elliptical top, from the center of which a tube or spout projects vertically, with water rising from the spout, parting and falling to right and to left so that it looks something like a tree. The percipient drew (1) an ellipse, (2) an ellipse, (3) something like a very round teapot, with elliptic top and spout at an angle of 45 degrees, (4) something like the vertical trunk of a tree surmounted by a ball of foliage. Success; there are too many suggestive partial parallels to allow this to be doubted.
July 26th there were 5 experiments, all drawn by Professor McDougall except one, that being a postal-card picture of trees, bushes and the yucca in bloom. Agent’s No. 2 was a wheel with spokes and tire nicely drawn. Percipient made three circles in a row with something like the connecting rod of a locomotive across them. This is at least Suggestive. Directly before the yucca picture, the percipient described plants with flowers, but the description did not fit the original next to come, nor did the impression of flowers persist when the yucca was at hand, so I do not allow this to count at all. There were no other successes in any degree.
Then followed experiments, one a day, with Professor McDougall drawing at Santa Monica, Mrs. Sinclair drawing at the same time at Pasadena, thirty miles distant.
July 30th. A failure.
August 2nd. Original drawing: a coffee-pot, its spout at the right of peculiar shape, somewhat like the profile of a boat’s stern. The percipient’s drawing was principally made up of a vertical line like the edge of the coffee-pot, and turned to the right from its upper extremity a projection curiously like the coffee-pot’s spout. To the left of the vertical line seven dots. It may be a mere coincidence that in the original there are several, but not seven, dark spots in the drawing, placed relatively about as far from the right edge of the coffee-pot as the dots are from the vertical line in the percipient drawing. The drawing is Suggestive, at least.
August 10th. Original drawing a teapot, and percipient’s drawing, a palm frond, was relatively to it, a failure.
August 11th. Agent drew a faucet. Percipient wrote “Teapot,” which is a failure. But agent had drawn a teapot the previous day—did percipient get a deferred telepathic impression?
August 13th. Agent drew a palm tree and percipient’s result was a failure. But, records agent, “Had it in mind to draw the palm in patio several days before. Mrs. S. seemed to get it August 10th.” No agent should have in mind to draw one thing when he actually draws another. If the result is from telepathy, not clairvoyance, a percipient is at least as likely to get that on which the agent’s mind has dwelt. On the whole it would perhaps be fair to count this as a Success.
August 16th. Agent drew a flower-pot and in it a plant with sword-shaped leaves, somewhat like a century plant. Percipient first drew what one might take to be a stalk with five straight, short leafless branches, but with the script “Velvet bow with band.” She added, “Then saw” and drew a plant—no pot—with leaves exactly of the form of the leaves in the original, and added, “I have too many leaves in the above.” Right: she had 11 leaves, the original had 7. This certainly is at least a Partial Success.
August 17th, August 18th and August 19th each yielded a Failure.
Now let us take account of stock. On the basis of our 260 experiments in guessing we would have about one-third of an expectation of finding in the McDougall experiments one Partial Success, but as another series of 260 guesses might be more fortunate we proposed to reckon a full likelihood of getting one Success or Partial Success, on the theory that Mrs. Sinclair was guessing also. But we have found 3 Successes and 4 Partial Successes (not counting a possible “anticipation,” and 2 instances of Suggestive). It is not mathematics, it is not logic, it is not common-sense to conclude that we have not, even in this series of Professor McDougall, although it does not equal some which have been exhibited, something for which chance is wholly unable to account.
It is not at all difficult to account for the fact that Professor McDougall’s results were not quite up to the average of Mrs. Sinclair’s work during the period covered by _Mental Radio_, both quantity and quality taken into consideration. In the first place, it has for many years been evident that something depends upon the degree of _rapport_ between agent and percipient; in other words, that some persons are better suited than others to act as agents in relation to a particular percipient. Thus, we are told in the book (pages 33–34) that among the friends of Mrs. Sinclair there was one peculiarly adapted in this respect—Mrs. Kate Crane-Gartz. I venture to relate my own very limited experience, as fact, not scientifically guaranteed. I have had reason to suppose that I was getting telepathic messages only with two persons. One was with my wife the first time I ever experimented with her, and then I got most of the objects she was thinking of, more or less satisfactorily, in about eight trials. But I never again had _any_ measurable success with her, though I tried repeatedly. The other person I was for a time in sympathetic relations with, and there occurred a number of incidents which convinced me that I was acting as a spontaneous percipient. The most striking category of these is the same which Mr. Sinclair describes when he says: “My wife will say to me, ‘Mrs. Gartz is going to phone,’ and in a minute or two the phone will ring.” Repeatedly, when I had no particular reason to think that the lady to whom I refer would ‘phone me, and when I was occupied with work, I would suddenly, as by a jerk, look at the ‘phone, expecting it to ring, and in a few moments it would do so. I have even gone to the ‘phone, almost without thinking, and stood there for half a minute or so before it did so. This period lasted for perhaps three or four months only, then faded out. Never at any other time, nor with any other person, not even with my daughter between whom and me there is the most cordial sympathy, has there been evidence of this kind sufficiently striking and repetitious to arrest serious attention. So it may well be that Professor McDougall, however amiable and fairminded he is, not having been long known to the percipient and being invested with the awe of a psychologist of extended reputation, was not so well adapted to be an agent in relation to her as her husband or her brother-in-law.
But again, while at times Mrs. Sinclair to the last of her experimentation analyzed by me got excellent results, I find that, whether because she was wearied, or too much occupied by other things, or more anxious and less spontaneous, or for whatever reason, did not in the later months do so well on the average as during the earlier months. The poorest stretch of the period after the material covered by the book was that from August 1 to August 28, 1929, inclusive. There were 27 experiments, of which, according to my reckoning, 2 were Successes, 1 a Partial Success, 3 Suggestive, 2 Slightly Suggestive and 19 Failures in a series of 27 experiments. The poorest stretch of experiments during the book period was that ending with the series of February 17, 1929, nevertheless shown on account of its significance. Here there were 4 Successes, 8 Partial Successes, 4 Suggestive, 1 Slightly Suggestive and 10 Failures out of the same total number of 27. So, after all, while the McDougall results did not reach the highest level of the later period, they did not by any means mark the lowest level. They greatly transcend the expectation of chance, and, with the exception of five experiments only, were achieved when agent and percipient were either thirty miles apart or at the two ends of a long room.
Attempts to Explain Otherwise Than by Telepathy
Would Chance Coincidence Explain?
It has already been proved by experiments in guessing that even the comparatively poor Dessoir results were far beyond the reach of chance. And it has been shown by experiments in guessing that the Sinclair results were much farther beyond the reach of chance. Such counter-tests may be repeated by any reader _ad libitum_.
Would the Kindred Ideas of Relatives Explain?
It makes one feel foolish to add anything more about the curious “thob” to the effect that what is taken for telepathy between husbands and wives is really coincidence brought about by their community of thought and tendency to think about the same things. It should be evident that even if a husband and wife knew only one hundred objects in common, that astonishing fact of limitation would not imply that the lady would be likely to think of a particular one of these, say No. 92, at the particular time that her spouse chose it. For once it may be well to show just how narrow and connubial a range of drawings a husband may submit to his wife. (See Appendix II.)
Would Conscious or Subconscious Fraud on the Part of the Percipient Explain?
We must squarely face every possible theory, and this is one. Mr. Sinclair himself dealt with it. We must do so more thoroughly, in spite of Mrs. Sinclair’s testimony to remarkable telepathic experiences in her earlier years (_Mental Radio_, p. 16), in spite of her husband’s testimony about her actually setting down in writing what “Jan” was doing at a distance before she got from him the substantially corresponding facts (pp. 21–24), and getting in dreams or by “concentration” facts concerning himself at a distance (pp. 31–33), in spite of Mrs. Sinclair’s reputation for practicality and non-credulity (pp. 17, 139), honor and conscientiousness (p. 53), her impressing her husband as being “a fanatic for accuracy” (pp. 138–139), the grave reasons which caused her to institute these experiments (p. 18; Appendix I), her intense desire to be sure, and to satisfy every misgiving of her own (pp. 136–137), her urgency that her husband should watch her work (p. 53), her variations in the methods of experimentation to see what effect they would have (pp. 80, 136–137, 144), her reluctance that her husband should publish his book until still more experiments were had (p. 137), and the great pains she takes to describe her method of development and “preparation” in order to encourage others to experiment (pp. 116, 128). All these considerations are cumulatively almost overwhelming, yet we proceed in disregard of them.
But the 7 experiments with “Bob” were at long distance, and the conditions guaranteed by “Bob” and his wife.
The 7 experiments of July 24–29, 1928, were conducted with the agent in one room and the percipient in another, thirty feet away, with a closed door between. That is to say, Mr. Sinclair, in one room, would call out “All right” when ready to draw, his wife, lying in another room, would call “All right” when she had completed her drawing, and then the two drawings were compared. He declares that there was no possible way by which Mrs. Sinclair could have seen his drawing. So that any charge of fraud would have to include him.
The 9 experiments of February 17, 1929, were thus conducted. The original drawings were made by the agent, Mr. Sinclair, while alone in his study, on green paper, enclosed in a sheet of green paper, the whole folded, making four thicknesses absolutely impervious to sight (as established in the office of the B.S.P.R.), put in an envelope, the envelope sealed, and the 9 envelopes put on a table by the percipient’s couch. She took each in turn and placed it over her solar plexus, kept it there until her decision was made, then sat up and made her drawing. All the while her husband sat near, but absolutely speechless until her drawing was done, when the wrappings were taken from the original drawing and it was immediately compared with the reproduction. If the experiments were at night, the reading light immediately over the percipient’s head was extinguished, since she found that somewhat subdued illumination favored passivity, but there remained sufficient light in the room for comparison of the drawings, and every movement of the woman was distinctly visible. If in the daytime, the window shades back of the couch were lowered, but again every object was distinctly visible. Under precisely these conditions, step by step, no professional magician could have obtained knowledge of the original drawing before making his own.[25]
As we have seen, 9 of Professor McDougall’s experiments, later than the period of the book and reaching results defying the doctrine of chance, were made with thirty miles between the parties, and 10 of them with the parties at opposite ends of a long room. Five more were done with McDougall at least watching his sealed envelopes. It will probably not be suggested that he was in a conspiracy to deceive the public, but in these cases fraud could hardly have been practiced by the percipient alone.
Already we have 47 experiments, 16 with an intervening distance of above thirty miles, 7 with agent and percipient in different rooms, and 10 with agent and percipient at the two ends of a room; 14 with agent near the percipient but closely watching her and his sealed opaque envelopes.
But since Mr. Sinclair says that “several score drawings” were drawn in his study, sealed in envelopes made impervious to sight, and watched by him as one by one his wife laid them on her body and set down her impressions, the total number of experiments, guarded to this or a greater extent, aside from the later ones by McDougall, could hardly have fallen short of 120.
Later, since Mr. Sinclair was very busy writing his novel “Boston” and disliked the interruptions, he ceased (about midway of the whole lot, he tells us) to enclose his drawings in envelopes and to watch his wife’s work. Had this been the case throughout, any report based on such “experiments” would not, scientifically speaking, be worth the paper it was written on. As it is, I should be quite willing to rest the whole case on the 120 or more guarded experiments covered by the last two paragraphs. More than that, I would be willing to rest it upon the 33 experiments conducted with the participants separated by the length of a room, thirty feet and a closed door, or thirty miles.
But the logic of the situation is entirely against the assumption that fraud was used any more after it became easily possible than before, when it would have been possible only by the connivance of various conspirators. Let us see.