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being mystified, they would finally have gotten to the stage where they believed it useless to continue further in the hope of dispelling the mystery. They might then have decided to conclude that the phenomena were genuine and to award the prize. Nevertheless, prize or no prize, it would still remain possible for someone cleverer than they, or more lucky than they, to solve the mystery in some perfectly normal

manner.

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On the other hand, if the committee had actually discovered some normal explanation of the originally strange events, that Margery rang the bellbox with her foot, or that Walter's voice was Margery's whisper in a trance, then they might have given a negative report. Still they would not be sure of their generalization. Perhaps Margery made the particular whispers that they observed, but perhaps Walter also whispers at other times. Their whole finding would be upset if it could later be shown that any whispering at all occurred without Margery's participation.

As a matter of fact, this particular committee made neither finding. The majority reported that the supernormality of the phenomena was not established, and thus they remained on scientific ground. If, however, they had made a definite statement one way or the other, it is plain that their finding could not have been final and irrevocable for the reason that scientific research is never final or irrevocable. One hears so much talk about science 'settling problems,' whereas it never settles them: it merely advances them.

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nature of certain phenomena. When are phenomena supernormal?

Suppose we are asked to a séance and there we observe many objects, remote from the medium and everyone else, moving about on the table or going up in the air. There is no doubt about the observation. The question arises: Is the movement supernormal?

Here the investigator is faced with a necessity for establishing relationships. To find the cause of a phenomenon is to find what else has to occur in order that the phenomenon may occur. If, in his final analysis, he finds that the movement will not occur unless the medium's hand or foot is free to touch the object and that the movement will not occur beyond the range of the hand or foot, he has established an hypothesis which bids fair to be accepted as genuine. Such an explanation, however, would be regarded as a demonstration of normality.

What other sort of relationship could he possibly find? Let us suppose that the investigator, as the result of prolonged experimentation, becomes convinced that the movement is not caused directly by any movable part of the medium's body or of the bodies of any other persons in the room; and, by choosing suddenly unexpected rooms known only to himself, that it is not caused by elaborate concealed apparatus. The unscientific person would begin then to think that the movement must be supernormal. He might be convinced until he discovered that the medium was in possession of what appeared to be a fountain pen, but was really a strong extensible rod by which objects at a distance could be manipulated. Then he would conclude that the movement might be normal after all.

Suppose, however, that at last he exhausts his ingenuity in thinking of things and conditions to exclude, and still the movements occur. What has

he proved? Not supernormality, but simply that there is movement and he does not know how it occurs. The belief in the supernormal turns out to be nothing more than a belief in his own ignorance.

To most readers this statement may seem very strange. Science, they will say, has done wonderful things; why should it not some day establish the reality of the supernormal? The answer is that to establish the reality of the supernormal would be to bring it within the normal. Science has no way of working except by relating the unknown to the known. When phenomena are built into the system of knowledge they cease to be supernormal.

The logicians would state this conclusion in another way. They tell us that you cannot prove a universal negative. Proof is essentially positive in its nature. To prove the supernormal you must define it, but you can only define it by saying that it is something that is not normal. Now you cannot prove that a phenomenon is not normal. You may be able to prove that it is normal, or you may persistently fail to prove it normal. If you fail to prove it normal you have not proved it supernormal; you have simply failed to prove it anything at all. It is surprising how easy it is to confuse the knowledge that one is ignorant with a knowledge about the thing of which one is ignorant.

All this argument does not, of course, go to show that there is nothing supernormal. It asserts merely that science cannot cope with the problem of the supernormal, which must presumably remain a matter of faith without proof.

III

Generalization. A fundamental characteristic of science that plays an important rôle in the misunderstanding

of psychic research is generalization. Theoretical science is interested always in the general, never in the particular. Yet it has always to study the particular. Galileo was not concerned to see whether his two particular weights, dropped from the tower of Pisa, would reach the ground at the same time, but whether bodies in general fell at speeds that were independent of their weights. Thus the scientist takes his particular materials as representative of the general class, and ordinarily he avoids difficulty by picking his representatives by naïve common-sense. He secures his generalizations further by repeating his observations with different materials, all of which he assumes belong to the same class, thus effecting a criticism of his common-sense selection. We become convinced of the law of falling bodies only after it has been tested out for a large number of objects and a larger number of weights.

In psychic research, however, repetition cannot always be had. Even astronomy is not so difficult as psychic research in this matter. In astronomy control of the actual phenomena is impossible, but they do recur, or else we learn little of them. There is no guarantee, however, that a 'spirit' will consent to repeat a given phenomenon just when it is wanted. Unless the 'control' will coöperate, it may be quite impossible to come to any conclusions at all.

Sometimes, nevertheless, the control does coöperate. In the Margery case, Walter was willing to repeat phenomena again and again. Is this all that science could ask for? No, for one needs assurance that apparent phenomena are really the same. In Mr. Hoagland's account of Margery in the November Atlantic the group remained for a long time puzzled. They thought that the hands and feet of the medium were controlled. Then it appeared that

she could slip off an ankle-band, freeing a foot. With this discovery it became immediately possible to arrange to control the foot; and the group, to put their hypothesis to the test, predicted that the phenomena would either cease or change. They did change somewhat in nature. Yet, even if they had not changed, they would not have been in a scientific sense the same phenomena. If Margery had done with her hand what she did with her foot, something else would have been going on.

The professional magician makes use of this principle generally. When he repeats a trick he does it in a different way. The naïve observer thinks he is observing the same phenomenon, eliminates some possibilities the first time and others later, and so remains mystified.

In studying accounts of supposed psychic phenomena, one has therefore to be extremely cautious. It is very easy to talk about teleplasm, for example, as if it existed, because there are telekinetic movements, and because one possible normal explanation has been excluded in one experiment, and others in others. The reader, however, knows nothing worth knowing until all the possibilities have been excluded in the same experiment, and even then, as we have seen, he knows only that teleplasm is something that acts in a particular manner by laws that he cannot explain. To me it seems that such a conclusion is worth mentioning only in so far as it sets the problem for further research.

IV

Sincerity. The fourth matter which I wish to take up is psychological and not methodological. It concerns the sincerity of the medium. Sincerity of the medium is often invoked as part of the demonstration of the genuineness of the phenomena. If the medium is a

fraud she is insincere. Conversely, it is argued, if she is sincere the phenomena must be genuine. The converse of a proven proposition, however, does not necessarily hold. Presumably sincerity, as we ordinarily know it, is not a proof that there is no trickery. To understand this matter we have to understand the human mind.

Human beings, while they seek in modern society to be rational and consistent, fall far short of success. Most of us want, for example, to be both honest and polite, and we find sometimes that we cannot be both simultaneously. We tell the truth with a little shame or we resort to a 'white lie.' In this case both motives are worthy motives and the conflict is not very great. Whichever we do, we are justified to ourselves.

The case is more serious when an unworthy motive clashes with a worthy one. I knew a girl who had such a passion for cold lamb chops that once, on a picnic, she went off alone so as to have all her chops for herself and then came back with some excuse. When I reminded her of it a year later she denied ever having done so, and I think she had really forgotten it. This mental device by which we avoid thinking about the less pleasant sides of ourselves is the well-known psychological mechanism of 'repression.'

In the extreme case one gets a dissociated personality. The most famous instance is Dr. Morton Prince's Miss Beauchamp and her alternating personality called Sally. Miss Beauchamp was refined and sensitive, but Sally was a young devil, always making trouble for Miss Beauchamp, destroying her things or creating impossible situations for Miss Beauchamp to face when she later replaced Sally. What a medium Miss Beauchamp might have been, preparing all the necessary devices as Sally, facing the public in all sincerity

as Miss Beauchamp, and reverting to Sally under the influence of the séance!

Nor does dissociation necessarily mean an alternation of personalities. There may be, as Dr. Prince styles them, co-conscious personalities. The one may control the voice while the other controls the hand, or at least the two may go on in rapid alternation. When we read in the papers of a devout man, respected in his community, carrying out over a considerable period some line of misconduct, we style him a hypocrite and dismiss the matter from mind. Most people, however, are not consciously hypocritical. The chances are that the man seemed to himself to be quite sincere when he was standing for morality and that the other life interpenetrated his moral life without his ever being able to bring himself to face the inconsistency.

Sincerity, then, may be a human ideal, but it will not be perfectly realized so long as the human mind remains the natural seat of conflicting impulses. I have recently had an example of such a conflict in my own experience.

Mr. Code, one of the Margery investigators, arranged a séance in which he was to produce all the Margery phenomena by trickery. I was present and held the important position of controlling his left hand. I wanted the control to be as rigid as possible in order that the demonstration should be convincing, but I also wanted Code to succeed. In general, Code was quite as mysterious as Margery to me, but once, in red light, he attempted too much and I saw how the trick was done. I should then have reported fraud into the dictaphone, according to the general understanding, but it never occurred

to me to do so. It was only after I had gone home and thought it over that I realized that the desire to have Code succeed had won out over the desire to control him rigidly. If I were not a psychologist accustomed to analyze my motives, I do not believe that I should even have remembered this incident.

The incident goes to show, however, that persons who have the 'will to believe' in the supernormal do not make good investigators of psychic phenomena. It shows also that in an investigation persons sympathetic to the phenomena or to the medium should not be placed in the important positions near her. A sympathetic sitter is not only uncritical. He may actually help the medium or allow her to help herself, and he may, after the sitting, be able to answer with all sincerity to the best of his knowledge and belief' - that he did not aid. The trouble is that the best of one's knowledge and belief is very apt not to be the truth when strongly conflicting motives arise.

I hope it is now plain that psychic research, in so far as it seeks to demonstrate the genuineness of supernormal phenomena, is a paradox. Research does not demonstrate genuineness; it yields at best a temporary practical belief. Research cannot prove the supernormal, for the supernormal is nothing more than something we know nothing at all about; it does not take research to tell us that we are ignorant of some things. And finally, with the human mind made the way it is, even sincerity is not a safeguard of the results of psychic research, for it takes more than sincerity to accomplish what is logically impossible.

THE COMING OF CHINA NEW YEAR'

BY NORA WALN

'PLEASE buy my laziness, please buy my
laziness,

Please buy my laziness for a year.'

The high sweet treble of the child's song drifted through the open windows of my sitting-room. I heard the soft fall of paper-wrapped coins on the paving-stones of my kitchen courtyard, a shrill joyous exclamation, the chuckle of deeper voices, and a continuation of the New Year's Eve chant:

'Maai laan, maai laan,

Maai to nin saam shap maan.'

(I've sold my laziness, I've sold my laziness, I've sold my laziness for a year.)

For half an hour I caught snatches of the melody - now distinct, now far away and knew that Chou Chunghung, the three-year-old son of my cook, was collecting his holiday tribute from all of those members of my household whom he numbers as his friends. In time the shuffle of cloth-slippered baby feet came down my passage, there was a suppressed nervous giggle, a knock, and the door came slowly open, disclosing a solemn little face. Instantly he doubled his fat 'tummy' into a bow so that his forehead tapped the polished floor and the stiff upstanding topknot on his otherwise cleanshaven head waggled impressively.

Before I had time to appreciate the full glory of his gayly embroidered crownless cap, from which a tiny bell dangled over each ear, he was standing erect beside my chair and my eyes were dazzled by the radiance of his red-satin coat and trousers. The coat fastened

stiffly up to his round pink chin and down the left side with buttons of self material. The trousers were bound at the ankles, 'exactly like a grown-up man's,' with bands of lavender silk, and disappeared into tiger shoes of yellow cloth marked with black stripes. Each toe had a dragon's face embroidered on it; there were turn-back ears of fur, and bristling whiskers of waxed thread.

His bright eyes sparkled with excitement and a dimple danced in one cheek of his otherwise perfectly controlled soap-polished face as he trilled his rhyme.

I had just dropped three coins, properly wrapped in red paper, into his chubby hand when my small daughter turned her attention from the treatment of her sick doll and contemplated Chou Chung-hung. Then she took up the song for herself.

'I'm sorry, but I have n't any more, Little Pigeon,' I said regretfully.

Chou Chung-hung lifted my sewingbasket to make sure that there were no more lurking under it, considered the situation deliberately, opened the pussy purse which hung from his inner belt, counted fourteen coins in the murmuring fashion of children, and passed exactly half of his hoard over to her.

It was morning. A perfume which could be only that of newly opened flowers came to my nostrils. I turned over in bed, waking from a dream. The odor persisted, tantalizing my curiosity until I rose and opened the door from which it came, to find the jardinières

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