1. Oliver Wendell Holmes was a poet and novelist, but as the Encyclopedia Britannica says: “In 1843 he published his essay on the Contagiousness of Puerperal Fever, which stirred up a fierce controversy and brought upon him bitter personal abuse, but he maintained his position with dignity, temper and judgment, and in time was honored as the discoverer of a beneficent truth.” It was about the same time that Semmelweiss was making similar observations, but he did not take preventive measures until 1847, and Lister came still later.

S. Weir Mitchell was one of the most prominent novelists of America at the close of the 19th century, but he was also conspicuous as a neurologist and member of many scientific societies.

The mentality of a man cannot be determined by his profession or by his prevailing occupation. Mendel, who influenced biology hardly less than did Darwin, was a monk and an abbot. Copernicus, who revolutionized solar astronomy, was canon of a cathedral, and astronomy was only his avocation.

A thing is as it acts. An automobile is a good automobile if it behaves as an automobile should. We shall see how Mr. Sinclair carried on his experiments and how he reported them. At times he pursued a defective method, but he was aware of the fact and reports it, while certain technically scientific investigators of telepathy and other matters have not seemed even to be aware of their mistakes.

2. From earlier correspondence and other sources, Mr. Sinclair was quite aware that the man to whom he was sending the materials is hard-boiled enough to reject them and drop the whole case or report on it adversely if the results of examination were unsatisfactory.

3. In some cases it might be necessary to increase rigidity of the conditions gradually, as friendly confidence and ease of the percipient became better established. It is futile to ignore the fact that nervous excitement and mental unrest are unfavorable to success.

4. For example, in 1906 Mr. Sinclair assisted the Government in the investigation of the Chicago stockyards.

5. [Historical reference deleted.]

6. If there are those who think there is no value in knowing something of the make-up of the chief witnesses in this case, I emphatically do not agree with them. That such knowledge is not absolutely determinative is, of course, true.

We are investigating a field of phenomena by all the methods which are practicable. The larger part of the phenomena are sporadic and spontaneous, and can hardly be expected to occur in a laboratory. There are many cases where a man has experienced but one apparition in his lifetime, and that at or close to the time when the person imaged died. Will any director of a laboratory consent to keep people under surveillance for a lifetime, to test if such an experience will take place in a laboratory, and can any persons be found who will consent so to spend a lifetime? And if under such conditions an apparition should be experienced and it should prove beyond doubt that the person imaged died at that moment, even though the apparitional experience occurred in a laboratory, in no sense would or could laboratory tests be applied to it. The authentication of the incident would be the testimonies of the scientific gentlemen present, to the effect that the story of the apparition was related to them and written down before the death of the person was known, with, perhaps, details of how the person who experienced the apparition looked and acted at the time. But the testimonies of witnesses outside of the laboratory are evidence of precisely as much weight, provided that their mentality and reputation for veracity are equal.

With favorable subjects experiments for telepathy can sometimes be and sometimes have been carried on with all the rigidity of method and the scrupulosity of a laboratory, or, if there remain doubts and objections on grounds seemingly almost of as “occult” a nature as telepathy itself, doubtless in time to come methods will be devised to meet these doubts and objections. But subjects of singularly calm and poised nature will be required. It seems to be a fact with which we have to deal, however regrettable, that with most persons who under friendly and unstrained conditions at times strongly evidence telepathic powers, suddenly to place them in a room containing strange apparatus, and before a committee of strangers, some perhaps cold and stern in appearance, others whose amiable demeanor nevertheless betrays an amused scepticism, is to make it improbable that they can exhibit telepathy at all. It will have to be recognized as a scientific datum that a state of mental tranquillity and passivity is generally requisite for such manifestations. Nor is this peculiar to psychical manifestations; the principle applies more or less to a variety of psychological manifestations and powers. Mark Twain could reel off witty utterances when he was mentally at ease, but had he been surrounded by a solemn-visaged group of psychologists with his wrists harnessed to a sphygmometer, and placed in face of an apparatus for recording graphs and a stenographer with poised pencil, it is very certain that his reactions would not have been those of brilliant and original humor. So I have seen a prominent violinist, invited to play at a reception, try to keep on amidst the waxing murmur of conversation, and finally falter and almost break down.

In this laboratory-fixation age it is well to remember that certain even of the physical sciences quite or mostly elude laboratory experimentation. Take astronomy, a great and promising but difficult and problematical field of research. No sun of all the millions, no planet, no planetary satellite, no comet, no tiniest of the asteroids can be brought into a laboratory. Once in a while a meteoric stone reaches the earth, and this can be analyzed, but no laboratory can control or predict time or place of its falling. It is necessary to devise agencies, telescopes, spectroscopes and so on, which, in a sense, go out and bring back data about the subjects of this science, and to develop methods of mathematical deduction by which to reach conclusions which are accepted by most people on authority only, since to most people the mathematics is quite unintelligible.

Astronomy, perhaps entitled to be called the most ancient of sciences, is one of the most difficult. A multitude of theories to account for its multitudinous phenomena have been supplanted by others; within the memory of persons now living many opinions once firmly held have been discarded or at least called in question. This is not in the least to the discredit of the science, but it is a fact. Today there are many contradictions of opinion among astronomers. While an article by a scientific man was printing in the Scientific American expressing the common view that in a little while, about a million million years, the earth will become too cold for anybody to live on it, another scientist was announcing to the world his reasons for questioning that conclusion. Even facts of a declared visual character are called in question. Professor Percival Lowell to his death in 1916 supported Schiaparelli’s announced discovery of canals on Mars, described them as he saw them through the telescope, and declared that they must be of artificial origin. It is said that there are astronomers who can see the canals but who question that they are artificial. And it is certain that there are astronomers who deny that there are any canals at all, and who claim that what seem to be canals to some are optical illusions or sheer hallucinations. (Is not astronomy getting to look like psychic research?)

But in spite of all its shifting and reconstruction of theories, its assertions and counter-assertions, the complexity and enormous difficulty of its numerous problems, and the exceedingly subtle methods by which, in a great measure, these problems must be studied, no one is so foolish as to think that astronomical investigation should not be pursued, or that there does not lie before it a great field for the pursuit of truth.

To a very large extent psychic research is analogous with astronomy. It, the youngest of the sciences (by few as yet acknowledged to be a science), has a very difficult field, lying as far apart from the ordinary life of most men as the multitudinous realities of infinite space lie outside the range of thought of ordinary men; its problems are many, theories are shifting and contradictory, certain facts are both affirmed and denied, and, what is more to the point for our present purpose, only to a limited extent can its problems be taken into the laboratory, but for the most part techniques and logical methods have to be devised to fit the nature of the facts with which we deal. In astronomy, most of the subjects of study can be found in place at any time; the great drawback is that they are so fearfully distant as to be sensed very slightly. On the other hand, with certain exceptions, either of kind or degree, the subjects of psychical study cannot be found in place whenever wanted but appear occasionally, yet when they do appear often do so with a nearness and clearness which spares the witnesses the necessity of those cautious qualifying phrases so common in articles dealing with astronomy.

In order at length to turn the attention of scientific men to a quarter of reality to which most of them are now voluntarily blind, we must continue to do what some people contemn as “old stuff,” and that is to multiply the number of intelligent and reputable witnesses by teaching people how to observe and how to record, and by ridding them of the cowardice which now keeps at least five out of six potential witnesses of such standing silent.

7. It is so judged from such expressions as “Or maybe she has been asleep and comes out with the tail end of a dream, and has written down what appears to be a lot of rubbish but turns out to be a reproduction of something her husband has been reading or writing at that very moment”; “Says my wife, ‘There are some notes of a dream I just had.’”

8. The words “Bob drew watch,” etc., were added by Mrs. Sinclair after she had read his statement.

9. “Ulceration and bleeding are also common symptoms, hence the term ‘bleeding piles.’” Encyclopedia Britannica.

10. [Deleted.]

11. “I explain that in these particular drawings the lines have been traced over in heavier pencil; the reason being that Craig wanted a carbon copy, and went over the lines in order to make it. This had the effect of making them heavier than they originally were, and it made the whirly lines in Craig’s first drawing more numerous than they should be. She did this in the case of two or three of the early drawings, wishing to send a report to a friend. I pointed out to her how this would weaken their value as evidence, so she never did it again.”

12. Of course, there would be theoretical possibility that the four persons involved joined in a conspiracy to deceive, and there would be the same theoretical possibility if four psychologists from the sanctum sanctorum of a laboratory announced similar results.

13. The cut does not show that the end is open like a pipe, but it is plainly so in the pencil drawing.

14. “A Series” since there was another of the same date at a different hour.

15. If it be objected that we are not told exactly what the conditions of the series of February 15th were, though assured that all series were carried out with scrupulous honesty, that is true. But it is also true that the results of this series were not better than some where we do know that the conditions were excellent, and that this series contains no successes of such astounding significance as three in the Sinclair-Irwin Group, when many miles separated the experimenters. I would have been quite willing to have employed for the guessing tests the originals in that group, plus those of February 17th, done under excellently satisfactory conditions. (To be sure, the parties were in the same room, but it will be shown later that, even granting all which the egregious “unconscious whispering” theory claims, it could not account for the results actually obtained.) In fact, the Sinclair-Irwin Group was avoided for the test for the very reason that it is an exceptionally good one. That of February 15th was selected because I wanted a series of a considerable number of experiments, an unbroken one produced at one time, and one which exhibited results of a more nearly average character.

16. “A series” because there were other experiments at another hour of the same day.

17. The general assumption is that Mrs. Sinclair got her successful results by telepathy. But could Mr. Sinclair remember just in what order his drawings came, so to be thinking of each just when his wife was holding that particular one? Unfortunately he did not record whether he laid them down in the order of their production.

We have judged Experiment 1 to be a failure. And yet it is not fanciful to say that if the drawing of the globe is looked at from its left side there is considerable resemblance between the very incorrectly drawn South America and Isthmus of Panama on the one hand, and the “animal’s” head and neck on the other. If clairvoyance were involved, there would be no necessary guarantee that the drawing would be sensed—to a degree—right side up. Nor do we know how the envelope was held.

18. Mr. Sinclair says, “Now why should an obelisk go on a jag, and have little circles at its base? The answer appears to be: it inherited the curves from the previous fish-hook, and the little circles from the next drawing.”

It is psychologically likely that a drawing just before made or even looked at sometimes unfortunately influences a succeeding drawing. The most interesting apparent example of this is Figure 8a made just after Mrs. Sinclair had been looking at the several concentric circles of her last reproduction in the Sinclair-Irwin Group. First she got a whirl of circles, then the whirl assumed the shape of a triangle, then came two angles differently characterized, and finally the angles multiplied and constituted a star duplicating the original. And a careful study makes it impossible to doubt that there were anticipations. Some are too striking to be likely as accidents in the same series, and in some cases Mrs. Sinclair announced ahead that such-and-such an object would be found among the originals, and was right. Indeed, in cases where a set of originals was not viewed by the agent one by one, as the tests were proceeding, but were submitted in a heap together, it is a wonder that as a general rule the correspondences were found in due order, and we are hardly able to explain it. I do not, however, count any feature theoretically left over from the previous drawing as evidential, but only as an interesting glimpse into the mental processes. Neither does Mr. Sinclair, as I understand him. Nor do I reckon any “anticipation” as evidential, unless it was announced in advance, and then only in a reduced degree. And Mr. Sinclair’s principles of estimation were nearly the same. For he says (the italics mine):

“Manifestly, if I grant the right to more than one guess, I am increasing the chances of guesswork, and correspondingly reducing the significance of the totals. What I have done is this: where such cases have occurred, I have called them total failures, except in a few cases, where the description was so detailed and exact as to be overwhelming—as in the case of this ‘Happy Hooligan.’ Even so, I have not called it a complete success, only a partial success. In order to be classified as a complete success, my wife’s drawing must have been made for the particular drawing of mine which she had in her hand at that time; and throughout this account, the reader is to understand that every drawing presented was made in connection with the particular drawing printed alongside it—except in cases where I expressly state otherwise.”

19. When she reached the snake original, the percipient made no drawing, but wrote “Man running fast.” If the reader will turn back to Experiment 2 of February 8th, where the original was a snake, he will again find the cat’s tail and living things fleeing. I more than ever suspect that buried in her subconsciousness is the memory of some incident wherein a snake and a cat and something else in flight figure.

20. O—original drawing. R—reproduction. Quoted matter was written by Mrs. S as a part of her result.

21. Statistically this must be rated a failure. But it is quite possible that in fact there is an underlying real connection. Perhaps Mrs. S had read the life of Napoleon, and had been aware that he was by education primarily an artillerist, and that the increased and peculiar use of artillery was the chief distinctive feature of his campaigns. If so, it is quite possible that the idea of cannon, struggling for emergence in her mind, by association of ideas got sidetracked to Napoleon, and became expressed in “Black Napoleon hat and red military coat.” I have not discovered what the uniform of Napoleon’s artillerists was; his infantry, at any rate, wore coats brilliantly faced with red.

22. Let it be understood that there were reproductions rated as Suggestive, Partial Successes or even Successes, where there was no such “correspondence.” That is to say, the reproduction might not recognizably represent any living thing, might even be indeterminable as to its nature, and yet so notably imitate the leading features of the original (though omitting something necessary for identification) as to give it one grade or another of ranking otherwise than Failure.

23. Here the original was not a drawing but a “red flower” that Mr. Sinclair was simultaneously reading about.

24. Mathematically, that is, on the basis of a large number of counted experiments in guessing.

25. Unless by “involuntary whispering,” a theory to be attended to later.

26. There was one experiment with drawings. One of the Danish experimenters drew a candlestick, with a lighted candle in it. The other in response drew what in the cut looks like a crooked milk-bottle with a short curved line proceeding from one end and two short curved lines proceeding from one side. The latter says he meant it for a cat, but does not know why he furnished it with only two “legs.” The only use made of this drawing in the pamphlet is to compare it with a selected and very poor example from the Richet series and to assert that it is as good a reproduction. The utmost I should grant for the Richet drawing is that, regarded as one of a series containing a number of far more impressive ones, it is Suggestive, and the most I could grant for the “cat,” is that it may possibly be Slightly Suggestive. But did Hansen and Lehmann think there was any resemblance between their reproduction and original? If so, how did they know that there was no thought-transference and why did they not continue to experiment with drawings? Were they afraid that if they did, they might have an intractable problem on their hands? But if they thought there was no real resemblance, what possible weight had their failure against a series of experiments wherein a large percentage of the reproductions beyond question did notably resemble the originals?

27. S.P.R. Proceedings, VI, 164–5.

28. Professor Sidgwick declared that the whispering of himself and his colleagues was certainly voluntary, and that there was no success otherwise.

29. Neither M. C. S. or I ever made the faintest trace of a sound during an experiment. That was the law. And I never knew which drawing she was holding. I had just one order: to watch steadily, and be able to say that she never “peeked.” I did this, and I say it, on my honor. This is an honest book.—Upton Sinclair.

30. She was undergoing the menopause; hence the special depression. It is important that every such fact should be stated. It might even be that the condition heightened the telepathic faculty.

31. Of course Mrs. Sinclair is solely responsible for this as every other of her expressed opinions.

32. This was written when it was expected that the experiments with the brother-in-law would continue some time. The general character of the objects is stated. In fact neither duck nor basket of fruit figured. The experiments with “Bob” soon ceased, not only because they involved a strain upon him in his then condition of health but because Mrs. Sinclair suspected that she was telepathically having her own feelings of depression increased by his.