Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/504

488 Knave of hearts. Knave of hearts (Right). Two of clubs. Two of clubs (Right). King of spades. King of clubs (No). Knave of clubs (No). King of diamonds (No). Knave of diamonds. King of diamonds (No). Knave of diamonds (Right).

It will be noticed that often the number of the card is guessed rightly, but not so the suit, and vice versa; and these partial successes are perhaps destined to be as important in drawing conclusions from the phenomena as those in which the guess was completely successful. In the above cases, the partial successes would seem to suggest a mental eye, so to speak, whose vision was in these cases obscured and inaccurate. Other cases, when the objects chosen were names, such as the guessing of Jobson for Johnson, would in a similar way suggest a mental ear.

As the result of six days' investigation with this family, 382 trials were made. In the cases of letters of the alphabet, of cards, and of numbers of two figures, the chances against success in a first trial were, of course, 25 to 1, 51 to 1, and 89 to 1 respectively; in the case of surnames they would be indefinitely greater. Cards were most frequently employed, and the odds in their case may be taken as a fair example. If this be done, then, in 382 trials, 7 would be about the average number of successes on a first trial by an ordinary guesser. In these tests of the committee, 127 trials were successful on a first attempt, 56 on a second, and 19 on a third—202 in all.

The most striking success was when five cards in succession were named correctly on a first trial. The chances against this were considerably over one million to one. By way of precaution, the committee says in its report: "The phenomena here described are so unlike any which have been brought within the sphere of recognized science as to subject the mind to two opposite dangers. The hypotheses as to how they happen are confronted with equally wild assertions that they can not happen at all. Of the two, perhaps the assumption of an a priori impossibility is, in the present state of our knowledge of nature, the most to be deprecated, though it can not be considered in any way surprising."

"We have given the data of this Creery case at some length, because it illustrates so admirably the methods of the society and the phenomena which it is investigating. In this and similar investigations, the question which the committee had before it was this: Is there, or is there not, any existing or attainable evidence, that can stand fair physiological criticism, to support a belief that a vivid impression or a distant idea in one mind can be communicated to another mind without the intervening help of the recognized means of sensation? And, if such evidence be found, is the impression derived from a rare or partially developed and hitherto unrecognized sensory organ, or has