Part 4 (1/2)

What kind of signs could be in question? It may seem to outsiders that the most wonderful system of signs would be needed for every content of one mind to be communicated to another. But here again we must first reduce the exaggerated claims to the simpler reality. When Beulah makes card experiments, the whole words jack, queen, king, spade, club, heart, diamond, come to her mind, but when she makes word experiments, never under any circ.u.mstances does a real word come to her consciousness, but only single letters. Why is this? If king and queen can be transmitted from mind to mind, why not dog and cat? Yet when the mother thinks of dog, it is always only first D, and after a while O, and finally G which creeps into her mind. This difference seems to me most characteristic, because it indicates very clearly that the whole performance is possible only when the communicated content belongs to a small list which can be easily counted. There are only three face cards, only four suites, only ten numbers, and only twenty-six letters, but there are ten thousand words and more. It is easy to connect every one of the ten numbers or every one of the twenty-six letters with a particular sign, but it would be impossible to have a sign for every one of the ten thousand words. Yet if we had to do with real mind-reading, it ought to make no difference whether we transmit the letter D or the word dog. This fact that she can recognize words only by slow spelling, while the faces and the suites of the cards and the names of the numbers come as full words, seems to me to point most clearly to the whole key of the situation. Anything which cannot be brought into such a simple number series, for instance, a colour impression, can never be transmitted. If the mother looks at the ace of diamonds, Beulah says that she sees the red of the diamond before her in her mind, but if the mother looks at the picture of a blue lake, this blue impression can never arise in Beulah's mind, but only the letters B-L-U-E.

Moreover, I observed that for Beulah the letters of the alphabet were indeed connected with numbers, as in seeking a letter she has a habit of going through the alphabet and at the same time moving one finger after another. Thus she feels each letter as having a definite place in her series of finger movements, and the finger movements themselves are often counted by her, so that each letter is finally connected with a special number. This, indeed, reduces the situation to rather a simple scheme. She succeeds only if her mother or sister is present and if her eyes are open, and she succeeds only with material which can be easily counted. A very short system of simple signs would thus be entirely sufficient to communicate everything which her mind-reading brings to her. As to the particular signs, I do not yet feel sure. It would probably take months of careful examination before I should find them out, just as in Germany it has taken months for scholars to discover the unintentional signs which the owner of a trick horse made, from which the horse was apparently able to calculate. I have no time to carry on such an investigation in this case, the more as I do not see that any new insight could be gained by it.

Once I noticed distinctly how in the card experiments the mother without her own knowledge made seven movements with her foot when she thought of the figure seven. That gave me the idea that the signs might be given by very slight knocking on the floor which Beulah's oversensitive skin might notice. What speaks against such a view is that the results stop when she is blindfolded. Yet in this connection I may mention another aspect. It is quite possible that the covering of her eyes may destroy her power, and that nevertheless she may receive her signs chiefly not through the eyes, but through touch and ear. It may be that she needs her eyes open because the seeing of the members of the family may heighten by a kind of autosuggestion her sensitiveness for the perception of the slight signs. I have no doubt that this kind of autosuggestion plays a large role in her mind. She can read a card much better when she is allowed to touch with her fingers the rear of the card. She herself believes that she receives the knowledge through her finger tips. In reality it is, of course, a stimulus by which she becomes more suggestible and by which accordingly her sensitiveness to the slight signs which her mother and sister give her becomes increased. We must, however, never forget that these signs, whatever they may be, are not only unintentional on the part of her family, but also not consciously perceived by Beulah. If she stares at the ceiling, and her mother, without knowing it, makes seven slight foot movements, Beulah gets through the side parts of her eye a nerve impression, but she does not think of the foot. This nerve impression, as we saw, works on the subconscious mind, or on the brain, and the idea of seven then arises in her conscious mind like a picture which she can see.

Such a system of signs, completely unknown to those who give them and to her who receives them, cannot have been built up in a short while.

But we heard how it originated. At first Beulah recognized the queen in the hands of her sister and mother, when they were playing ”Old Maid.” There are many who have so much power to recognize the small signs. But when they began to make experiments with cards, probably definite family habits developed; there was much occasion to treat each card individually, to link some involuntary movement with the face cards and some with each suite, and slowly to carry this system over to letters. They all agree that Beulah recognizes some frequent letters much more easily than the rare letters. What the observers have now found was the result of two years' training with mother and sister. Yet all this became possible only because Beulah evidently has this unusual, supernormal sensitiveness together with this abnormal power to receive the signs without their coming at once to consciousness. Her mental makeup in this respect constantly reminds the psychologist of the traits of a hysteric woman.

We have to add only one important point. Some startling results have surely been gained by another method. The same sensitiveness which makes Beulah able to receive signs which others do not notice, evidently makes her able to catch words spoken in a low voice within a certain distance, while she is not consciously giving her attention to them. She picks up bits of conversation which she overhears and which settle in her subconscious mind, until they later come to her consciousness in a way for which she cannot account. All were startled when at the end of our first day together I took a bill in my closed hand and asked her what I had there, and she at once replied a ”ten-dollar bill,” while they all agreed that the child had never seen a ten-dollar bill before. This result surprised the minister and the judge greatly, and only later did I remember that I had whispered to the judge in the next room, with the door open, that I should ask her to tell the figures on a ten-dollar bill. In the same way the greatest sensation must be explained, which the experiments before my arrival yielded. The New York lady who came with the minister's family and others to the house was overwhelmed when Beulah spelled her name, which, as the affidavit said, was not known to any one else present.

This affidavit was as a matter of course given according to the best knowledge of all concerned. Yet when later I came to Warren, one of the partic.i.p.ants who told me the incident strengthened it by adding that he was the more surprised when the child spelled the name correctly with a K at the end, as he had understood that it was spelled with a T. In other words, some of those present did know the name, and the lady had evidently either been introduced or addressed by some one, and this had slipped from their minds because Beulah was not in the room. But she was probably in the other room and caught it in her subconscious mind. At her first debut before the minister, too, by her same abnormal sensitiveness she probably heard when he told the mother that he had a gla.s.s of honey in his pocket. In short, the two actions of her subconscious mind, or of her brain, always go together, her noticing of family signs from her mother and sister and her catching of spoken words from strangers, both under conditions under which ordinary persons would neither see nor hear them. We have therefore nothing mysterious, nothing supernatural before us, but an extremely interesting case of an abnormal mental development, and this unusual power working in a mind which is entirely nave and sincere.

How long will this navete and sincerity last? This is no psychological, but a social problem. Since the newspapers have taken hold of the case, every mail brings heaps of letters from all corners of the country. Some of them bring invitations to give performances, but they are not the most dangerous ones. Most of the letters urge the child to use her mysterious, supernatural powers for trivial or pathetic ends in the interest of the writers. Sometimes she is to locate a lost trunk, or a mislaid pocketbook; sometimes she is to prophesy whether a voyage will go smoothly or whether a business venture will succeed; sometimes she is to read in her mind where a runaway child may be found; and almost always money promises are connected with such requests. The mother, who has not much education but who is a splendid, right-minded country woman with the very best intentions for the true good of her children, has ignored all this silly invasion. She showed me a whole teacupful of two-cent stamps for replies which she had collected from Beulah's correspondence. But I ask again, how long will it last? If Beulah closes her eyes and some chance letters come to her mind, and she forms a word from them and sends it as a reply to the anxious mother who is seeking her child, she will soon discover that it is easy to gather money in a world which wants to be deceived. She is followed by the most tempting invitations to live in metropolitan houses where sensational experiments can be performed with her. The nave mother is still impressed when a New York woman applies the well-known tricks and a.s.sures her that the child reminds her so much of her own little dead niece that she ought to come to her New York house. It is a pity how the community forces sensationalism, commercialism, and finally humbug and fraud on a nave little country girl who ought to be left alone with her pet lamb in her mother's kitchen. Her gift is extremely interesting to the psychologist, and if it is not misused by those who try to pump spiritualistic superst.i.tions into her little mind or to force automatic writing on her it will be harmless and no cause for hysteric developments. But surely her art is entirely useless for any practical purpose. She cannot know anything which others do not know beforehand. Clairvoyant powers or prophetic gifts are not hers, and above all her mind-reading is a natural process. The edifice of science will not be shaken by the powers of my little Rhode Island friend.

Yet the most important part is not the fate of the individual child, but the behaviour of this nation-wide public which chases her into the swamps of fraud. No one can decide and settle whether the party of superst.i.tion forms the majority or the minority. If all the silent voters were sincere, they probably would carry the vote for telepathy.

But in any case, such a party exists, and it does not care in the least that scientific investigations clear up a case which threatens to bring our world of thought into chaotic disorder. A world of mental trickery and mystery, a world which by its very principle could never be understood, is to them instinctively more welcome than a world of scientific order. There cannot be a more fundamental contrast between men who are to form a social unit than this radical difference of att.i.tude toward the world of experience. Compared with this deepest split in the community, all its other social questions seem temporary and superficial.

V

THE MIND OF THE JURYMAN

Every lawyer knows some good stories about some wild juries he has known, which made him s.h.i.+ver and doubt whether a dozen laymen ever can see a legal point. But every newspaper reader, too, remembers an abundance of cases in which the decision of the jury startled him by its absurdity. Who does not recall sensational acquittals in which sympathy for the defendant or prejudice against the plaintiff carried away the feelings of the twelve good men and true? For them are the unwritten laws, for them the mingling of justice with race hatreds or with gallantry. And even in the heart of New York a judge recently said to a chauffeur who had killed a child and had been acquitted: ”Now go and get drunk again; then this jury will allow you to run over as many children as you like.”

Yet whatever the temperament of the jury and its legal insight, we may sharply separate its ideas of deserved punishment from that far more important aspect of its function, the weighing of evidence. The juries may be whimsical in their decisions, they may be lenient in their acquittals or over-rigid in their verdicts of guilty, but that is quite in keeping with the democratic spirit of the inst.i.tution. The Teutonic nations did not want the abstract law of the scholarly judges; they want the pulse-beat of life throbbing in the court decisions, and what may be a wilful ignoring of the law of the jurists may be a heartfelt expression of the popular sentiment. Better to have some statutes riddled by the illogical verdicts than legal decisions severed from the sense of justice which is living in the soul of the nation. But while a rush into prejudice or a hasty overriding of law may draw attention to some exceptional verdicts, in the overwhelming ma.s.s of jury decisions nothing is aimed at but a real clearing up of the facts. The evidence is submitted, and while the lawyers may have wrangled as to what is evidence and what is not, and while they may have tried, by their presentation of the witnesses on their own side and by their cross-examinations, to throw light on some parts of the evidence and shadow on some others, the jurymen are simply to seek the truth when all the evidence has been submitted. And mostly they do not forget that they will live up to their duty best the more they suppress in their own hearts the question whether they like or dislike the truth that comes to light. Whoever weighs the social significance of the jury system ought not to be guided by the few stray cases in which the emotional response obscures the truth, but all praise and blame and every scrutiny of the inst.i.tution ought to be confined essentially to the ability of the jurymen to live up to their chief responsibility, the sober finding of the true facts.

It cannot be denied that much criticism has been directed against the whole jury system in America as well as in Europe by legal scholars as well as by laymen on account of the prevailing doubt whether the traditional form is really furthering the clearing up of the hidden truth. Where the evidence is so perfectly clear that every one by himself feels from the start exactly like all the others, the cooperation of the twelve men cannot do any harm, but it cannot do any particular good either. Such cases do not demand the special interest of the social reformer. His doubts and fears come up only when difference of opinion exists, and the discussion and the repeated votes overcome the divergence of opinion. The skeptics claim that the system as such may easily be instrumental for suppressing the truth and bringing the erroneous opinion to victory. In earlier times a frequent objection was that lack of higher education made men unfit to weigh correctly the facts in a complicated situation. But this kind of arguing has been given up for a long while. The famous French lawyer who, whenever he had a weak case, made use of his right to challenge jurymen by systematically excluding all persons of higher education, certainly blundered in this respect, according to the views of to-day.

Those best informed within and without the legal science agree that the verdicts of straightforward people with public-school education are in the long run neither better nor worse than those of men with college schooling or professional training. A jury of artisans and farmers understands and looks into a ma.s.s of neutral material as well as a jury of bankers and doctors, or at least its final verdict has an equal chance to hit the truth.

But the critics say that it is not the lack of general or logical training of the single individual which obstructs the path of justice.

The trouble lies rather in the mutual influence of the twelve men. The more persons work together, the less, they say, every single man can reach his highest level. They become a ma.s.s with ma.s.s consciousness, a kind of crowd in which each one becomes oversuggestible. Each one thinks less reliably, less intelligently, and less impartially than he would by himself alone. We know how men in a crowd do indeed lose some of the best features of their individuality. A crowd may be thrown into a panic, may rush into any foolish, violent action, may lynch and plunder, or a crowd may be stirred to a pitch of enthusiasm, may be roused to heroic deeds or to wonderful generosity, but whether the outcome be wretched or splendid, in any case it is the product of persons who have been entirely changed. In the midst of the panic or in the midst of the heroic enthusiasm no one has kept his own characteristic mental features. The individual no longer judges for himself; he is carried away, his own heart reverberates with the feelings of the whole crowd. The ma.s.s consciousness is not an adding up, a mere summation, of the individual minds, but the creation of something entirely new. Such a crowd may be pushed into any paths, chance leaders may use or misuse its increased suggestibility for any ends. No one can foresee whether this heaping up of men will bring good or bad results. Certainly the individual level of the crowd will always be below the level of its best members. And is not a jury necessarily such a group with a ma.s.s consciousness of its own? Every individual is melted into the total, has lost his independent power of judging, and becomes influenced through his heightened suggestibility and social feeling by any chance pressure which may push toward error as often as toward truth.

But if such arguments are brought into play, it is evident that it is no longer a legal question, but a psychological one. The psychologist alone deals scientifically with the problem of mutual mental influence and with the reenforcing or awakening of mental energies by social cooperation. He should accordingly investigate the question with his own methods and deal with it from the standpoint of the scientist.

This means he is not simply to form an opinion from general vague impressions and to talk about it as about a question of politics, where any man may have his personal idea or fancy, but to discover the facts by definite experiments. The modern student of mental life is accustomed to the methods of the laboratory. He wants to see exact figures by which the essential facts come into sharp relief. But let us understand clearly what such an experiment means. When the psychologist goes to work in his laboratory, his aim is to study those thoughts and emotions and feelings and deeds which move our social world. But his aim is not simply to imitate or to repeat the social scenes of the community. He must simplify them and bring them down to the most elementary situations, in which only the characteristic mental actions are left. Is this not the way in which the experimenters proceed in every field? The physicist or the chemist does not study the great events as they occur in nature on a large scale and with bewildering complexity of conditions, but he brings down every special fact which interests him to a neat, miniature copy on his laboratory table. There he mixes a few chemical solutions in his retorts and his test-tubes, or produces the rays or sparks or currents with his subtle laboratory instruments, and he feels sure that whatever he finds there must hold true everywhere in the gigantic universe. If the waters move in a certain way in the little tank on his table, he knows that they must move according to the same laws in the midst of the ocean. In this spirit the psychologist arranges his experiments too. He does not carry them on in the turmoil of social life, but prepares artificial situations in which the persons will show the laws of mental behaviour. An experiment on memory or attention or imagination or feeling may bring out in a few minutes mental facts which the ordinary observer would discover only if he were to watch the behaviour and life att.i.tudes of the man for years.

Everything depends upon the degree with which the characteristic mental states are brought into play under experimental conditions. The great advantage of the experimental method is, here as everywhere, that everything can be varied and changed at will and that the conditions and the effects can be exactly measured.

If we apply these principles to the question of the jury, the task is clear. We want to find out whether the cooperation, the discussion, and the repeated voting of a number of individuals are helping or hindering them in the effort to judge correctly upon a complex situation. We must therefore artificially create a situation which brings into action the judgment, the discussion, and the vote, but if we are loyal to the idea of experimenting we must keep the experiment free from all those features of a real jury deliberation which have nothing to do with the mental action itself. Moreover, it is evident that the situations to be judged must allow a definite knowledge as to the objective truth. The experimenter must know which verdict of his voters corresponds to the real facts. Secondly, the situation must be difficult in order that a real doubt may prevail. If all the voters were on one side from the start, no discussion would be needed.

Thirdly, it must be a rather complex situation in order that the judgment may be influenced by a number of motives. Only in this case will it be possible for the discussion to point out factors which the other party may have overlooked, thus giving a chance for changes of mind. All these demands must be fulfilled if the experiment is really to picture the jury function. But it would be utterly superfluous and would make the exact measurement impossible if the material on which the judgment is to be based were of the same kind of which the evidence in the courtroom is composed. The trial by jury in an actual criminal case may involve many picturesque and interesting details, but the mental act of judging is no different when the most trivial objects are chosen.

I settled on the following simple device: I used sheets of dark gray cardboard. On each were pasted white paper dots of different form and in an irregular order. Each card had between ninety-two and a hundred and eight such white dots of different sizes. The task was to compare the number of spots on one card with the number of spots on another.

Perhaps I held up a card with a hundred and four dots above, and below one with ninety-eight. Then the subjects of the experiment had to decide whether the upper card had more dots or fewer dots or an equal number compared with the lower one. I made the first set of experiments with eighteen Harvard students. I took more than the twelve men who form a jury in order to reenforce the possible effect, but did not wish to exceed the number greatly, so that the character of the discussion might be similar to that in a jury. A much larger number would have made the discussion too formal or too unruly. The eighteen men sat around a long table and were first allowed to look for half a minute at the two big cards, each forming his judgment independently. Then at a signal every one had to write down whether the number of dots on the upper card was larger, equal, or smaller.

Immediately after that they had to indicate by a show of hands how many had voted for each of the three possibilities. After that a discussion began. Indeed, the two cards offered plenty of points for earnest and vivid discussion. During the exchange of opinion in which those who had voted larger tried to convince the party of the smaller, and vice versa, they were always able to look at the cards and to refer to them, pointing to the various parts. One showed how the distances on the one card appeared larger, and another pointed out how the spots were cl.u.s.tered in a certain region, a third how the dots were smaller in some parts, a fourth spoke about the optical illusions, a fifth about certain impressions resulting from the narrowness of the margin, and a sixth about the effect of certain irregularities in the distribution. In short, very different aspects were considered and very different factors emphasized. The discussion was sometimes quite excited, three or four men speaking at the same time. After exactly five minutes of talking the vote was repeated, again at first being written and then being taken by show of hands. A second five minutes' exchange of opinion followed with a new effort to convince the dissenters. After this period the third and last vote was taken. This experiment was carried out with a variety of cards with smaller or larger difference of numbers, but the difference always enough to allow an uncertainty of judgment. Here, indeed, we had repeated all the essential conditions of the jury vote and discussion, and the mental state was characteristically similar to that of the jurymen.

The very full accounts which the partic.i.p.ants in the experiment wrote down the following day indicated clearly that we had a true imitation of the mental process in spite of the striking simplicity of our conditions. One man, for instance, described his inner experience as follows: ”I think the experiment involves factors quite comparable to those that determine the verdict of a jury. The cards with their spots are the evidence pro and con which each juryman has before him to interpret. Each person's decision on the number is his interpretation of the situation. The arguments, too, seem quite comparable to the arguments of the jury. Both consist in pointing out factors of the situation that have been overlooked and in showing how different interpretations may be possible.” Another man writes: ”In the experiment it seemed that one man judged by one criterion and another by another, such as distribution, size of spots, vacant s.p.a.ces, or counting along one edge. Discussion often brought immediate attention to other criterions than those he used in his first judgment, and these often outweighed the original. Similarly, different jurymen would base their opinion on different aspects of the case, and discussion would tend to draw their attention to other aspects. The experiment also ill.u.s.trated the relative weight given to the opinion of different fellow-jurymen. I found that the statements of a few of the older men who have had more extensive psychological experience weighed more with me than those of the others. Suggestion did not seem to be much of a factor. A man is rather on his mettle, and ready to defend his original impression, until he finds that it is hopeless.” Again, another writes: ”To me the experiment seemed fairly comparable to the real situation. As in an actual trial, the full truth was not available, but certain evidence was presented to all for interpretation. As to the nature of the discussion itself, I think there was the same mingling of suggestion and real argument that is to be found in a jury discussion.” Another says: ”The discussion influenced me by suggesting other methods of a.n.a.lysis. For instance, comparison of the amount of open s.p.a.ce in two cards, comparison of the number of dots along the edges, estimation in diagonal lines, were methods mentioned in the discussion which I used in forming my own judgments. It does not seem to me that in my own case direct suggestion had any appreciable effect. I was conscious of a tendency toward contrasuggestibility. There was a half submerged feeling that it would be good sport to stick it out for the losing side. The lack of any unusual amount of suggestion and the presence of the influences of a.n.a.lysis and detailed comparison seem to me to show that the tests were in fact fairly comparable to situations in a jury room.” To be sure, there were a few who were strongly impressed by the evident differences between the rich material of an actual trial and the meagre content of our tests: there the actions of living men, here the s.p.a.ce relations of little spots. But they evidently did not sufficiently realize that the forming of such number judgments was not at all a question of mere perception; that on the contrary many considerations were involved; most men felt the similarity from the start.

What were the results of this first group of experiments? Our interest must evidently be centred on the question of how many judgments were correct at the first vote before any discussion and any show of hands were influencing the minds of the men, and how many were correct at the last vote after the two periods of discussion and after taking cognizance of the two preceding votes. If I sum up all the results, the outcome is that 52 per cent. of the first votes were correct and 78 per cent. of the final votes were correct. The discussion of the successive votes had therefore led to an improvement of 26 per cent.

of all votes. Or, as the correct votes were at first 52 per cent., their number is increased by one half. May we not say that this demonstrates in exact figures that the confidence in the jury system is justified? And may it not be added that, in view of the widespread prejudices, the result is almost surprising? Here we had men of high intelligence who were completely able to take account of every possible aspect of the situation. They had time to do so, they had training to do so, and every foregoing experiment ought to have stimulated them to do so in the following ones. Yet their judgment was right in only 52 per cent. of the cases until they heard the opinions of the others and saw how they voted. The mere seeing of the vote, however, cannot have been decisive, because 48 per cent., that is, practically half of the votes, were at first incorrect. The wrong votes might have had as much suggestive influence on those who voted rightly as the right votes on those on the wrong side. If, nevertheless, the change was so strongly in the right direction, the result must clearly have come from the discussion.

But I am not at the end of my story. I made exactly the same experiments also with a cla.s.s of advanced female university students.