Sinclair, Mary Craig, 1883-1961; Sinclair, Upton, 1878-1968; Telepathy; Telepathy -- Case studies
It seems almost incredible that any intelligent person would hold, or
suggest it possible, that the several degrees of resemblance between 12
of the 13 originals in this series and the reproductions could have come
about by chance guessing. Surely, no one possessing an average quality
of logical and mathematical faculty, if he takes time to consider, will
be guilty of so monstrous a _faux pas_ of the intellect. But experience
teaches that some, even of excellent academic or professional standing,
to whom the notion of the possibility of telepathy has long been
obnoxious, are indeed capable of dismissing an exhibit such as this
after a passing glance, with the exclamation, “Merely chance
coincidence.” It is well, then, to make a large number of experiments in
order to test the chances of chance-coincidence to produce such a
result. Perhaps, after that is done, even those most convinced that
chance cannot account for such correspondences as we have seen will be
astonished to find the extent to which results where telepathy has
played a part and results of mere guessing differ.
Ten ladies offered themselves for experimentation. Of course the
likelihood was very small that any one of them would show a trace of
telepathic faculty. As it proved, there developed no reason to suspect
its possession by a single one of them. And it is certain that no one
who disbelieves that _any one_ gets impressions by telepathy will
complain of our conclusion that the ten ladies did nothing more than
guess.
If they did nothing more than to guess, it made no difference what
method we employed, so long as the ladies were given no inkling of the
original drawings. Nevertheless, the exact replicas of Mr. Sinclair’s 13
drawings of February 15th were separately sealed in numbered envelopes,
and the lady was asked to hold the envelopes, one by one, in her hand,
and to draw what came into her mind visually or by concept, choosing
from such impressions according to vividness, recurrence or by whatever
criterion seemed to her most congenial. She was told to take all the
time she wished and was then left alone. Thus the conditions of the
Sinclair experiments were imitated as closely as possible. The time
occupied by the ladies for the series varied from half an hour to nearly
an hour and a half. Every woman would have been pleased, naturally, if
her results had been such as to give grounds for suspecting telepathy,
but the results of the ladies differed in quality only by narrow
degrees, and, as said, there was not the slightest reason to suppose
that with any of them there was anything but chance in play.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account