The subject of the picture was always carefully chosen by one of the
experimenters--Mrs Sidgwick or Miss Alice Johnson. Any possibility of
the percipient being able to guess at the subject through chance,
association, or ideas was rigorously excluded. To prevent any hint being
unconsciously imparted by the third experimenter, Mr G. A. Smith,
silence was enjoined upon him, and he was placed behind the percipient
or in another room; yet the percipient actually saw and described the
projecting impression as if it were a real picture before his eyes. When
Mr Smith went downstairs with Miss Johnson he was asked by her to think
of an eagle pursuing a sparrow. Mrs Sidgwick, who remained upstairs with
P., the percipient, in a few minutes induced him to see a round disc of
light on the imaginary lantern-sheet, and then he saw in it "something
like a bird," which disappeared immediately. He went on looking (with
closed eyes, of course), and presently he thought he saw "something
like a bird--something like an eagle." After a pause he said: "I thought
I saw a figure there--I saw 5. The bird's gone. I see 5 again; now it's
gone. The bird came twice." Mr Smith then came upstairs, and P. had
another impression of an eagle. He was told that the eagle was right,
and there was something else besides, no hint being given of what the
other thing was. He then said that the first thing he saw "was a little
bird--a sparrow, perhaps--he could not say--about the size of a sparrow;
then that disappeared, and he saw the eagle. He had told Mrs Sidgwick so
at the time."
We see the mental machinery at work in another case, where the subject
agreed upon was "The Babes in the Wood." To begin with, P. sat with
closed eyes, but, when no impression came, Mr Smith opened his eyes,
without speaking, and made him look for the picture on a card. After we
had waited a little while in vain, Mr Smith said to him: "Do you see
something like a straw hat?" P. assented to this, and then began to
puzzle out something more: "A white apron, something dark--a child. It
can't be another child, unless it's a boy--a boy and a girl--the boy to
the right and the girl to the left. Little girl with white socks on and
shoes with straps." Mr Smith asked: "What are they doing? Is it two
children on a raft at sea?" P.: "No; it's like trees in the
background--a copse or something. Like a fairy-story--like babes in a
wood or something."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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