THE SINCLAIR EXPERIMENTS FOR TELEPATHY
About eighteen months ago I first opened a new book by the novelist Upton Sinclair, entitled Mental Radio, then newly issued. In 239 pages it outlined the story of the discovery and development of what purported to be a supernormal faculty possessed by his wife, and rehearsed a large number of experiments in which she seemed to have achieved a large and convincing percentage of successes as a telepathic “percipient,” the “agent” generally being Mr. Sinclair, but sometimes her brother-in-law or another person. I confess to misgivings as I began to read, first for the very reason that the writer is a novelist (unmindful of Wells and certain other writers of fiction who, nevertheless, have shown themselves capable of serious and even scientific thinking),[[1]] and secondly because I had suspected, rightly or wrongly, that once or twice in the past he had failed to discover the devices of certain clever professionals. To be sure, his wife was not a professional, and all the conditions could be under his own hand, but sometimes through sheer confidence people are deceived by their own relatives.
This, to be frank, was my initial attitude—one of cautious interrogation and alertness to find signs of credulity, failure to appreciate the possibilities of chance, or lack of data by which the calculus of chance coincidence could be determined. But as I read on and studied the reproductions of drawings it became more and more evident that something besides chance had operated, that the conditions of many of the experiments had been excellently devised, and that where the conditions were relaxed Mr. Sinclair had been quite aware of the fact and was candid enough to admit it. He stated that such relaxation did not increase the percentage of success, and it certainly so appeared from the examples given. He reported the total number of experiments, and estimated the percentages of successes, partial successes, and failures. In 290 experiments, he made these percentages: successes, approximately 23 per cent; partial successes, 53 per cent; failures, 24 per cent. He admitted that judges probably would not agree upon exactly the same ratios. In fact I personally think that certain examples which he did not publish are better than a few which he did, but have not yet found reason to quarrel with his general estimates.
After considerable study of the book, becoming interested beyond any expectation, I wrote to Mr. Sinclair, stating that I had become favorably impressed, and making the somewhat audacious proposal that he should send me all the original materials for a fresh study by the individual standards and through the particular methods of a professional investigator. One can think of several reasons which might make the most honest and confident man hesitant to assent to such a proposal, coming from one whom he had never seen, and who might for all he knew have a set of prejudices which after all would cause him to make a lawyer’s argument against the case. I was really surprised that the bundle of materials was sent as quickly as it could be gotten together.[[2]]
Among the objects in mind were: (1) To study the materials in their strict chronological order, day by day. The mode of presentation in Mental Radio was to give some of the most striking results first, then many more that were more or less classified according to subjects and aspects. This is effective for popular reading but not satisfactory to the serious student. (2) To see if there were signs, in any part of the results, of profiting from normal knowledge, whether consciously or subconsciously acquired, of what the “agent” had drawn. Mr. Sinclair took this theory into account and quite decidedly killed it, but it was my duty to try it out anew by my own processes, with the same rigor shown in relation to my own wife and my daughter in The Psychic in the House. Later, in summary fashion, these tests will be set forth. (3) To try out other theories to account for the ratios and degrees of correspondence between “original drawings” and “reproductions” in the Sinclair experiments, such as involuntary whispering and chance coincidence. (4) To make a large number of guessing tests on the basis of the Sinclair originals, both as a means of deciding whether the “mere coincidence” theory is tenable (as aforesaid) and, if it should prove otherwise, in order to make a rough measurement of the disparity between telepathic results and those of guessing. (5) In the event that there appeared to be no reasonable escape from conclusion that telepathy is displayed by the material, to ascertain (a) whether the telepathic faculty with Mrs. Sinclair was constant, vacillating, progressively constant, or what; (b) whether the telepathic impressions came to her in the form of ideas, images, names or in more than one fashion; (c) whether any further hints as to the mental processes involved could be discerned or any particular pieces of information isolated which might be helpful in this field of study. (6) Finally, to urge readers to institute experiments of their own, and to give amateurs some directions as to procedure. If many could be persuaded to start “games” of this character with their friends, doubtless favorable subjects could be discovered or developed. Attention being called to these persons, series of tests could be made with them under conditions against which none of the old objections could be offered.[[3]]
The Sinclair experiments are treated first in this Bulletin, since they are its chief subject. The drier Historical Notes, presenting a sketch of the first steps in methodical research relating to alleged Thought-Transference, with summaries of some of the classic series of tests, particularly such as are based upon drawings, are relegated to Part Two. The more earnest and methodical students of such matters will prefer to read that first.
Mr. Upton Sinclair, about fifty-two years old when his book Mental Radio was issued, is, as everyone is supposed to know, one of the leading novelists of the United States. His stories are all, or nearly all, characterized by an intense purpose. To those who claim that art should be exercised only for art’s sake this may be obnoxious. But from the point of view of this examination of his book purporting to prove telepathy, the fact that his novels also attempt to prove something, on the basis of studies made by him, is quite in his favor.[[4]] Whether he has in fact proved the thesis of his respective tales is not within our province to determine; we do propose rigidly to analyze and review his claims to have proved telepathy.
Mr. Sinclair is a Socialist, and a very active and prominent one; he has been Socialist candidate for Congress in New Jersey and later in California, besides having been Socialist candidate for the United States Senate and for Governor in the latter-named State. Political prejudices or predilections should be strictly excluded from the minds of readers of the book or this review of it.[[5]] It is another gratifying indication that Mr. Sinclair was not deterred from publishing Mental Radio by the solicitations or irony of influential friends in his political group, for the scientific spirit is in part compounded of courage, honesty and candor.
Mrs. Sinclair, née Mary Craig Kimbrough, somewhere about forty-five years old when the experiments afterwards published took place, is the daughter of a retired judge, bank president, and planter of Mississippi.
The reader may judge of the quality of her mentality by reading Appendix 1. That is, in part, the reason that it is printed. It is a piece of writing by Mrs. Sinclair shortened according to permission given. Almost immediately after my suggestion that the experimental materials should be sent for examination, they were bundled up and sent, together with some stray scraps, among which was this unfinished piece of manuscript which, as it proved, the Sinclairs did not know had been included. In spots the composition may be a bit diffuse and repetitious, but the woman really thinks and reasons, which is more than many do.
There is in it a sincerity, earnestness and intensity of desire to know, which can hardly be counterfeited. Its writer fairly rivals Descartes in her determination to find some salient and secure spot from which to start in her quest. But in a manner she goes back farther than Descartes, at least she splits his ultimate in two. She is satisfied with “I am,” not because “I think,” but because “I am conscious of thinking”; but she does not so readily grant the “I think.” She wants to know, “Am I doing all the thinking I am conscious of?”
In fact, the document is so intense in its eagerness to penetrate the secret of personality in relation to its cosmic environment that it is almost febrile. At least in its first pages there is something pathological. To paint life with such dark colors and to dwell so upon its “discouragements” is not an indication of perfect health.
And yet it is certain that the writer is not self-absorbed. The painful reactions of the kind which she has experienced, the torture produced in her by the existence of so much in life that seems unmeaning and disappointing, she supposes to be quite general with her fellow-men and so feels a great pity for them. Whereas, in my belief, while more are complaining than are happy or contented, it is common to fret because of income taxes, and inability to wear such fine clothes as those of Mrs. Jones, and cold weather and squalling cats, and such sordid matters, but uncommon to be agonized by the desire to fathom the mysteries of the human spirit.
The main points of what Mr. Sinclair tells us of the characteristics of his wife are to be discerned in this revealing manuscript. He says “She has nothing of the qualities of naïveté and credulity. She was raised in a family of lawyers and was given the training and sceptical point of view of a woman of the world. ‘Trust people, but watch them,’ was old Judge Kimbrough’s maxim, and following it too closely has almost made a pessimist of his daughter. In the course of the last five or six years Craig has acquired a fair-sized library of books on the mind, both orthodox, scientific, and ‘crank.’ She has sat up half the night studying, marking passages and making notes, seeking to reconcile various doctrines, to know what the mind is, and how it works, and what can be done with it.” This began with a breakdown of health when she was about forty years old. “A story of suffering needless to go into; suffice it that she had many ills to experiment upon, and mental control became suddenly a matter of life and death.” This breakdown, it is said, resulted directly from “her custom of carrying the troubles of all who were near her.” She is intensely sympathetic, we are told. “The griefs of other people overwhelm Craig like a suffocation.”[[6]]
The book relates several spontaneous experiences of Mrs. Sinclair when she was young and which, taken together, strongly indicate telepathy. Her husband rightly remarks that it is the number of such incidents which is impressive; one or two might well be coincidence. Still the coincidence of being suddenly impressed that Mr. B, whose home was three hundred miles away, was at her home where he had never been, and turning back from a drive and finding him there, even taken by itself, is a very striking one. Mr. Sinclair himself is witness to the fact that she suddenly, for no known reason became very much worried about Jack London, insisting that he was in mental distress, whereas it proved that London committed suicide at about that time.
Such incidents indicate that her experimental successes were not solely the result of the method which she explains at length, but that she had an inborn gift from early childhood. Her interest in that gift seems to have been much stimulated by her acquaintance with “Jan,” the “young hypnotist” of Appendix I, whose advent is probably not in that narrative placed in chronological order. She became convinced that he showed evidence of telepathy, and tried in turn to ascertain what he was thinking or what he was doing when absent, and became convinced that many times she had been successful. Also, “Craig has been able to establish exactly the same rapport with her husband,” who relates instances. These were “written down at the time.” So few even intelligent people do make immediate record of such things that we would have suspected, even if he had not informed us on another page, that he has made a considerable study of the literature of psychic research.
One of these incidents we shall particularly notice here, and that because Mr. Sinclair himself has either not noticed all of its evidential value, or has not fully called attention to it. * * * [Refer to Figs. 14a and 14b and experiment.]
Probably Mr. Sinclair thought it would be sufficiently obvious to the reader that the first drawing is as similar in shape to a clover blossom as a person having no gift for drawing would be likely to make it, in addition to the correspondence of color. But it should also be remarked that the second drawing is like the flower-head of the American aloe, as one may see by comparing it with the cut shown in the article entitled “Agave,” in the Encyclopedia Britannica. The article provokingly fails to tell us what are the colors of the flower, but the cut shows that it is at least much lighter above than below.
Another incident is remarkable for its apparent revelation of subconscious mechanisms. Seemingly here Mrs. Sinclair not only got an impression of what her husband had drawn, but it was modified by something he was then reading, and that by the aid of memories from childhood. His drawing represented a football, “neatly laced up” (Fig. [15]). Hers (Fig. [15a]) shows a band of exactly the same shape on a figure not so very far from that of a football, but with an extension suggesting the head of an animal, and a line suggesting a leg. And she wrote “Belly-band on calf.” * * *!
“Wishing to solve the mystery!” But why should the lady have felt that there was any mystery in her drawing and script, any more than in the generality of her results? But she evidently did, or she would not have asked the question. It is one of the most interesting features of this experiment that she seemed to feel that something else than the original drawing or her husband’s thoughts about it was influencing her impression, and suspected that this something was his contemporaneous reading.
Sometimes the apparent telepathy was exercised in a dream, especially during its latter stage, while the lady was gradually emerging into full consciousness.[[7]]