It should also be remembered that in everyday life recognition is a much more sketchy affair than might at first be suspected. Experiments have shown that in reading, or in viewing a drawing, we do not take cognizance of each individual element; on the contrary our attention flits, so to speak, from point to point, skipping altogether the intervening matter. We thus obtain an outline or skeleton impression which we fill up from our own resources. We actually notice a few salient features and interpolate the rest; hence, for example, the well-known difficulty of “spotting” mis-prints in proofs. This process is perfectly satisfactory for ordinary purposes such as reading, and seldom results in our misinterpreting the symbols before us, and when it does the context usually puts us right. But in dealing with spirit photographs the context, if there can properly be said to be any, is much more likely to put us wrong. The “salient features” which “leap to the eyes” are, in this case, those which suffice to locate a face as belonging to a certain general type, while the details which we fill up for ourselves are just those which are necessary for the identification of a particular individual. Consequently, false recognition is easy provided the general type is all right. The “beauty” is emphatically “in the eye of the beholder.” As “M.A. (Oxon),” a famous spiritualist and a believer in spirit photographs, well said:
“Some people would recognise anything. A broom and a sheet are quite enough to make up a grandmother for some wild enthusiasts who go with the figure in their eye and see what they wish to see.... I have had pictures that might be anything in this or any other world sent to me, and gravely claimed as recognised portraits; palpable old women authenticated as ‘my spirit brother, dead seventeen years, as he would have been if he had ...’ etc.”
But, as usual, the empirical test of experience is the best. Considerations such as those outlined above may be valuable in establishing a priori probabilities, but it is far more important to ascertain whether as a matter of fact people actually do make false recognitions with any frequency. The answer to this has already been given by Mr. Patrick in his account of the Buguet case above.[12] The most striking feature of the case, as he rightly points out, was the way in which witnesses swore to having “unmistakably recognised” the extras they obtained, and stuck to their recognitions in spite of Buguet’s own confession of fraud and his description of the methods employed. In the face of this sort of thing, who will be bold enough to maintain that the recognition factor can be assigned any appreciable weight?
VIII.—Recent Literature
(W. Whately Smith)
Recent contributions to the literature of spirit photography are not very numerous. I may first mention the very thorough exposure by Dr. Walter Prince of the Keeler-Lee-Bocock photographs; this appeared in the Proceedings of the American Society for Psychical Research, vol. xiii., part II, March, 1920. Keeler is a photographic medium who has practised in the United States for a number of years. For the benefit of Mrs. Lee he produced, at a price, a long series of “spirit” photographs purporting to represent the deceased Mr. Bocock in a variety of situations. Test conditions were either wholly absent or absurdly inadequate, and the photographs are, on internal evidence alone, so palpably fraudulent that it is surprising that they were ever accepted at all. The most obvious indication of fraud is the fact that through a whole long series of photographs Mr. Bocock’s facial angle remains the same and identical with that of one of the only two extant photographs of him, no matter what his posture may be or on what occupation he may be represented as engaged. This circumstance clearly points to the use of a single photograph of Mr. Bocock as the basis of all the fakes. The case is not of sufficient importance to be worth discussing at length, but it is an interesting example of the art of critically studying internal evidence and of the almost incredible effrontery of fraudulent mediums.
More important is Mr. Edward Bush’s “Spirit Photography Exposed,” a small pamphlet published by the author as a contribution to the “Nehushtan Crusade.” The object of the latter movement, of which one gathers that Mr. Bush is the leading spirit, is to show that all the physical phenomena of Spiritualism are fraudulent and to expose dishonest mediums. This last object, at least, is admirable, and Mr. Bush is certainly entitled to consider himself “one up” on Hope in the matter of spirit photographs.
Briefly, Mr. Bush laid a trap for Hope by writing to the latter under an assumed name and enclosing a photograph of a living person which he represented as that of his deceased son. Hope returned the photograph and gave Mr. Bush an appointment for a séance, which he attended, still under his assumed name (Wood). He duly received an “extra” in the form of the face portrayed in the photograph which he had sent,[13] together with a “psychograph” beginning “Dear friend Wood”! Any reasonable person will say that Mr. Bush has proved his case, that he laid a trap for Hope and that Hope fell into it as completely as possible. But an apologetic will doubtless be forthcoming from those to whom Hope’s integrity is a cardinal article of faith.
Mr. Bush appears, I may add, to be almost wholly ignorant of fraudulent methods, but he has successfully made good his deficiency in this case by the exercise of a little diplomacy.