On February 10th, thirty experiments having intervened, the agent made two such men, facing each other in boxing attitudes (Fig. [107]). It will be seen that just two vertical lines, longer than any of the others, enter into their composition. The longest lines in what the percipient drew are also two and vertical. And she got a confused notion of the legs and arms, each with its angle for knee or elbow. She failed to get any circles (Fig. [107a]).
All through the period covered by the book, and past it until the 300th experiment, there is no other line-and-circle man original. The percipient in the same number of experiments made one drawing in which head and body are represented by a circle and an ellipse, and the rest of the man by single lines. And she made one fairly well drawn head with hair, the rest of the figure represented by single lines.
A STUDY IN “ANTICIPATIONS”
Series of February 11, 1929
We have been pursuing the rigorous rule of estimating a percipient drawing by its correspondence or lack of correspondence with the agent drawing then in hand. Only when Mrs. Sinclair announced in advance that a described drawing would come in a series, and it actually came, have we given weight to an anticipation. Such an instance was that of the snow and sled drawing of February 8th. This is not by any means to say that other “anticipations” have not had weight, as a matter of fact. In some of the instances exhibited in Mental Radio the original drawings represented objects of such character that it was extremely unlikely that there should be a near correspondence among the half dozen or dozen reproductions constituting the whole series, or in fifty guesses.
Again, there could be a series with so many of these correspondences out of order that one is mathematically[[24]] and logically compelled to acknowledge that there was anticipation. Such a series is that of February 11, 1929.
1. Agt., a molar tooth; Per., an ellipse containing 19 tiny circles. This is emphatically a failure compared with the contemporaneous original drawing. However, see No. 12. Before the drawing was made, the percipient wrote “First see rooster. Then elephant.”
2. And now Agt.’s drawing was an elephant, as far back as but lacking hind legs. And Per. wrote “Elephant comes again. I try to suppress it, and see lines, and a spike sticking some way into something.” And she draws two vertical lines, related to each other in ribbon fashion, what looks like a pin with circle for head, crossing the band through a slit indicated by two short vertical lines, and below the “spike” two widely separated vertical lines. The “spike” crosses what I have called a ribbon exactly as the elephant’s tusk crosses his trunk, the round eye of the elephant has moved slightly to form the head of the “spike,” and the vertical lines below may stand for a feeling that something (really the front legs) should be below. We have some warrant for our interpretation from the words “Elephant comes again. I try to suppress it.” Had she not tried to suppress it (because of the erroneous notion that it is but a memory of the elephant impression of Experiment 1), it is fair to assume that she would have tried to draw an elephant. She “tried to suppress” the animal, but his eye and “spike,” which was really “sticking into something,” but not in the manner drawn, seem to have persisted. (See Figs. 66, 66a.)
3. And now Agt. did draw a rooster. Both elephant and rooster, with which she was impressed at Experiment 1, had come by the time Experiment 3 had been reached. This is rather too much for “chance coincidence,” especially as the Sinclairs do not have an elephant among their domestic pets. But this is not all. As Per. not only announced an elephant in advance but got details of the elephant when that animal actually was in hand as the original, so not only was a rooster announced in advance but when the original is a rooster, Per. gets correspondences. She writes “I don’t know what, see a bunch, or tuft clearly. Also a crooked arm on a body. But don’t feel that I’m right.” What she drew was remarkably like the rear three-quarters of the rooster, the “tuft” representing its tail, “the crooked arm” its two legs in conjunction. (See Figs. 67, 67a.)
4. Agt., a table; Per., “Flower. This is a very vivid one. Green-spine-leaves like century plant,” and a corresponding drawing with tall flowering spike in the center. (See Fig. [68a].) A flat failure, but wait for Experiments 7 and 11.