[19]. When she reached the snake original, the percipient made no drawing, but wrote “Man running fast.” If the reader will turn back to Experiment 2 of February 8th, where the original was a snake, he will again find the cat’s tail and living things fleeing. I more than ever suspect that buried in her subconsciousness is the memory of some incident wherein a snake and a cat and something else in flight figure.
[20]. O—original drawing. R—reproduction. Quoted matter was written by Mrs. S as a part of her result.
[21]. Statistically this must be rated a failure. But it is quite possible that in fact there is an underlying real connection. Perhaps Mrs. S had read the life of Napoleon, and had been aware that he was by education primarily an artillerist, and that the increased and peculiar use of artillery was the chief distinctive feature of his campaigns. If so, it is quite possible that the idea of cannon, struggling for emergence in her mind, by association of ideas got sidetracked to Napoleon, and became expressed in “Black Napoleon hat and red military coat.” I have not discovered what the uniform of Napoleon’s artillerists was; his infantry, at any rate, wore coats brilliantly faced with red.
[22]. Let it be understood that there were reproductions rated as Suggestive, Partial Successes or even Successes, where there was no such “correspondence.” That is to say, the reproduction might not recognizably represent any living thing, might even be indeterminable as to its nature, and yet so notably imitate the leading features of the original (though omitting something necessary for identification) as to give it one grade or another of ranking otherwise than Failure.
[23]. Here the original was not a drawing but a “red flower” that Mr. Sinclair was simultaneously reading about.
[24]. Mathematically, that is, on the basis of a large number of counted experiments in guessing.
[25]. Unless by “involuntary whispering,” a theory to be attended to later.
[26]. There was one experiment with drawings. One of the Danish experimenters drew a candlestick, with a lighted candle in it. The other in response drew what in the cut looks like a crooked milk-bottle with a short curved line proceeding from one end and two short curved lines proceeding from one side. The latter says he meant it for a cat, but does not know why he furnished it with only two “legs.” The only use made of this drawing in the pamphlet is to compare it with a selected and very poor example from the Richet series and to assert that it is as good a reproduction. The utmost I should grant for the Richet drawing is that, regarded as one of a series containing a number of far more impressive ones, it is Suggestive, and the most I could grant for the “cat,” is that it may possibly be Slightly Suggestive. But did Hansen and Lehmann think there was any resemblance between their reproduction and original? If so, how did they know that there was no thought-transference and why did they not continue to experiment with drawings? Were they afraid that if they did, they might have an intractable problem on their hands? But if they thought there was no real resemblance, what possible weight had their failure against a series of experiments wherein a large percentage of the reproductions beyond question did notably resemble the originals?
[27]. S.P.R. Proceedings, VI, 164–5.
[28]. Professor Sidgwick declared that the whispering of himself and his colleagues was certainly voluntary, and that there was no success otherwise.