THE THOUGHT-READING WAGER.
"NONSENSE dies hard," says Mr. Labouchere, and he is perfectly right ; but no nonsense dies harder than the nonsense of infatuated prejudice. Amongst literary men, those who know Mr. Henry Sidgwick and Mr. Labouchere,- the two who wrote to the Thus on the Thought-reading wager,—very few, we suspect, would prefer Mr. Labonehere's judgment on a matter of evidence of this kind to Mr. Sidg- wick's. Mr. Sidgwick has as cool and sceptical a temperament as Mr. Labouchere himself, but he has in. addition a very much larger knowledge of the subject under investigation, and knows how absolutely childish it is to speak of such a power as some persons impute to Mr. Bishop as a miraculous and all but incredible thing. We say this without having formed any definite opinion ourselves on the subject of Mr. Bishop's powers, and, indeed, with a strong prejudice against a man who mixes up common conjurors' tricks with the professed attempt to illustrate obscure psychological powers of this nature. If he is, as we have been told that he is, a gentle- man who never gained a penny by the use of such power as he possesses,—one intellectually interested in the question of Thought-reading, but not in the least professionally interested in that question,—then we should certainly suppose that in the accounts of the case, as the various correspondents of the Times state it, there is no pretence at all to impute fraud ; but, then, in that case, why on earth does he try the patience of his audience by illustrating common sleight-of-hand? Of course, if we have been misinformed, if Mr. Bishop is gaining anything by the public experiments in which he plays a principal part, the matter must be put on a totally different footing. It is always reasonable to be incredulous about the claim laid to ex- traordinary powers by those who gain a good deal by being supposed to possess those powers ; and we should regard Mr. Labouchere's non-appearance at St. James's Hall on Tuesday week as perfectly excusable, if he really regarded Mr. Bishop's refusal to be limited to any particular subject—Mr. Firth, M.P. —as the refusal of a professional gentleman who wanted to evade a test to which he felt himself unequal. But if, as many declare, Mr. Bishop has nothing to lose by failure, and nothing to gain by success, except the pleasure of establishing the existence of a certain rare class of psychological facts which are declared to be impossible by the dense sagacity of men of the world, we think that Mr. Labouchere ought to have gone to St. James's Hall, and judged for himself whether or not he could not agree with Mr. Bishop's Committee on some one "subject" satis- factory both to himself and to Mr. Bishop. His evasion of that test ought, we think, in that case to count for more on the one side, than Mr. Bishop's refusal to have his power judged absolutely by his success or failure in any one case, should count for on the other side.
However, the real interest of the wager is less in the test itself,—for comparatively few people can know how far Colonel Statham is above all imputation of collusion, on the one hand. and how far, even if he be above all imputation of collusion, the conditions were so rigid that Mr. Bishop had no other means than " thought-reading " of discovering the number of the note, on the other,—than in the extreme difficulty of proving an extra- ordinary fact to the satisfaction of the general public which it seems to demonstrate. We can imagine, indeed, a test which might perhaps be sufficient. Suppose twelve of the gentlemen whom Mr. Labouchere named in his first letter,—the letter printed in the Tinter of Friday week,—viz., Sir John Lubbock, Sir Lyon Playfair, Sir Wilfrid Lawson, Mr. Dillwyn, Mr. W. Fowler, Mr. Jacob Bright, Mr. Brodrick, Lord Edward Caven- dirh, Mr. Albert Grey, Sir Henry Holland, Mr. Cohen, and Mr. A. J. Balfour, were all to experiment with Mr. Bishop, each of them writing down for himself a number of not less than five figures, and keeping his mind upon the figures thus written down, while Mr.Bishop attempts to read his thought on the subject, then- we should say that if the experiment succeeded fully, say in two cases out of the twelve, even though it should fail more or less in the other ten, the existence of a power not to be accounted for by guessing, would be demonstrated beyond question. But then it would be almost impossible to get these conditions fulfilled. Some of these gentlemen might probably decline to mix themselves up in a matter to which they would think ridicule likely to attach, and even if they served, and if the test succeeded in two or three cases out of the twelve, we are disposed to think that its failure in several cases, and still more in a majority of cases, would be excuse enough, with most of the public, for attaching no importance at all to the results of the experiment. The truth is that there is nothing so impossible as to persuade ordinary men of the world that what they call " common-sense " is no sufficient guide to the obscurer phenomena of human nature.
We have said that we have ourselves formed no opinion at all as to the nature of Mr. Bishop's feats, not having had the means of doing so, and that we feel a strong prejudice against the conglomerate of conjuring tricks and professed thought- reading which Mr. Bishop exhibited to his audience at St. James's Hall. But this we will say, that to all who have studied the subject, evidence literally abounds of the existence in rare cases of powers of thought-reading much more remarkable than any alleged in the case of Mr. Bishop. Now, as we do not like to make this sort of statement without any kind of verifica-
tion, we will take a modern instance, from the writings of a Bristol medical man, Dr. Davey, who published a paper in the Journal of Psychological Medicine, for April, 1881 (Part 1 of Volume VII. of the Journal), which records the case of a patient of his, investigated by him in concert with two other Bristol medical men —Dr. Andrews and Dr. Elliot. Dr. Davey records the results of his investigation in this rather obscure medical journal of which no one has ever heard half as mach as the world has heard lately of Mr. Bishop. Here is his description of Mrs. Croad's state :—
" In 1870, it is stated, she became totally blind ;' in the following year deaf, and in 1874 speechless. The paralysis, which was limited to the lower extremities, involved, in 1879, the upper limbs ; but at this time the loss of sensation and motion is limited to the left arm, the fingers and thumb of the left hand being but partially affected. The right hand and arm have recovered their once-lost functions. She is now able to articulate, though with difficulty, from, as it appears to me, a tetanic rigidity of the temporal and masseter muscles, by which the month is kept, to a large extent, fixed and closed. It was in October last [i.e., October, 1880] that I was asked to see Mrs. Croad. I found her sitting in a semi-recumbent position on a small bed- stead, her head and shoulders resting on pillows. The eyelids were fast closed, and the left arm and hand resting by the aide. The knees I found then, as they are still, bent at an acute angle, the heels closely pressed to the under and upper parts of the thighs Since October, and through the months of November and December, 1880, I have subjected Mrs. Croad to many and various tests with the view of satisfying myself as to the truth or otherwise of the state- ments given to the world of her blindness, sense of touch, and mar- vellous sympathies. To my near neighbours—Drs. Andrews and Elliot—I am much indebted. The various tests referred to were witnessed by them in my presence, and with the effect of assuring ns that she (Mrs. Croad) was and is enabled to perceive, through the aid only of touch, the various objects, both large and small, on any given card or photograph. After an experience extending over some nine or ten weeks, during which the `tests' were many times re- peated, and, now and then, in the presence of several medical and non-medical (ladies and gentlemen) friends, there remained (I believe) not the least doubt of this transference of sense' from the eyes of Mrs. Croad to her fingers and the palm of her right hand. It need not to be supposed that I and others were content to believe in Mrs. Croad's blindness, and to take no specific precautions against any possible trick or deception—far from this. On solicitation, she very kindly assented to be blindfolded, after a very decided fashion ; and so blindfolded, that neither deception on her part nor prejudice nor false judgment on ours were—either the one or the other—possi- ble. The blindfolding was accomplished thus : a pad of cotton wool being placed on each orbit ; the face was then covered by a large and thickly-folded neckerchief ; this was tied securely at the back part of the head, and—even more than this—more cotton wool was pushed up towards the eyes, on either side of the nose. Not content, how- ever, the aid of two fingers of a bystander were called into requisi- tion, and with these a continued pressure was kept up, during the `testing' outside and over the neckerchief and wool and above the closed eyes. At this stage of the proceedings the room was, on two different occasions, very thoroughly darkened. Under such circum- stances it was the testing commenced, and continued to the end ; the result being, as theretofore, in the highest degree, conclusive and satisfactory. The transference of sense from one organ to another as an acquired and spontaneous condition of being must, on the evid- ence here adduced, be accepted as a demonstrated and certain fact. I would state here, that on receiving a picture card or a photo' from a bystander she (Mrs. Croad) places it on and about the chin or mouth, and perhaps draws it across the forehead, but the minute examination of the card is, apparently, the work of the fingers of the right hand. These several acts are, for the most part, followed by a quiet and intense thought, a well-marked concentration of mind on the picture or whatever it may be, when, after a short time, she writes on a slate kept near her, a description—sometimes a full and detailed one—of the card, its colouring, and the several objects thereon. I have seen some forty or fifty picture-cards and photo- graphs described by Mrs. Croad at different times with various de- grees of accuracy, during the whole period I have known her. Occasionally her rapid and precise perception, or, if you prefer the word, conception, of the picture, and of the many yet minute and trifling objects going to form its entirety, is really startling. I have but seldom seen her wholly at fault, though she has met with her failures."
Now, this seems to ns a much more marvellous power than that of thought-reading ; but this is not all. Mrs. Croad appears to have had the very power which Mr. Bishop attributes to himself, in a very much higher degree :—
" Sitting quietly by or near to Mrs. Croad, my attention has been again and again rivetted on the manner in which Miss Croad holds communion with her mother. Miss Croad does very certainly move her fingers over and about the face of her mother, but few, if any, letters or words are formed by her. Watching her very narrowly on several occasions, I felt at length assured that Miss Croad'a com- munications were altogether unlike those made by either visitors or friends. The latter named formed letters, and with these words, and so conversed—if the expression be allowed—with Mrs. Croad ; but it is not so with her daughter. Impressed with the fact as above stated, I spoke to Miss Croad of it, when she told me that as the rule it was requisite simply that she put herself in a close or personal contact with her mother to convey to her what was wished, or to give her a knowledge of this or that, as the case may be Now so marked a mental sympathy or concordance as this is altogether without or
outside the experience of most of us ; and it is therefore well worthy the attention of those present who have the courage to investigate,
what I may well call, unorthodox medicine As a further illustration of Mrs. Croad's peculiar and clairvoyant gifts, it should be stated that at my second interview with Mrs. Croad, and in the presence of Dr. Andrews and others, certain of my own personal and private convictions on a particular subject became, as it would seem, in a strange and exceptional manner, known to Mrs. Creed. She asked me if I would allow her to tell me a secret in my own life history, and would I be offended if she wrote it on her slate. I re- plied No.' That written on the slate was and is a fact, than which nothing could or can be more truthful and to the point. Dr. Andrews is prepared to verify this ; the others present on this occasion were but little known to me."
Here we have one of the most remarkable amongst numbers of instances of thought-reading, known to all students of the more abnormal facts of psychology,—an instance encountered by steady-going professional men, in the ordinary course of their pro- fession; and never produced on platforms fur the amusement of the crowd at all. Dr. Carpenter, in his remarkable work on " Mental Physiology," has admitted the probability of the existence of some such power as this, on the evidence in his own possession ; indeed, Mr. Bishop declares that Dr. Carpenter has verified the real existence of some kind and degree of this power in Mr. Bishop himself, and has stated his belief that Mr. Bishop's powers have been tested under strictly scientific conditions. Now, we do not pretend to have any specific opinion of our own upon Mr. Bishop's case, and have absolutely no right to any such opinion. But we do say that nothing is more marvellous than the assumption of a mere man of the world like Mr.
Labouchere, that because the phenomena have never come within his knowledge, they are incredible. To him, apparently opinions like Dr. Carpenter's are not even entitled to a respect- ful recognition, for he does not refer to them in his second letter of Wednesday last, unless it be in the remark that "nonsense dies hard." A t all events incredulity dies hard ; though, per- haps, in Mr. Bishop's case there may be good reasons why it should.
It is very possible, not to say likely, that those who came away from St. James's Hall convinced, as apparently was Professor Lan- kester, that Mr. Bishop had simply juggled successfully, are right.
But undoubtedly there are plenty of facts on which eminent medical men have some without having any motive whatever for credulity, and to which they have been compelled to give their attestation, such, for instance, as those we have quoted from Dr. Davey 's address to the Bath and Bristol Branch of the Medical Association, far more remarkable, and far more difficult to bring under any of the known laws of nature, than the achieve- ments of Mr. Bishop, even if these achievements be what Colonel Statham and Colonel Trench affirm, and what Mr. Labouchere denies.
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