Although this was not the first appearance of the term 'Extrasensory Perception' in print, this book was the first one which brought ESP to the foreground. Even in Mental Radio, which preceded this study (in 1930), there was no general agreement as to what to call the phenomena.

J. B. Rhine, the author of this study, and the organizer of the famous Duke ESP laboratory, attempted to create standardized terminology and methodologies (such as the Zener card deck) for studying these mental abilities. Rhine empiricized the study of ESP; instead of making wild speculations about ghosts, angels, spirits, or the akashic plane, he started from the point of view of a scientist. Rhine asked questions such as: How do we measure this in a controlled experiment? Can we reproduce the results? What parameters of the experiment can we alter, and what effects of this can we measure?

Rhine found that some individuals could reliably demonstrate telepathy and clairvoyance in laboratory settings. The subjects did better when alert, and therefore, not surprisingly, caffeine seemed to improve ESP. Accuracy did not seem to drop off at distance (even hundreds of miles), which probably means that it is not some kind of inverse-square-law radiation. Alas, 'Mental Radio!' Mental Internet is probably closer to reality...

ESP is very puzzling, and more common that might be expected. Decades later, we are still waiting for some kind of explanation of this from conventional science. 

 

 

Click to enlarge
Frontispiece:
MAY FRANCES TURNER
JUNE BAILEY
A. J. LINZMAYER
T. COLEMAN COOPER
J. G. PRATT
Mr. Pratt (assistant) was photographed while experimenting.

p. i

Extra-Sensory Perception

J. B. RHINE, Ph. D.

Associate Professor of Psychology

Duke University

With a Foreword by

Professor WILLIAM McDOUGALL, F.R.S., D.Sc., M.B.

And an Introduction by

WALTER FRANKLIN PRINCE, Ph.D.

Research Officer, B.S.P.R.

[MARCH, 1934]

BOSTON SOCIETY FOR PSYCHIC RESEARCH

 

 

 

CONTENTS

 

 

 

FOREWORD

By Professor William MacDougall

THE work reported in this volume is the first fruit of the policy of naturalization of "psychical research" within the universities. It goes far to justify that policy; to show, first, that a university may provide conditions that will greatly facilitate and promote this most difficult branch of science; secondly, that the university may benefit from such liberal extension of its field of studies. On the former head I will say nothing; it is for the instructed public to judge of the value of this work. On the second head, I may properly testify here that to the best of my judgment, the group of students who have taken part in this work have reaped in a high degree the chief benefits which scientific research has to offer, namely, discipline in careful experiment and observation, and in logical thinking, practice in faithful cooperation, and the gratification of pushing back the bounds of knowledge, in this case in a field of peculiar difficulty and significance. There has been no hysteria, no undue excitement, among this group of students, nor has this work unduly pre-occupied their minds to the detriment of other activities.

Though it would be unseemly for me to pronounce upon the value of this work, I may properly say a few words to help the reader to form his estimate of it. On reading any report of observations in the field of psychic research, invariably there rises in my mind the question—What manner of man is this who so reports? And I find that my estimate of the validity and value of the report depends very largely upon the answer to that question. A report may appear to be above serious criticism; and yet a brief acquaintance with its author may suffice to deprive it (for me, at least) of all claim to serious consideration or, on the other hand, may convince me that its statements must (provisionally at least) be accepted at their full face value. I do not stop to explain or to justify this attitude of mine. I believe it is well justified and to be very general among all who are interested in this field. Therefore I may assume that readers of this report who have no personal acquaintance with the author will welcome a few words from me about him and some of his collaborators, while the author, recognizing the purity of my motive, will pardon my intrusion on his privacy.

In introducing Dr. Joseph Banks Rhine to the reader, I must premise that almost all I have to say of him is true also of Dr. Louisa E. Rhine, his wife. Both have taken their doctorates in biology at the University of Chicago, both had begun promising careers as university teachers of

p. vi

biology, and both have resigned these. When Dr. J. B. Rhine burnt his boats, gave up his career in biology and came over to psychology and psychical research, it was with the full consent, endorsement, and parallel action of his wife—a unique and remarkable event in the history of this subject. For the Rhines are no monied amateurs. They are working scientists without worldly resources other than their earnings. When the facts become known to me I was filled with admiration and misgiving. Their action seemed to me magnificently rash. I had always plumed myself on indifference to worldly considerations; but here was a young couple who made me seem small, made me seem to myself a cautious, nay, a timid worldling. Nor was this action prompted by some overwhelming emotional and personal interest, such as the desire to make contact with some lost loved one. The motivation was, so far as I could and still can judge, the desire to work in the field that seemed to contain most promise of discoveries conducive to human welfare. Indeed in this age when we erect monuments to the boll-weevil, send up prayers for drought, pest and plague, and are chiefly concerned to make one ear of wheat grow where two grew before, it is difficult to retain enthusiasm for botanical research, unless one is a scientist of the peculiarly inhuman type.

The action filled me, I say, not only with admiration but also with misgiving; for it appeared that I was in some measure unwittingly responsible. The Rhines, in pondering the question—What is most worth doing? To what cause can we give ourselves?—had come upon my Body and Mind and upon others of my writings, especially my plea for Psychical Research as a University Study; * and had determined to join forces with me at Harvard. Accordingly, Dr. Rhine arrived on my doorstep in Cambridge, Mass. one morning in June 1926, at the moment when I had completed the bestowal of my family and worldly possessions in two taxi cabs, with a view to begin a journey round the world, a journey which, owing to unforeseen alteration of my course, terminated in North Carolina. Nothing daunted, the Rhines spent the year at Harvard studying psychology and philosophy and in making acquaintance with Dr. W. F. Prince and the Boston S. P. R. And in the fall of 1927 they turned up at Duke University, as determined as ever to work in the field of psychic research, and, if possible, within the walls of a university. It was then I began to realize what manner of man I had to deal with. I found J. B. Rhine to be a ruthless seeker after truth, almost, I may say, a fanatical devotee of science, a radical believer in the adequacy of its methods and in their unlimited possibilities. He is one of those whole-hearted scientists for whom philosophy and theology are but preliminary skirmishings beyond the frontiers of scientific knowledge; one of those who will not admit a

 

p. vii

sphere of valuation in which philosophy must always retain her relative independence and prerogatives and responsibilities, no matter how greatly the province of science may be extended. When he comes into my room and finds me reading a book on metaphysics or religion, he scratches his head and (though he is too polite to utter his misgivings) wonders whether, after all, I, in my latter years, am becoming a renegade.

He has devoted much thought and study to the history of science and to the problem of scientific method. And he manifests in every relation the scrupulous honesty and regard for truth that befit such a student. Yet, though a fanatic devotee of science, he is very human in the best sense. He has again and again shown that he is ever ready to share his resources of every kind with those who are in need; a multitude of students, both men and women, bring their troubles to him, knowing that they will receive tactful sympathy and sound advice. And this power to inspire and attract the confidence of young people has been of no little value from the point of view of the researches reported in this volume. For it has overcome the initial difficulty of inducing students to participate in and to give time and effort to research of a kind which is looked at askance by the world in general and by the scientific world especially. The manifest sincerity and integrity of Dr. Rhine's personality, his striking combination of humane sympathy with the most single-minded devotion to truth have induced in his collaborators a serene confidence in the worthwhileness of the effort, and have set a tone which, to the best of my judgment, pervades the group and contributes an important, perhaps an indispensable condition, of the striking successes here reported.

I cannot pretend to be intimately acquainted with all of those who have participated in the experiments. But I have some acquaintance with all of them and my impressions are entirely favorable. Four of those who have taken a prominent part have worked for some years in our department as senior and graduate students, and of them I can speak, with entire confidence, as students of the highest class, in respect of general training and ability, of scientific devotion and of personal integrity.

A question that must rise in the mind of many a reader of this report may be formulated as follows:—Granting that Dr. Rhine is all that is here claimed for him, is it not possible that his collaborators have deceived or tricked him, perhaps with the benevolent desire to reward with positive results so earnest a seeker? My reply is that, if the experiments involved only some two or three collaborators and that during a brief period only, neither Dr. Rhine nor I could perhaps adduce any completely convincing objection to such interpretation; but in view of the considerable number of participants, often unknown to each other, and of the prolonged period of participation (extending in some cases through several years) it becomes wildly improbable that any such conspiracy of deception can have been

p. viii

successfully maintained throughout and under the constant variation of conditions, without any trace or indication of it coming to light. To which it may be added that the experimenters have been at special pains from the beginning to exclude by the conditions maintained, any possibility of deception, conscious or unconscious.

Finally, I would testify that I have "sat in" at the experimentation on a number of occasions, and have in some instances personally conducted the experiments, and have failed to discover either any indication of lack of good faith or any serious flaw in the procedures followed.

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Footnotes

vi:* A lecture included in the Symposium published by the Clark University Press in 1926, The Case for and Against Psychical Research, and reprinted in the recently published volume, Religion and the Science of Life.

 

 

INTRODUCTION

By Dr. Walter Franklin Prince

My acquaintance with the author of this book dates from 1926. I early learned that he was keen to discover the indicia of deception within the field of psychic research, and at the same time, while open-minded, only to be convinced of any of its claims by a slow process of evidence and sound reasoning. My estimate of the qualifications of an ideal psychic researcher is very exacting, and already in that year, before I had any idea that he would find opportunity as a psychologist to devote much attention to psychic research, I earnestly wished that he might be able and inclined to do so.

The momentous study here presented has what may be called, metaphorically, three dimensions. First, there is the unprecedently long period, about three years, during which experiments have been conducted until they reached a vast number. Secondly, we find that the co-operation, observation, and critical judgment of many persons both within and without the teaching staff of the psychological department of Duke University have been applied to the experiments at various stages. Thirdly, we note the waxing rigor of the main stream of the experimentation, and the diversity of methods employed not simply to pile up proof to astronomical proportions, but to isolate telepathy and clairvoyance, each from the other, to find out what measures enhanced and what detracted from results, and to acquire data to test this and that hypothesis of the processes involved. Many admirable series of experiments for extrasensory perception have been made by men of science and other men of university education and high mental endowment, especially since 1880, with some of earlier date. But in none of the particulars stated above can any of them compare with the great task accomplished at Duke University.

To be sure, some of the series of trials reported in this book rest, prima facie, upon the good faith of unwitnessed experimenters. The author could well have afforded to omit all of these, for the host of experiments witnessed under rigid conditions are enormously sufficient to bring the odds against chance to tremendous figures. But he wished to tell the whole story. Pearce's 15,000 witnessed trials under diversified conditions alone would have been abundantly ample upon which to rest the case as regards proof. But it is certainly worth while to know if some subjects can get results better when alone and others can not and how the general progress under the two conditions compares. Besides, our

p. x

confidence in the reported unwitnessed results in some cases is established by finding that their subjects did as well or better under inspection. And it is hard to discredit those persons whose unwitnessed results declined against natural wish or displayed under analysis, as will be shown, striking analogies, which could not have been foreseen by the subjects, with results received under inspection. But let the reader discard all these which he will, there remains a huge block of evidence against which it would appear that skepticism must batter in vain.

"Unconscious whispering" has had a larger place in psychical research discussion than it ever deserved, but in this report conditions under which, even though near the agent, the percipient could not have heard any such, and separation in different rooms and buildings, have banished this ghost. The discovery that some of the subjects did better at considerable distances is a noteworthy one. Some other writers have reported the reverse, but it may be that their subjects were too abruptly removed to a distance or that some other factor caused them to lose confidence.

This report agrees with most others in the effects of mental comfort, calm, and abstraction in promoting success. But here much experimentation was done, expressly to measure the effects of various disturbances. So far as subjects were ill, their scores fell. But why should anyone not guess (that is, with all sensory data for judgment excluded) as well when ill as when well? Success declined when the percipient against his own desire was kept at the task until it was highly distasteful. But why should pure guessing be thus put at a disadvantage? At first, when conditions were suddenly changed as by the interception of a screen, scoring would fall, later to rise, and so also when a visitor was brought in while a series was in operation. A certain drug markedly and consistently lowered the ratio of "hits," another drug tended to restore the ratio. There is no conceivable way by which pure guessing could thus be affected. There appears to be no explanation save that the various disturbances, including the administering of a certain drug, unfavorably affected that mental state most productive of extra-sensory perception, and that another drug mysteriously affected that state favorably.

The results of a single experiment may have great evidential force. Such an experiment has been lately reported by Mr. Theodore Besterman, a very careful and conservative researcher. 1 The subject was Ossowiecki, with whom Dr. E. J. Dingwall, an experienced investigator whose bent is toward skepticism, several years ago had a result almost equally amazing. Mr. Besterman employed precautions the avoidance of which baffles the mind to imagine. The odds against chance in his case cannot be mathematically evaluated, but it is safe to say, after considering all the factors involved, that they could not be less than a million to one.

 

p. xi

Nevertheless, probably many a scientific man, in spite of the critical character of the reporter, the precautions described, etc., will think there was some hocus-pocus in this case. But how can he suppose that a group of intelligent men, some of them belonging to a University staff, could, through a period of three years, all the while intent on sure conditions, where such conditions were so easy to devise and apply and where the described precautions were so multiplied and diversified, be all the time fooled by each other? Learned men have been obfuscated by tricks played in dark seances, with various crippling conditions prescribed by the medium. But the Duke University work was done in the light with all conditions under command of the experimenters. If the reader will peruse carefully, he will find that any explanatory suggestion which his imagination can furnish regarding a particular series of tests is effectually demolished by the conditions of many another series.

It is indeed extraordinary that so many good subjects were discovered. I am inclined to attribute this to three main factors; (1) the general harmony amid which the work was done from the first, the perhaps unprecedented fact that the President of the University, the entire teaching staff of the psychological department from Dr. McDougall down, and other experimenters were open-minded and sympathetic to the unusual experimentation; (2) the tactful methods of approaching and dealing with subjects, maintained by Professor Rhine and shared by others; (3) the gradual selection and segregation of hopeful subjects, and supreme patience in the continuance of tests with these.

Perhaps, in addition to Rhine's control experiments on the mathematics of probability, a specimen exhibit of what mere guessing can do will be worth while. I started out with the idea of discovering clairvoyant ability in my own office. After a number of non-significant experiments with another person, I set out to test Pure Clairvoyance on myself alone with one set of Zener cards, shuffled after every five trials, and unseen. After one thousand, I had made 209 hits, an excess of only 9 above mean expectation, quite insignificant in so large a number of trials. My second thousand, done in the same way, yielded 201 hits, but 1 in excess of mean expectation. The first 500 of a third thousand was done in the same way, but, since nothing but chance seemed to be in operation, I then employed a device which guaranteed chance only, and the third thousand showed 199 hits, or 1 below mean expectation. The fourth thousand, with guaranteed chance results, resulted in 193 hits, or 7 below. It might now seem as though there had been a very slight clairvoyance in the first two sets, so I went through a fifth thousand, again by the method allowing clairvoyance to enter, through some hundreds working slowly, through others more swiftly, neither method showing an advantage. But my hits for

p. xii

this thousand were fewest of all, being 188, or 12 below. And the total for five thousand trials was 990, a deviation from mean chance expectation (below) of but 10, which for so large a number is quite insignificant of anything but chance.

There were, of course, groups in the course of the experiments where scores shot up, and other groups where they rapidly dropped, but in the course of a thousand, these vagaries, so to speak, nearly ironed out. Taking the hundreds consecutively, twice I made as many "hits" as 35 in a hundred and once as few as 9. In the first thousand, five sets (that is, of the 5 cards) were guessed with entire accuracy, in the second none were, though both were done by the P.C. method. In each of the third and fourth thousands, I got one 5-card set entirely right, and in the fifth, two sets. Were there gleams of clairvoyance in the first thousand particularly? Possibly, but probably we have only high points of chance, which must be expected. At any rate, we have in five thousand a deviation of 10 from mean expectation, indicative of chance only.

Contrast these results with those of Dr. Rhine's selected percipients! Even though there should come criticism of any results obtained by a higher order of mathematics announcing successively the mounting values of X, it would amount in the end merely to the exchange of one astronomical figure for another. The mere statistics in many tables giving the average number of successes per 25 through various long runs of trials, and not less the statistics of effects produced by various species of purposed disturbances and of recovery therefrom, given in the same terms of number of successes per 25, would seem to make the notion of chance entirely out of question.

While the chapters of this treatise are in proper logical sequence, I am tempted to suggest that some lay readers might, before reading the book as a whole, acquire a taste for its contents by first reading certain selected portions. Let them place a book-mark for reference at page xiv in order that they may at any point consult the table for the meaning of abbreviations. Also, as one will find frequent evaluations of a series, or of total results to a date, in terms of "X" (an arbitrary sign equivalent to "D/p.e.") which signifies the odds against chance, I advise him (unless he is a mathematician) to keep a book-mark at page 32, so that when he finds the statement that X is 13 or 20 or 30 or a higher figure he can turn to that page and seeing that in the progress of X from 1 to only 9, it has already reached an anti-chance valuation of more than 100,000,000 to 1, he can better understand what the statement implies. Mathematicians think it rather silly to demand to know exactly the valuation of X 15, etc., for if one is not satisfied with odds of a hundred million by what would he be satisfied? Then let pages 109-113 be read, and then Chapter VII, describing the nature and analyzing the results of Pearce's great number

p. xiii

of 15,000 witnessed experiments. By this time, if not before, the reader should have acquired zest to carry him through the whole book, from the first to the last word.

Comments, questions, and criticism from any readers, and especially such as are of scientific standing, are welcome, and may be addressed either to the author at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, or to the Boston Society for Psychic Research.

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Footnotes

x:1 Proc. S. P. R., Part 132, 1933.

 

 

PREFACE

THERE has been considerable deliberation prior to the publication of this work on perception-without-the-senses. It is three years since it was begun, and more than two years since the results began to be so striking as to move some of my interested friends to urge publication. These two years have been spent in making sure "ten times over", in testing and re-testing at every reasonable point of doubt, and in going on beyond the point of proof into the discovery of natural relationships or laws that will make the capacity for this mode of perception more understandable and acceptable to those who must understand somewhat before they can believe. Now that we are fast approaching the mark of 100,000 trials or individual tests—will doubtless be beyond it before this leaves the press—it seems entirely safe to publish these experiments. We need, of course, to have them discussed before a larger forum.

It is to be expected, I suppose, that these experiments will meet with a considerable measure of incredulity and, perhaps, even hostility from those who presume to know, without experiment, that such things as they indicate simply cannot be! But this inevitable reactionary response to all things new and strange, which is as old as the history of science, already shows many signs of decline, as the scientific world turns a "scientific attitude", one of open-minded but cautious inquiry, toward the facts. Even so short a period as the last ten years has been one of marked transition. In it we have had many features contributing to popular interest and enlightenment. There have been broadcasting telepathy experiments by radio in England and America; the popular presentation of some remarkable evidence in Upton Sinclair's "Mental Radio", with introductions by William McDougall (here) and Albert Einstein (in Germany), (and with a splendid analysis by Walter Franklin Prince in B.S.P.R. Bulletin XVI); popular tests for telepathy conducted by the Scientific American Magazine; favorable expressions by Freud, Whitehead and other prominent intellectuals in their lectures; and other features and facts that reach and impress the minds of the people at large. There is today much more natural inquiry as a consequence and less of the older blind intolerant credulity—for or against.

The work reported here is motivated largely by what may be termed an interest in its philosophical bearing—by what it can teach us of the place of human personality in nature and what the natural capacities are that determine that place. Ever since reading, ten years ago, of the telepathy experiments carried, out by Professor Lodge when he was a young Professor of Physics at Liverpool I have been bent upon this quest. The somewhat unknown and unrecognized features of mind such as are

p. 2

studied here promise more of such "philosophical fruit" as that mentioned than any other inquiry I can conceive of. Hence their deep fascination for me. By a cautious study of the unusual we come most readily into an understanding of the more usual and common.

But it is a "philosophy for use" that these studies are meant to serve. The need felt for more definite knowledge of our place in nature is no mere academic one. Rather it seems to me the great fundamental question lying so tragically unrecognized behind our declining religious system, our floundering ethical orders and our unguided social philosophies. This work is, then, a step, a modest advance, in the exploration of the unrecognized boundaries and reaches of the human personality, with a deep consciousness of what such steps might lead to in the way of a larger factual scheme for a better living philosophy.

It is the more general purpose behind this work to push on with caution and proper systematization into all the other seriously alleged but strange phenomena of the human mind. By proceeding always from already organized territory out into the phenomena on trial, never lowering the standards of caution in the face of the desire to discover or the need to generalize, the field of these unrecognized mental occurrences can and will ultimately be organized and internally systematized to a degree that will simply compel recognition. How long this may require one cannot estimate; but it is the only truly scientific course to take.

.     .     .     .     .     .     .     .

I began using the term "Extra-Sensory Perception" (E. S. P.) at first with the more tentative meaning, "perception without the function of the recognized senses". But as our studies progressed it gradually became more and more evident that E. S. P. was fundamentally different from the sensory processes, lacking a sense organ, apparently independent of recognized energy forms, non-radiative but projectory, cognitive but un-analyzable into sensory components—all quite non-sensory characteristics. It seemed to extend the word "sensory" ridiculously to use it to cover this phenomenon. Hence the present interpretation is rather that E.S.P. is, frankly, "perception in a mode that is just not sensory", omitting all question of "unrecognized". I think we have progressed this far with reasonable certainty.

"Extra-Sensory Perception" is preferable, I think, to "Supernormal Perception" because of the ambiguity of the term "Supernormal" in psychology and because "super" is taken by many, in spite of careful definition to the contrary, to imply an hypothesis of the explanation. In fact, "extra" (as "without") includes "super" (as "above") and we do not yet know if "above" is what we want to state about the process; i.e.,

p. 3

[paragraph continues] "above" may be the wrong "direction" or rating. "Metagnomy" is defined in much the same way as the use here of Extra-Sensory Perception; but I prefer the more obvious and simpler term, even though it is longer. E.S.P. keeps the natural association with sensory perception more before the mind as one reads; i.e., it normalizes it as a psychological process more than does the strange and less obviously associative term "metagnomy". There the need is to keep in mind that E.S.P. is a natural mode of perception and an integral part of mental life, as this work helps to demonstrate. "Cryptesthesia", the name given by the eminent physiologist, Richet, means a hidden sense, and for this there is no evidence; it calls, moreover, for a vibratory theory of transmission which its author proposes. This, too, has all the facts against it. Let us merely say, if we wish to be noncommittal, as is safest, of course: "perception by means that are outside of the recognized senses", and indicate this meaning by "Extra-Sensory Perception" or E.S.P. We may then think of it, as I do, as a non-sensory type of phenomenon.

In the use of the words "Telepathy" and "Clairvoyance" I take their accepted usage of "perception of the thought or feeling of another (telepathy) or of an objective fact or relation (clairvoyance) without the aid of the known sensory processes".

The convenience of the reader will, it is hoped, be served by the arrangement of the chapters Part I is introductory, general, historical and technical. Part II is a report of the evidence and the conditions followed, with little else added. If the reader is antagonistic to the field, he might better begin with Part II. Chapter 3 of this Part gives a narrative account of the experiments pretty much in the order in which they occurred and gives enough of the results to permit a sort of survey of the work. This may be as far as some readers will care to go into the data. But the careful scientific reader will find in the chapters of Part II that follow the full statement of the results and conditions, arranged around the individual subjects themselves. In Part III these results are generally discussed and, to a great extent, reassembled around the major points of importance, and their larger bearing is considered. This discussion is naturally the more debatable section of the report and the reader may judge for himself as to the acceptability of the suggestions and conclusions, since the supporting facts are given or else are referred to by table number and chapter.

.     .     .     .     .     .     .     .

Finally, I wish to give the strongest utterance to an expression of gratitude that these experiments have been permitted in a Psychological Laboratory of an American University. I am doubtful if there is any other

p. 4

[paragraph continues] Psychological Department on this side of the Atlantic or even, perhaps, in the world, where they would even have been permitted, much less encouraged and supported, as these have been. For this I have to thank Professor William McDougall, Head of the Department, whom I might characterize as the "presiding genius" in the work. But his own attitude of encouragement and interest has been shared by others of my colleagues in the Department, notably by Dr. Helge Lundholm and by Dr. Karl Zener, who have themselves, like him, given me valuable aid and counsel. Dr. D. K. Adams, the remaining Departmental colleague, has kindly cooperated as a subject and given some promise of himself demonstrating E.S.P. ability.

It has, I think, been a unique and noteworthy feature that, from the sympathetic and enlightened interest of the President of Duke University, Dr. W. P. Few, and of Mrs. Few, down to the hundreds of students who kindly served as subjects, a very gratifying spirit of cooperation and open-mindedness has marked the trail of these three years of research, this spirit centering chiefly in the contributions and attitudes of the colleagues already mentioned, in the valuable work of certain of the graduate assistants of this Department, namely, Miss Sara Ownbey 1, Mr. C. E. Stuart and Mr. J. G. Pratt, who have been my principal assistants, and of the major subjects who have spent hundreds of laborious hours in monotonous experimentation. At every point we have met only with friendly encouragement and willingness to give assistance. Thus the scope of the work was greatly broadened. It is with pleasure and gratitude that I acknowledge this help, the extent of which will be very apparent through the chapters to come.

The financial assistance given me from the Department Budget and the University Research Fund is also gratefully acknowledged.

To Dr. Walter Franklin Prince, whom I am proud to recognize as my principal teacher in Psychic Research, I am grateful for help and criticism, especially from the standpoint of publication, and for his generous acceptance of this work for the Boston Society Series. My wife, Dr. Louisa E. Rhine, has given me great assistance and encouragement throughout, but especially in the writing of this report. I cannot over-appreciate her share in whatever of merit it may have.

 

 

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Footnotes

4:1 Miss Ownbey has been married since the above writing, and is now Mrs. George Zirkle.