180 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ual or by attendant circumstances, and these subjective sensations are 

 to him genuine, objective realities. This state of trance is not infre- 

 quent, but is most common and constantly occurring ; it is not con- 

 fined to any one class or sex, but all human beings are subject to it; no 

 degree of intelligence or of culture suffices to insure exemption ; it comes 

 often when it is least looked for, and its easiest victims are of all per- 

 sons most unsuspicious and ignorant of its nature. Trance is en- 

 tirely a subjective state, external causes acting as excitant only, and, 

 of all the numberless exciting causes none are more influential in the 

 average individual than the witnessing of strange or exceptional events ; 

 and as the testimony of those who are even partially entranced in 

 regard to what they have seen, or heard, or experienced, or done, is 

 of no value, and as under the excitement of the emotions produced by 

 the real or supposed occurrences of unusual or marvelous events large 

 numbers of witnesses are liable to be simultaneously and similarly en- 

 tranced, therefore human testimony becomes practically of the least 

 value in just those crises and situations where evidence both for the 

 purposes of science and law is most needed. The influence of psychical 

 contagion, or the excitation of emotions through involuntary imitation, 

 one person carrying the excitement to another, and so on, through vast 

 audiences, is of special import in relation to human testimony : excite- 

 ment spreads through a multitude in arithmetical ratio, proportioned 

 to the numbers ; a crowd is a multiplier of force, and through the stimu- 

 lus of sight and sound generates a storm of emotion ; out of an insig- 

 nificant cause each individual in his turn unconsciously adding to the 

 original excitement, just as in the Holtz or Gramme electrical ma- 

 chines each new revolution adds to the force obtained by the first. A 

 large audience may be agitated with laughter or melted into abundant 

 tears by a story which, when told to an individual, causes perhaps but 

 a feeble smile or mildly suffused eyes. Average testimony, therefore, 

 in regard to unprecedented, or marvelous, or wondrous phenomena, as 

 the manifestation of supposed new forces, or strange symptoms of dis- 

 ease, or the raising of the dead, or any unusual appearances in Nature, 

 on the earth, in the air, in the sky such as would be likely to excite 

 the emotions of awe, of wonder, of reverence, or of fear, in the pres- 

 ence of large assemblages can have no scientific value; a whole army 

 may be entranced, and may see and hear what is dreaded or expected. 



Under conditions that strongly excite the emotions, no force of 

 numbers and no concurrence of testimony can give any value to testi- 

 mony ; a million ciphers are worth no more than a single cipher. The 

 greater the number of eye-witnesses, the greater their liability to be 

 deceived through the influence of mental contagion. 1 



But, aside from trance and allied states which constitute the cul- 

 mination of the involuntary life the value of human testimony is im- 



1 For more detailed analyses of this subject, the reader is referred to my monograph 

 on the "Scientific Basis of Delusions." 



