tional ability, like that of individuals, is specific and not general; then it is attained only in those fields to which serious study and thought are given. At all events, the German belief regarding the behavior of civilized nations toward her barbarous acts grew out of uncriticised experience the animal method. And the acceptance of uncriticised experience is adaptation to events as they come to us.

Experience is a filing-case from which a man draws reports from his past life. And the analogy goes further. He selects from the files that for which he is looking. If one wants to believe something one will find ample justification in one's memory records. A significant psychological corollary is that another man with essentially the same "experience" will draw the opposite conclusion. In discussing questions of efficiency with business men the writer has found them differing vitally regarding matters of policy about which they should have agreed did “ experience" have objective validity. The disagreement was not in the facts but in the interpretation of them and in the attitude toward them. This last is important because the mental attitude ends by altering the facts themselves. If a man expects a plan to succeed the chances are that he will carry it through, and if one anticipates failure one is quite certain to be gratified. Unbelievers are often surprised at the experiences of followers of occult phenomena. The explanation is, of course, that believers see, hear, and feel what they are expecting. "Do you never have the feeling of having previously existed in another form?" a theosophical devotee once said to the writer. To the reply, "Never, madam," came the astonished exclamation, "That is strange! I often do!" Prophecies, again, fulfil themselves for their advocates. Believers in the miraculous cures by relics or mind produce the cure if there is nothing serious the matter-by their belief. Primitive man, who was convinced that injury to his clay image would cause his death, fulfilled his fate because he lost his

nerve; and, in more recent times, Charles Kingsley, speaking through Mr. Leigh, says: "I have seen, and especially when I was in Italy, omens and prophecies before now beget their own fulfilments, by driving men into recklessness and making them run headlong upon the very ruin that they fancied was running upon them."1 "Where there's a will there's a way" may not always be true, but it is a good mental attitude to bring the desired result. No one who did not believe in ghosts ever saw one, and visible spirits vanished with the coming of science, except in groups where science has not yet penetrated. The new knowledge that attends scientific investigation alters experience.

Experience is evidently a treacherous guide because it is likely to give what one is seeking. "I have tried putting children on their honor and letting them govern themselves, but it has failed," said a teacher recently. Of course it did. He expected failure and arranged the details so that it had to fail. Another teacher replied that he had used the plan for ten years and could not get along without it. This confidence was the reason for his success. The Colorado penitentiary system which has transformed the prison and made the roads of the State would fail under a less enthusiastic believer than Warden Tynan.

The trouble is not with experience but with the experiencer. He gets what he is looking for and so does not question the result. A variety of meanings may be observed in most experiences, and the one selected is likely to be taken either from unwillingness to undergo the effort of thinking or from emotional bias, which, again, is favored by native indolence. Spiritualistic materialization illustrates uncriticised, submissive adaptation from the side of perception. One medium has said that whenever she gives a séance, the stories told afterward grow, and always to her advantage. They grow so that when they come back to her she can hardly recognize her own work. "It

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is a fact," she says, "that believers are so anxious for tests that they always help out, if they be believers, in the way that the medium desires they should." This is because the mediums' desires coincide with the wishes of their followers. It is a common experience of lecturers to find an address interpreted in quite contradictory ways by different hearers who read their own views into what was said. A friend has told the writer that he recently gave an address on mind-cures. The lecture was purely descriptive, giving the positions and beliefs of the several "schools." At the close of his address a New Thought advocate, a metaphysical healer, and a Christian Scientist went to the platform to express their pleasure at finding him in their ranks. Yet, so far as he expressed any opinion at all, his intention had been to show that suggestion was the common factor and operating cause in all mind-cures. Here, again, adaptation-accepting appearances and adjusting oneself to them was perfect, but comprehension was negligible.

Another instance of adaptation is the acceptance of succession of events as indicating cause and effect. Shortly after McKinley's first election to the presidency of the United States, potatoes, which had been low, rose to over a dollar a bushel, an advance which was attributed by Wisconsin farmers to his election. The fact that a potato famine occurred, owing to continued droughts in wide potato areas, was ignored.

Coincidences-agreement between events with wholly different causes or conditions, which, accordingly, are not likely to agree again—are often the basis of judgments and opinions, and adaptation is then made to their face value. Coincidence is the explanation of the importance ascribed to numbers by the ancients. Sometimes the coincidence is astonishingly striking. "If to 1794," for instance, "the number of the year in which Robespierre fell, we add the sum of its digits, the result is 1815, the 1 Behind the Scenes with Mediums, by David P. Abbott, 1912, p. 67.

year in which Napoleon fell; the repetition of the process gives 1830, the year in which Charles the Tenth abdicated. Again, the French Chamber of Deputies, in 1830, consisted of 402 members, of whom 221 formed the party called 'La queue de Robespierre,' while the remainder, 181 in number, were named 'Les honnêtes gens.' If we give to each letter a numerical value corresponding to its place in the alphabet, it will be found that the sum of the values of the letters in each name exactly indicates the number of the party." 1

Teachers of psychology are frequently regaled with coincidences seriously offered as "proof" of something that those who relate the stories want to believe. They are the basis of much of the evidence for "reasoning" in animals, and it is probable that not a little of the circumstantial evidence in criminal courts has no better foundation. The success of advertising campaigns, again, may frequently be traced to the same chance agreement of events.

Animals low in the scale accept appearances. To them the world is what it seems to be. They are troubled neither by philosophic nor scientific doubts. They could not do otherwise and survive. If fishes stopped to examine a worm or a fly before seizing it they would starve to death. It is better that they take their chances. Appearances are true to fact often enough to meet their purposes. There are only a few things for which animals must provide— chiefly food and self-protection-and nature remedies their mistakes by rapid and numerous multiplication. The herring lays twenty thousand eggs, and the conger-eel the enormous number of fifteen million annually. It is more economical for nature to provide against annihilation in this lavish way than to make all animals clever. But, as we ascend the animal series intelligence begins to count, and then the offspring are not so numerous. The Principles of Science, by W. Stanley Jevons, 1900, p. 263.

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higher forms have better developed sense-organs, and they interpret more correctly the world in which they live. To them appearances may be deceitful. Foxes are famous for the skill with which they circumvent animals and man, when seeking food or escaping from enemies. In the arctic region they dig down through the snow under the trap, so as to spring it, and then they carry away the bait. The life of both parents and young is now important, because the offspring are not so numerous. Nature is not so extravagant in producing them. So they must be protected by cleverness if a given species is to survive. Far down the animal scale mechanical reactions are the only defense but among the higher forms intelligence has a greater value in nature's market, and in man survival depends only in a slight degree upon physical strength, at least beyond that which is needed to do his work. Intelligence is now the compelling factor.

Man, however, has not developed a method of progress. He does not make it his business to criticise experience. Like the lower animals, he is prone to accept appearances as true to fact. In other words, he continues to use the animal method. To be sure, scientists, as we have said, have a method. They prepare an experiment so as to control conditions, and they eliminate one factor after another that the effect of each in the phenomenon under investigation may be determined. This is man's reconstruction of nature's trial-and-error method, but it is too slow and laborious to satisfy the unscientific. These people want immediate results. So they draw conclusions from limited and uncontrolled observations, and take much pride in what "experience" has taught them. The complacency of "self-made" men in their "experience" is well known. They have taken a heavy responsibility from their teachers and from the Almighty with their boast of being self-made. To be sure, some effort is being made to-day to test experience in matters outside of science.