said that this is not meant as a reflection on the character or ability of the thousands of prosecuting attorneys throughout the country who are carrying out honestly and well a particularly difficult obligation. Nevertheless, again the law itself cannot be bettered. It does not say that convictions must be reversed if the prosecutor misbehaves, but only that they must be reversed if such misbehavior casts suspicion upon the fairness and justice of the conviction. The rule could not be otherwise. If reversals occur where convictions are clearly just, only the members of the reversing court can be blamed; if the reversals are proper, the state's attorneys must bear the censure.

Parole commissioners too are human, though they hold office through the law. 'Big Jim' Morton was foisted on society, or nearly so, by the Ohio Board of Clemency. Six times he had been convicted of burglary and sentenced to imprisonment and six times he had been paroled or otherwise released from the penitentiary. Only once was he held for more than three years-in California, where he spent three years and a half in jail. Twice he was paroled and once returned to the penitentiary for violation of parole. Once he escaped prosecution for automobile stealing in Minnesota by jumping his bond. After that he robbed a bank in Cleveland. He was later arrested for a minor offense in Toledo; his connection with the Cleveland robbery was discovered and he was eventually convicted thereof. The Ohio supreme court reversed the conviction because he had not been allowed to take certain depositions. On a new trial he was again convicted and was sentenced to from one to fifteen years in the penitentiary. Then he began to ask for parole, on the strange ground that he would like to go to Minnesota or Michigan to stand trial for crimes which he

was alleged to have committed there. Neither Minnesota nor Michigan asked for his release or appears to have desired it. Nevertheless the Board of Clemency held a special meeting and granted a 'conditional release to Michigan authorities, effective if and when called for, out of Ohio forever with no final release.' No official explanation for this was given, though those assigned in the press included the fact that it was too hot in the Ohio penitentiary, that Morton would probably be convicted of robbery in Michigan, and that he had promised to stay out of Ohio.

In due course Morton was delivered to the Detroit authorities. After many continuances it developed that, owing to lapse of time since the commission of the crime, he could not be convicted in Michigan. He refused to plead guilty. (He had promised to plead guilty to the Minnesota charge, but for reasons unknown had not been sent there.) The question became how to hold him longer. He had been 'conditionally released,' to be sure, but what were the conditions? The order of release did not state. He had been released presumably to stand trial in Michigan, and he was ready to stand trial. There seemed to be no strings sufficient to haul him back to Ohio. He was not a fugitive from justice for whom extradition could be asked; he had been voluntarily released 'out of Ohio forever.' A writ of habeas corpus was about to be asked by his attorney and might probably be granted, freeing Morton from any custody. Fortunately for society, the authorities themselves undertook to violate the law, for which they were afterward vigorously criticized in some quarters and by some judges. Three state troopers unexpectedly spirited Morton across the state line, and Ohio authorities locked him up again for a while.

Such a situation could hardly be foreseen or forestalled by the law. We cannot so far step backward as to abolish entirely the parole law. It is therefore to its very human administrators that we must look for avoidance of its abuse.

V

So the tale might run unendingly. Quite recently the writer sat in one of the criminal court rooms of a city sometimes noted for its prompt administration of criminal justice, listening to the arraignment of prisoners. The judge, for a laudable purpose of his own, asked each defendant when he had been arrested. Many had already been in jail for a fortnight, some for a month, awaiting trial. One man had been in jail for six weeks waiting for a chance to plead guilty. As it later developed, he had been given a preliminary hearing as soon as arrested and admitted his guilt. But judgment could not be rendered against him until a formal accusation was made—an indispensable of orderly, recorded procedure. Two weeks went by, however, while he lay in jail, before the facts of his case were sent to the prosecuting attorney. For two weeks more he waited in jail before that busy office could draw up an information and return it to the courts. Still another two weeks he waited before the assignment clerk brought the case up for hearing. At the hearing

the defendant promptly pleaded guilty. And then the judge was compelled to remand him to jail for sentence at a later date, because no one had been notified to look up his history and previous criminal record.

Thus, from the failure of the police to arrest for crime, the failure to prepare the evidence, the failure of the state's attorney to prosecute the case, the failure of the jury to convict, the failure of the courts to sustain a fair conviction, the failure of the parole board to function wisely, to the failure of the governor to withhold his pardon, the inefficiency of the criminal law is a matter of the weakness of the human element through which it must function.

Crime commissions of one sort or another in half the states of the Union are busily gathering data and preparing proposals for revamping the criminal law. May their work prosper! There is everything in the way of fact yet to be learned, and the law needs revision. The danger is in resting content therewith. The situation is unfortunately not one to be cured by the comparatively easy method of a fit of enthusiasm and a bit of legislation at the capitol. It can be really alleviated only when Messrs. Flivverman and Lincoln correct their own failure to show a continuing and helpful interest in the conduct of the officials on whose service they rely.

How wonderful the human mind! It has given us mastery over the animal world and over physical forces stupendous in their might. It promises even to make us masters of ourselves and of our future development. But the possession of this wonderful capacity entails also unfortunate consequences. It leads primitive man into forms of behavior grotesquely absurd and at times not only useless but also harmful - habits of which no animal could ever be guilty. Did any animal ever attempt to kill otherwise than in what seems to be a rational manner?

That cannot be said of the natives of the islands of Melanesia. They seek to destroy their enemies with ghostshooters made of a bit of bamboo stuffed with leaves, a dead man's bone, and other magical ingredients. The magician holds it in his hand, with the open end of the bamboo covered with his thumb, till he sees his enemy; then he lets out the magic influence and shoots his man.

Among the Papuans, when a house is to be built, the preparation begins long before the actual work. A variety of things, which do not seem to us to have any possible connection with building, have to be assembled: a few leaves from the thatch of a house, some ashes from a fireplace, certain things connected with the person of an enemy, a little of his spittle, remains of food showing his teeth marks, trophies such as pieces of the skull of a slain enemy,

I

- certain parts of a wild pig, a snake, the teeth of a dog known to have been very fierce. Only when all these things have been gathered is it wise to begin to cut down the trees for the building. When the poles have been prepared and the holes dug for them, another chapter of queer performances begins: the end of the main post is smeared with ashes mixed with water, and the remainder of the mixture is kept for daubing the men when they go out to fight; the snake is twisted round the lower end of the post; in the hole made for it are put the eyebrows, finger nails, and parts of the tongues of slain enemies.

I shall not weary you with further directions for the erection of a solid house, proof against accidents, in which a family may live happily ever after. I shall add only that every part of the life of the uncivilized - birth, marriage, hunting, the preparation of the game, sowing, reaping, death, burial is regulated by magical and by religious customs regarded by us as altogether ineffectual.

It may seem a matter for wonder that among the first fruits of the great intellectual gifts separating man from the animal should be useless and absurd beliefs and practices, making men look ridiculous by the side of the apparently sensible and reasonable animals! But it requires imagination and powers of invention to create magic. The animal is preserved from errors of imaginative

form of thought.

are

We are not to suppose that, because magic and inferior forms of worship have disappeared from our highest civilizations, the mind has ceased to mislead us into striking and far-reaching errors. I intend to consider in this paper two related forms of illusion. The first is the conviction of the presence with us of a person, although the ordinary indicators of a presence - such as sight, sound, touch absent. Let us call that experience the Sense of Presence. The second is a failure to become aware of the reality of a person actually perceived by the senses; it is, therefore, the reverse of the Sense of Presence. We may call it the Unreality of the Real. The first experience is almost commonplace, in no way indicative of abnormality, and plays an important rôle in civilized humanity, particularly in religion. It is otherwise with the second; it does not come to healthy persons, and it is socially insignificant.

I shall illustrate these two kinds of related experiences by a sufficient number of instances, and then attempt an explanation of them. The same psychological principles will be sufficient to explain them both.

Before proceeding, however, I should like to comment briefly upon the attitude assumed by many persons even by certain philosophers - toward any attempted explanation of things which, for some reason or other, have come to be regarded as mysterious and sacred. No less a personage than William James will provide us with the horrible example of romanticism and misplaced awe which I desire to bring to your attention.

In that famous book, The Varieties of Religious Experience, there is a chapter entitled "The Reality of the Unseen,' in which, among other things,

phenomenon is abundantly illustrated, but no effort is made to explain it. The author's purpose is not to analyze and to understand, but to set forth the wonder and to declare the inadequacy of reason to cope with it. Instead of attempting to do the work that might be expected of the psychologist, he launches into a tirade against rationalism: 'We have to confess,' he writes, 'that the part of it of which rationalism can give an account is relatively superficial. It is the part that has the prestige undoubtedly, for it has the loquacity, it can challenge you for proofs, and chop logic, and put you down with words. But it will fail to convince or convert you all the same, if your dumb intuitions are opposed to its conclusions. . . . Something in you absolutely knows that that result must be truer than any logic-chopping rationalistic talk, however clever, that may contradict it.'

I will take the liberty of saying that this last sentence might have come from the mouth of those who, in long-past centuries, wanted the Giordano Brunos and Galileos to recant their sacrilegious propositions and to stop their impious search after knowledge. We may imagine the cold, unflinching voice of the inquisitor saying, 'Our God-given eyes assure us that the sun turns round the earth. That assurance must be truer than any logic-chopping rationalistic talk, however clever.'

I must not forget to add that the passage I have quoted does not represent William James completely. It expresses only one, or perhaps two, of the several moods or attitudes of this great and many-sided writer: the mood of the scientist acutely conscious of defeat and limitation, and partly discouraged; and the mood of the romantic soul, lover of adventure and mystery.

I think we may proceed and seek to explain even the Sense of Invisible Presence without fear of making discoveries reserved for themselves by jealous gods.

II

I begin with the Unreality of the Real—that is, the failure to believe in the reality of someone whose presence is testified to by vision or some other sense. Confronted with his daughter, an unfortunate neurasthenic father would say, 'It seems to me that she is not my daughter, for if she were my daughter I should experience a great joy.' Another patient, in the presence of her mother, whom she recognizes very well, would nevertheless deny that she was her mother and even affirm that the person before her had no real existence.

This curious impression of unreality, or rather this curious absence of the impression of reality, varies in its extension. At times it bears mainly on one person or on one class of things, or yet upon a period of one's life. In other cases it affects everything, even the sense of one's own existence. Claudine, a patient of Janet, complains that things have become strange, that they have lost their reality. In Lætitia the disturbance spreads to her own self. Reversing Descartes's axiom, she had the audacity to say, 'Of course I think, but I do not exist.' And to Janet, her physician, she would say, 'Why do you want me to speak to you? You do not exist; neither do I. Good-bye.'

This absence of the impression of reality affects not only things actually perceived by the senses but also memories of past experiences. The past is not forgotten, memory remains; but the things recalled, like the things perceived, have lost their reality.

Janet reports very striking instances

of this abnormality. A lady who had suffered throughout her life from neuropathic disturbances married at thirty-eight and enjoyed a few years of happiness. When the husband died fairly suddenly, the unfortunate widow returned to her earlier neuropathic condition. The disturbance took on a particular form. She accused herself of lack of the proper feeling for her husband. 'It seems to me,' she would say, 'that one must feel a peculiar sorrow for the death of a child, of a friend, of a husband. Well, I do not feel any particular sorrow for my husband, that excellent man-his personality escapes me. To have no appropriate sorrow that is revolting and unjust. It is humiliating to live thus heartlessly. And the friendly visits of condolence; friends who come weeping and saying, "I understand your grief, I sympathize with your great sorrow" they are more than I can stand. With whom do they sympathize? I feel no sorrow. It is painful not to be unhappy, and I should be happy if I could be unhappy.'

She searches her memory for past incidents which will bring back to her the affection and the love she knows she had for her husband. The memories come, but there is no life in them; she remains indifferent; they do not have the kind of reality which normally would belong to them. She says, 'I was proud to be his wife. Well, when I think of an outing with him, arm in arm, or of a visit, I do not get even a trace of pride or satisfaction. I try to imagine that he is going to come in - I remain indifferent. I think that he will never again come into this room again I remain indifferent. It is as if my memories were not about him, as if they were not about myself.'

There is no need of adding other instances; the main features of these curious experiences have appeared