The Worthington advance. [volume] (Worthington, Minn.) 1874-1908, 1902-01-10


wild animals merely ~ the animals
staring At them. Forintsance, Bell,
lin his recent book, t'Tangweera, "
says: Presently I felt as i some 1
one were lookong at me, and, rails
ing my head, I saw q large puma
standing ten yards away. = B 2'- 8 +s S$
With d view to ascertaining just
what degree Of truth, there was in
this popular theory-a theory which,
however Psychologists have been apt
hitherto to dismiss from their minds
a. a manifest aberudity-Dr. Hiram
M. Stanley Of Philadelphia recently
conducted some interesting expert
ments. %;Is TX.
He asked q young man who had
been unusually confident OF his
power to arrest the attention OF q
person who was not looking at him,
to stand, unknown. to A, the per-
son on whom the experiment was
to be tried, behind a bookcase, and
to carry on his operations through
q carefully concealed loophole.
:. The subject Of the experiment., A,
was placed in the most favorable
position. She was engaged in copy
ing some writing which Dr.: Stanley
had given her and was, of course
wholly ignorant of the experiment.
The copying work was purely me-
chanical and required no special
mental exertion. The peephole was
some four feet from the place where
A was writing, and was directly
facing her. Nevertheless, despite
all these favorable circumstances,
and, much to the young mans ex-
pressed disgust and irritation, he
was unable to..attract the attention
of A or to disturb her in any way.
Several other experiments con-
Quoted by DR.. Stanley we're followed
by similar results, and he now looks
upon the theory as a popular fallacy.
The truth of the whole matter
seems to be that you can attract an
others attention by merely staring
at him olny' when that other is
aware Of your presence in the room.
At least all the experiment so far
have gone to show that that is the.
case.
That fact seems to take the whole
element of magic out of the phe-
1iomenon, if such it may be called,
for, when the other person know
that you are in the room he will out
of mere curiosity, although some
times almost Involuntary, raise his
eyes to see what you are doing quite
Independently of anything you may
For instance, both Of you are in the
same room, your mpanion engaged
in reading and you in writing: = You
cease your work and stare at your
companion by endeavoring to at
tract this attention by the ''power
Of your eyes,
In few minutes your companion
will undoubtedly raise his eyes and
you will possibly think that your
staring process has been the sole
cause of it. But the fact of the mat
ter is that,when you started to gaze
at your companion you of necessity
stopped your writing, you stopped
your writing, and it was the sudden
cessation of the scratching of your
pen which caused your companion
to look up, and not the peculiar
power of your eyes," as you may
have supposed.
When you examine the circum-
stances surrounding any one. of these
phenomena you will always find
that there was some effective cause
other than the power of the eye to
produce the result If it wasn't the
cessation of the scratching, tEen it
was the sudden stopping of the rock
ing of chair or of the process OF
eating.
Then, again, it is we'll known that
nobody reads continuously without
raising his eyes, however absorbing
the book maybe. The eyes get tired
and nature insists upon changing
the focus. The curiosity Of the
reader as to what the other occu-
pants of the room are doing Ii, how
ever, the most likely cause of the
seeming phenomen. -San Francisco
To11