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+Project Gutenberg Etext The Unknown Guest, by Maurice Maeterlinck
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+The Unknown Guest
+
+by Maurice Maeterlinck
+
+Translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos
+
+January, 2000  [Etext #2033]
+
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+Project Gutenberg Etext The Unknown Guest, by Maurice Maeterlinck
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+
+THE UNKNOWN GUEST
+
+BY MAURICE MAETERLINCK
+
+
+
+
+Translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+1
+
+My Essay on Death[1] led me to make a conscientious enquiry into
+the present position of the great mystery, an enquiry which I
+have endeavoured to render as complete as possible. I had hoped
+that a single volume would be able to contain the result of these
+investigations, which, I may say at once, will teach nothing to
+those who have been over the same ground and which have nothing
+to recommend them except their sincerity, their impartiality and
+a certain scrupulous accuracy. But, as I proceeded, I saw the
+field widening under my feet, so much so that I have been obliged
+to divide my work into two almost equal parts. The first is now
+published and is a brief study of veridical apparitions and
+hallucinations and haunted houses, or, if you will, the phantasms
+of the living and the dead; of those manifestations which have
+been oddly and not very appropriately described as
+"psychometric"; of the knowledge of the future: presentiments,
+omens, premonitions, precognitions and the rest; and lastly of
+the Elberfeld horses. In the second, which will be published
+later, I shall treat of the miracles of Lourdes and other places,
+the phenomena of so called materialization, of the divining-rod
+and of fluidic asepsis, not unmindful withal of a diamond dust of
+the miraculous that hangs over the greater marvels in that
+strange atmosphere into which we are about to pass.
+
+[1] Published in English, in an enlarged form, under the title of
+Our Eternity (London and New York, 1913)--Translator's Note.
+
+
+2
+
+When I speak of the present position of the mystery, I of course
+do not mean the mystery of life, its end and its beginnings, nor
+yet the great riddle of the universe which lies about us. In this
+sense, all is mystery, and, as I have said elsewhere, is likely
+always to remain so; nor is it probable that we shall ever touch
+any point of even the utmost borders of knowledge or certainty.
+It is here a question of that which, in the midst of this
+recognized and usual mystery, the familiar mystery of which we
+are almost oblivious, suddenly disturbs the regular course of our
+general ignorance. In themselves, these facts which strike us as
+supernatural are no more so than the others; possibly they are
+rarer, or, to be more accurate, less frequently or less easily
+observed. In any case, their deep-seated cause, while being
+probably neither more remote nor more difficult access, seem
+to lie hidden in an unknown region less often visited by our
+science, which after all is but a reassuring and conciliatory
+espression of our ignorance. Today, thanks to the labours of the
+Society for Psychical Research and a host of other seekers, we
+are able to approach these phenomena as a whole with a certain
+confidence. Leaving the realm of legend, of after-dinner stories,
+old wives' tales, illusions and exaggerations, we find ourselves
+at last on circumscribed but fairly safe ground. This does not
+mean that there are no other supernatural phenomena besides those
+collected in the publications of the society in question and in a
+few of the more weighty reviews which have adopted the same
+methods. Notwithstanding all their diligence, which for over
+thirty years has been ransacking the obscure corners of our
+planet, it is inevitable that a good many things escape their
+notice, besides which the rigour of their investigations makes
+them reject three fourths of those which are brought before them.
+But we may say that the twenty-six volumes of the society is
+Proceedings and the fifteen or sixteen volumes of its Journal,
+together with the twenty-three annuals of the Annales des
+Sciences Psychiques, to mention only this one periodical of
+signal excellence, embrace for the moment the whole field of the
+extraordinary and offer some instances of all the abnormal
+manifestations of the inexplicable. We are henceforth able to
+classify them, to divide and subdivide them into general, species
+and varieties. This is not much, you may say; but it is thus that
+every science begins and furthermore that many a one ends. We
+have therefore sufficient evidence, facts that can scarcely be
+disputed, to enable us to consult them profitably, to recognize
+whither they lead, to form some idea of their general character
+and perhaps to trace their sole source by gradually removing the
+weeds and rubbish which for so many hundreds and thousands of
+years have hidden it from our eyes.
+
+3
+
+Truth to tell, these supernatural manifestations seem less
+marvelous and less fantastic than they did some centuries ago;
+and we are at first a little disappointed. One would think that
+even the mysterious has its ups and downs and remains subject to
+the caprices of some strange extra mundane fashion; or perhaps,
+to be more exact, it is evident that the majority of those
+legendary miracles could not withstand the rigorous scrutiny of
+our day. Those which emerge triumphant from the test and defy our
+less credulous and more penetrating vision are all the more
+worthy of holding our attention. They are not the last survivals
+of the riddle, for this continues to exist in its entirety and
+grows greater in proportion as we throw light upon it; but we can
+perhaps see in them the supreme or else the first efforts of a
+force which does not appear to reside wholly in our sphere. They
+suggest blows struck from without by an Unknown even more unknown
+than that which we think we know, an Unknown which is not that of
+the universe, not that which we have gradually made into an
+inoffensive and amiable Unknown, even as we have made the
+universe a son of province of the earth, but a stranger arriving
+from another world, an unexpected visitor who comes in a rather
+sinister way to trouble the comfortable quiet in which we were
+slumbering, rocked by the firm and watchful hand of orthodox
+science.
+
+4
+
+Let us first be content to enumerate them. We shall find that we
+have table-turning, with its raps; the movements and
+transportations of inanimate objects without contact; luminous
+phenomena; lucidite, or clairvoyance; veridical apparitions or
+hallucinations; haunted houses; bilocations and so forth;
+communications with the dead; the divining-rod; the miraculous
+cures of Lourdes and elsewhere; fluidic asepsis; and lastly the
+famous thinking animals of Elberfeld and Mannheim. These, if I be
+not mistaken, after eliminating all that is in, sufficiently
+attested, constitute the residue or caput mortuum of this
+latter-day miracle.
+
+Everybody has heard of table-turning, which may be called the A B
+C of occult science. It is so common and so easily produced that
+the Society for Psychical Research has not thought it necessary
+to devote special attention to the subject. I need hardly add
+that we must take count only of movements or "raps" obtained
+without the hands touching the table, so as to remove every
+possibility of fraud or unconscious complicity. To obtain these
+movements it is enough, but it is also indispensable that those
+who form the "chain" should include a person endowed with
+mediumistic faculties. I repeat, the experiment is within the
+reach of any one who cares to try it under the requisite
+conditions; and it is as incontestable as the polarization of
+light or as crystallization by means of electric currents.
+
+In the same group may be placed the movement and transportation
+of objects without contact, the touches of spirit hands, the
+luminous phenomena and materialization. Like table-turning, they
+demand the presence of a medium. I need not observe that we here
+find ourselves in the happy hunting-ground of the impostor and
+that even the most powerful mediums, those possessing the most
+genuine and undeniable gifts, such as the celebrated Eusapia
+Paladino, are upon occasion--and the occasion occurs but too
+often--incorrigible cheats. But, when we have made every
+allowance for fraud, there nevertheless remains a considerable
+number of incidents so rigorously attested that we most needs
+accept them or else abandon all human certainty.
+
+The case is not quite the same with levitation and the wonders
+performed, so travelers tell us, by certain Indian jugglers.
+Though the prolonged burial of a living being is very nearly
+proved and can doubtless be physiologically explained, there are
+many other tricks on which we have so far no authoritative
+pronouncement. I will not speak of the "mango-tree" and the
+"basket-trick," which are mere conjuring; but the "fire-walk" and
+the famous "rope-climbing trick" remain more of a mystery.
+
+The fire-walk, or walk on red-hot bricks or glowing coals, is a
+sort of religious ceremony practiced in the Indies, in some of
+the Polynesian islands, in Mauritius and elsewhere. As the result
+of incantations uttered by the high priest, the bare feet of the
+faithful who follow him upon the bed of burning pebbles or brands
+seem to become almost insensible to the touch of fire. Travelers
+are anything but agreed whether the heat of the surface traversed
+is really intolerable, whether the extraordinary power of
+endurance is explained by the thickness of the horny substance
+which protects the soles of the natives' feet, whether the feet
+are burnt or whether the skin remains untouched; and, under
+present conditions, the question is too uncertain to make it
+worth while to linger over it.
+
+"Rope-climbing" is more extraordinary. The juggler takes his
+stand in an open space, far from any tree or house. He is
+accompanied by a child; and his only impedimenta are a bundle of
+ropes and an old canvas sack. The juggler throws one end of the
+rope up in the air; and the rope, as though drawn by an invisible
+hook, uncoils and rises straight into the sky until the end
+disappears; and, soon after, there come tumbling from the blue
+two arms, two legs, a head and so on, all of which the wizard
+picks up and crams into the sack. He next utters a few magic
+words over it and opens it; and the child steps out, bowing and
+smiling to the spectators.
+
+This is the usual form taken by this particular sorcery. It is
+pretty rare and seems to be practised only by one sect which
+originated in the North-West Provinces. It has not yet perhaps
+been sufficiently investigated to take its place among the
+evidence mentioned show. If it were really as I have described,
+it could hardly be explained save by some strange hallucinatory
+power emanating from the juggler or illusionist, who influences
+the audience by suggestion and makes it see what he wishes. In
+that case the suggestion or hallucination covers a very extensive
+area. In point of fact, onlookers, Europeans, on the balconies of
+houses at some distance from the crowd of natives, have been
+known to experience the same influence. This would be one of the
+most curious manifestations of that "unknown guest" of which we
+shall speak again later when, after enumerating its acts and
+deeds, we try to investigate and note down the eccentricities of
+its character.
+
+Levitation in the proper sense of the word, that is to say, the
+raising, without contact, and floating of an inanimate object or
+even of a person, might possibly be due to the same hallucinatory
+power; but hitherto the instances have not been sufficiently
+numerous or authentic to allow us to draw any conclusions. Also
+we shall meet with it again when we come to the chapter treating
+of the materializations of which it forms part.
+
+
+THE UNKNOWN GUEST
+
+CHAPTER I. PHANTASMS OF THE LIVING AND THE DEAD
+
+1
+
+This brings us without any break to the consideration of
+veridical apparitions and hallucinations and finally to haunted
+houses. We all know that the phantasms of the living and the dead
+have now a whole literature of their own, a literature which owes
+its birth to the numerous and conscientious enquiries conducted
+in England, France, Belgium and the United States at the instance
+of the Society for Psychical Research. In the presence of the
+mass of evidence collected, it would be absurd to persist in
+denying the reality of the phenomena themselves. It is by this
+time incontestable that a violent or deep emotion can be
+transmitted instantaneously from one mind to another, however
+great the distance that separates the mind experiencing the
+emotion from the mind receiving the communication. It is most
+often manifested by a visual hallucination, more rarely by an
+auditory hallucination; and, as the most violent emotion which
+man can undergo is that which grips and overwhelms him at the
+approach or at the very moment of death, it is nearly always this
+supreme emotion which he sends forth and directs with incredible
+precision through space, if necessary across seas and continents,
+towards an invisible and moving goal. Again, though this occurs
+less frequently, a grave danger, a serious crisis can beget and
+transmit to a distance a similar hallucination. This is what the
+S. P. R. calls "phantasms of the living." When the hallucination
+takes place some time after the decease of the person whom it
+seems to evoke, be the interval long or short, it is classed
+among the "phantasms of the dead."
+
+The latter, the so-called "phantasms of the dead," are the
+rarest. As F. W. H. Myers pointed out in his Human Personality, a
+consideration of the proportionate number of apparitions observed
+at various periods before and after death shows that they
+increase very rapidly for the few hours which precede death and
+decrease gradually during the hours and days which follow; while
+after about a year's time they become extremely rare and
+exceptional.
+
+However exceptional they may be, these apparitions nevertheless
+exist and are proved, as far as anything can be proved, by
+abundant testimony of a very precise character. Instances will be
+found in the Proceedings, notably in vol. vi., pp. 13-65, etc.
+
+Whether it be a case of the living, the dying, or the dead, we
+are familiar with the usual form which these hallucinations take.
+Indeed their main outlines hardly ever vary. Some one, in his
+bedroom, in the street, on a journey, no matter where, suddenly
+see plainly and clearly the phantom of a relation or a friend of
+whom he was not thinking at the time and whom he knows to be
+thousands of miles away, in America, Asia or Africa as the case
+may be, for distance does not count. As a rule, the phantom says
+nothing; its presence, which is always brief, is but a sort of
+silent warning. Sometimes it seems a prey to futile and trivial
+anxieties. More rarely, it speaks, though saying but little after
+all. More rarely still, it reveals something that has happened, a
+crime, a hidden treasure of which no one else could know. But we
+will return to these matters after completing this brief
+enumeration.
+
+2
+
+The phenomenon of haunted houses resembles that of the phantasms
+of the dead, except that here the ghost clings to the residence,
+the house, the building and in no way to the persons who inhabit
+it. By the second year of its existence, that is to say, 1884,
+the Committee on Haunted Houses of the S. P. R. had selected and
+made an analysis of some sixty-five cases out of hundreds
+submitted to it, twenty-eight of which rested upon first-hand and
+superior evidence.[1] It is worthy of remark, in the first place,
+that these authentic narratives bear no relation whatever to the
+legendary and sensational ghost-stories that still linger in many
+English and American magazines, especially in the Christmas
+numbers. They mention no winding-sheets, coffins, skeletons,
+graveyards, no sulphurous flames, curses, blood-curdling groans,
+no clanking chains, nor any of the time-honoured trappings that
+characterize this rather feeble literature of the supernatural.
+On the contrary, the scenes enacted in houses that appear to be
+really haunted are generally very simple and insignificant, not
+to say dull and commonplace. The ghosts are quite unpretentious
+and go to no expense in the matter of staging or costume. They
+are clad as they were when, sometimes many years ago, they led
+their quiet, unadventurous life within their own home. We find in
+one case an old woman, with a thin grey shawl meekly folded over
+her breast, who bends at night over the sleeping occupants of her
+old home, or who is frequently encountered in the hall or on the
+stairs, silent, mysterious, a little grim. Or else it is the
+gentleman with a lacklustre eye and a figured dressing-gown who
+walks along a passage brilliantly illuminated with an
+inexplicable light. Or again we have another elderly lady,
+dressed in black, who is often found seated in the bay window of
+her drawing-room. When spoken to, she rises and seems on the
+point of replying, but says nothing. When pursued or met in a
+corner, she eludes all contact and vanishes. Strings are fastened
+across the staircase with glue; she passes and the strings remain
+as they were. The ghost--and this happens in the majority of
+cases--is seen by all the people staying in the house: relatives,
+friends, old servants and new. Can it be a matter of suggestion,
+of collective hallucination? At any rate, strangers, visitors who
+have had nothing said to them, see it as the others do and ask,
+innocently: "Who is the lady in mourning whom I met in the
+dining-room?"
+
+[1] Proceedings, vol. i., pp. 101-115; vol. ii., pp. 137-151;
+vol. viii., pp. 311, 332, etc.
+
+
+If it is a case of collective suggestion, we should have to admit
+that it is a subconscious suggestion emitted without the
+knowledge of the participants, which indeed is quite possible.
+
+Though they belong to the same order, I will not here mention the
+exploits of what the Germans call the Poltergeist, which take the
+form of flinging stones, ringing bells, turning mattresses,
+upsetting furniture and so forth. These matters are always open
+to suspicion and really appear to be nothing but quaint frolics
+of hysterical subjects or of mediums indulging their sense of
+humour. The manifestations of the Poltergeist are fairly numerous
+and the reader will find several instances in the Proceedings and
+especially in the Journal of the S. P. R.
+
+As for communications with the dead, I devoted a whole chapter to
+these in my own essay entitled Our Eternity and will not return
+to them now. It will be enough to recall and recapitulate my
+general impression, that probably the dead did not enter into any
+of these conversations. We are here concerned with purely
+mediumistic phenomena, more curious and mere subtle than those of
+table-rapping, but of the same character; and these
+manifestations, however astonishing they may be, do not pierce
+the terrestrial sphere wherein we are imprisoned.
+
+3
+
+Setting aside the religious hypotheses, which we are not
+examining here, for they belong to a different order of ideas,[1]
+we find, as an explanation of the Majority of these phenomena, or
+at least as a means of avoiding an absolute and depressing
+silence in regard to them, two hypotheses which reach the unknown
+by more or less divergent paths, to wit, the spiritualistic
+hypothesis and the mediumistic hypothesis. The spiritualists, or
+rather the neospiritualists or scientific spiritualists, who must
+not be confused with the somewhat over-credulous disciples of
+Allan Kardec, maintain that the dead do not die entirely, that
+their spiritual or animistic entity neither departs nor disperses
+into space after the dissolution of the body, but continues an
+active though invisible existence around us. The
+neospiritualistic theory, however, professes only very vague
+notions as to the life led by these discarnate spirits. Are they
+more intelligent than they were when they inhabited their flesh?
+Do they possess a wider understanding and mightier faculties than
+ours? Up to the present, we have not the unimpeachable facts that
+would permit us to say so. It would seem, on the contrary, if the
+discarnate spirits really continue to exist, that their life is
+circumscribed, frail, precarious, incoherent and, above all, not
+very long. To this the objection is raised that it only appears
+so to our feeble eyes. The dead among whom we move without
+knowing it struggle to make themselves understood, to manifest
+themselves, but dash themselves against the inpenetrable wall of
+our senses, which, created solely to perceive matter, remain
+hopelessly ignorant of all the rest, though this is doubtless the
+essential part of the universe. That which will survive in us,
+imprisoned in our body, is absolutely inaccessible to that which
+survives in them. The utmost that they can do is occasionally to
+cause a few glimmers of their existence to penetrate the fissures
+of those singular organisms known as mediums. But these vagrant,
+fleeting, venturous, stifled, deformed glimmers can but give us a
+ludicrous idea of a life which has no longer anything in common
+with the life--purely animal for the most part- which we lead on
+this earth. It is possible; and there is something to be said for
+the theory. It is at any rate remarkable that certain
+communications, certain manifestations have shaken the scepticism
+of the coldest and most dispassionate men of science, men utterly
+hostile to supernatural influences. In order to some extent to
+understand their uneasiness and their astonishment, we need only
+read--to quote but one instance among a thousand--a disquieting
+but unassailable article, entitled, Dans les regions inexplorees
+de la biologic humaine. Observations et experiences sur Eusapia
+Paladino, by Professor Bottazzi, Director of the Physiological
+Institute of the University of Naples.[2] Seldom have experiments
+in the domain of mediums or spirits been conducted with more
+distrustful suspicion or with more implacable scientific
+strictness. Nevertheless, scattered limbs, pale, diaphanous but
+capable hands, suddenly appeared in the little physiological
+laboratory of Naples University, with its doors heavily padlocked
+and sealed, as it were, mathematically excluding any possibility
+of fraud; these same hands worked apparatus specially intended to
+register their touches; lastly, the outline of something black,
+of a head, uprose between the curtains of the mediumistic
+cabinet, remained visible for several seconds and did not retire
+until itself apparently frightened by the exclamations of
+surprise drawn from a group of scientists who, after all, were
+prepared for anything; and Professor Bottazzi confesses that it
+was then that, to quote his own words--measured words, as beseems
+a votary of science, but expressive--he felt "a shiver all
+through his body."
+
+[1] On the same grounds, we will also leave on one side the
+theosophical hypothesis, which, like the others, begins by
+calling for an act of adherence, of blind faith. Its
+explanations, though often ingenious, are no more than forcible
+but gratuitous asservations and, as I said in Our Eternity, do
+not give us the shadow of the commencement of a proof.
+
+[2] Annales des Sciences Psychiques: April November 1907.
+
+
+It was one of those moments in which a doubt which one had
+thought for ever abolished grips the most unbelieving. For the
+first time, perhaps, he looked around him with uncertainty and
+wondered in what world he was. As for the faithful adherents of
+the unknown, who had long understood that we must resign
+ourselves to understanding nothing and he prepared for every sort
+of surprise there was here, all the same, even for them, a
+mystery of another character, a bewildering mystery, the only
+really strange mystery, more torturing than all the others
+together, because it verges upon ancestral fears and touches the
+most sensitive point of our destiny.
+
+4
+
+The spiritualistic argument most worthy of attention is that
+supplied by the apparitions of the dead and by haunted houses. We
+will take no account of the phantasms that precede, accompany or
+follow hard upon death: they are explained by the transmission of
+a violent motion from one subconsciousness to another; and, even
+when they are not manifested until several days after death, it
+may still he contended that they are delayed telepathic
+communications. But what are we to say of the ghosts that spring
+up more than a year, nay, more than ten years after the
+disappearance of the corpse? They are very rare, I know, but
+after all there are some that are extremely difficult to deny,
+for the accounts of their actions are attested and corroborated
+by numerous and trustworthy witnesses. It is true that here
+again, where it is in most cases a question of apparitions to
+relations or friends, we may be told that we are in the presence
+of telepathic incidents or of hallucinations of the memory. We
+thus deprive the spiritualists of a new and considerable province
+of their realm. Nevertheless, they retain certain private
+desmesnes into which our telepathic explanations do not penetrate
+so easily. There have in fact been ghosts that showed themselves
+to people who had never known or seen them in the flesh. They are
+more or less closely connected with the ghosts in haunted houses,
+to which we must revert for a moment.
+
+As I said above, it is almost impossible honestly to deny the
+existence of these houses. Here again the telepathic
+interpretation enforces itself in the majority of cases. We may
+even allow it a strange but justifiable extension, for its limits
+are scarcely known. It has happened fairly often, for instance,
+that ghosts come to disturb a dwelling whose occupiers find, in
+response to their indications, bones hidden in the walls or under
+the floors. It is even possible, as in the case of William
+Moir,[1] which was as strictly conducted and supervised as a
+judicial enquiry, that the skeleton is buried at some distance
+from the house and dates more than forty years back. When the
+remains are removed and decently interred, the apparitions cease.
+
+[1] Proceedings, vol. vi., pp. 35-41.
+
+
+But even in the case of William Moir there is no sufficient
+reason for abandoning the telepathic theory. The medium, the
+"sensitive," as the English say, feels the presence or the
+proximity of the bones; some relation established between them
+and him--a relation which certainly is profoundly
+mysterious--makes him experience the last emotion of the deceased
+and sometimes allows him to conjure up the picture and the
+circumstances of the suicide or murder, even as, in telepathy
+between living persons, the contact of an inanimate object is
+able to bring him into direct relation with the subconsciousness
+of its owner. The slender chain connecting life and death is not
+yet entirely broken; and we might even go so far as to say that
+everything is still happening within our world.
+
+But are there cases in which every link, however thin, however
+subtle we may deem it, is definitely shattered? Who would venture
+to maintain this? We are only beginning to suspect the
+elasticity, the flexibility, the complexity of those invisible
+threads which bind together objects, thoughts, lives, emotions,
+all that is on this earth and even that which does not yet exist
+to that which exists no longer. Let us take an instance in the
+first volume of the Proceedings: M, X. Z., who was known to most
+of the members of the Committee on Haunted Houses, and whose
+evidence was above suspicion, went to reside in a large old
+house, part of which was occupied by his friend Mr. G--. Mr. X.
+Z. knew nothing of the history of the place except that two
+servants of Mr. G--'s had given him notice on account of strange
+noises which they had heard. One night--it was the 22nd of
+September--Mr. X. Z., on his way up to his bedroom in the dark,
+saw the whole passage filled with a dazzling and uncanny light,
+and in this strange light he saw the figure of an old man in a
+flowered dressing-gown. As he looked, both figure and light
+vanished and he was left in pitch darkness. The next day,
+remembering the tales told by the two servants, he made enquiries
+in the village. At first he could find out nothing, but finally
+an old lawyer told him that he had heard that the grandfather of
+the present owner of the house had strangled his wife and then
+cut his own throat on the very spot where Mr. X. Z. had seen the
+apparition. He was unable to give the exact date of this double
+event; but Mr. X. Z. consulted the parish register and found that
+it had taken place on a 22nd of September.
+
+On the 22nd of September of the following year, a friend of Mr.
+G--'s arrived to make a short stay. The morning after his
+arrival, he came down, pale and tired, and announced his
+intention of leaving immediately. On being questioned, he
+confessed that he was afraid, that he had been kept awake all
+night by the sound of groans, blasphemous oaths and cries of
+despair, that his bedroom door had been opened, and so forth.
+
+Three years afterwards, Mr. X. Z. had occasion to call on the
+landlord of the house, who lived in London, and saw over the
+mantelpiece a picture which bore a striking resemblance to the
+figure which he had seen in the passage. He pointed it out to his
+friend Mr. G--, saying:
+
+"That is the man whom I saw."
+
+The landlord, in reply to their questions, said that the painting
+was a portrait of his grandfather, adding that he had been "no
+credit to the family."
+
+Evidently, this does not in any way prove the existence of ghosts
+or the survival of man. It is quite possible that, in spite of
+Mr. X. Z.'s undoubted good faith, imagination played a subtle but
+powerful part in these marvels. Perhaps it was set going by the
+stories of the two servants, insignificant gossip to which no
+attention was paid at the time, but which probably found its way
+down into the weird and fertile depths of the subconsciousness.
+The image was next transmitted by suggestion to the visitor
+frightened by a sleepless night. As for the recognition of the
+portrait, this is either the weakest or the most impressive part
+of the story, according to the theory that is being defended.
+
+It is none the less certain that there is some unfairness in
+suggesting this explanation for every incident of the kind. It
+means stretching to the uttermost and perhaps stretching too far
+the elastic powers of that amiable maid-of-all-work, telepathy.
+For that matter, there are cases in which the telepathic
+interpretation is even more uncertain, as in that described by
+Miss R. C. Morton in vol. viii. of the Proceedings.
+
+The story is too long and complicated to be reproduced here. It
+is unnecessary to observe that, in view of the character of Miss
+Morton, a lady of scientific training, and of the quality of the
+corroborative testimony, the facts themselves seem incontestable.
+
+The case is that of a house built in 1860, whose first occupier
+was an Anglo-Indian, the next tenant being an old man and the
+house then remaining unlet for four years. In 1882, when Captain
+Morton and big family moved in, there had never, so far as they
+knew, been any question of its being haunted. Three months
+afterwards, Miss Morton was in her room and on the point of
+getting into bed, when she heard some one at the door and went to
+it, thinking that it might be her mother. On opening the door,
+she found no one there, but, going a few steps along the passage,
+she saw a tall lady, dressed in black, standing at the head of
+the stair. She did not wish to make the others uneasy and
+mentioned the occurrence to no one except a friend, who did not
+live in the neighborhood.
+
+But soon the same figure dressed in black was seen by the various
+members of the household, by a married sister on a visit to the
+house, by the father, by the other sister, by a little boy, by a
+neighbour, General A--, who saw a lady crying in the orchard and,
+thinking that one of the daughters of the house was ill, sent to
+enquire after her. Even the Mortons' two dogs on more than one
+occasion clearly showed that they saw the phantom.
+
+It was, as a matter of fact very harmonious: it said nothing; it
+wanted nothing; it wandered from room to room, without any
+apparent object; and, when it was spoken to, it did not answer
+and only made its escape. The household became accustomed to the
+apparition; it troubled nobody and inspired no terror. It was
+immaterial, it could not be touched, but yet it intercepted the
+light. After making enquiries, they succeeded in identifying it
+as the second wife of the Anglo-Indian. The Morton family had
+never seen the lady, but, from the description which they gave of
+the phantom to those who had known her, it appeared that the
+likeness was unmistakable. For the rest, they did not know why
+she came back to haunt a house in which she had not died. After
+1887, the appearances became less frequent, distinct, ceasing
+altogether in 1889.
+
+5
+
+Let us assume that the facts as reported in the Proceedings are
+certain and indisputable. We have very nearly the ideal case,
+free from previous or ambient suggestion. If we refuse to believe
+in the existence of ghosts, if we are absolutely positive that
+the dead do not survive their death, then we must admit that the
+hallucination took birth spontaneously in the imagination of Miss
+Morton, an unconscious medium, and was subsequently trained by
+telepathy to all those around her. In my opinion, this
+explanation, however arbitrary and severe it may be, is the one
+which it behooves us to accept, pending further proofs. But it
+must be confessed that, in thus extending our incredulity, we
+render it very difficult for the dead to make its existence
+known.
+
+We possess a certain number of cases of kind, rigorously
+investigated, cases probably representing but an infinitesimal
+part of those which might be collected. Is it possible that they
+one and all elude the telepathic explanation? It would be
+necessary to make a study of them, conducted with the most
+scrupulous and unremitting attention; for the question is not
+devoid of interest. If the existence of ghosts were
+well-established, it would mean the entrance into this world,
+which we believe to be our world, of a new force that would
+explain more than one thing which we are still far from
+understanding. If the dead interfere at one point, there is a
+reason why they should not interfere at every other point. We
+should no longer be alone, among ourselves, in our
+hermetically-closed sphere, as we are perhaps only too ready to
+imagine it. We should have to alter more than one of our physical
+and moral laws, more than one of our ideas; and it would no doubt
+be the most important and the most extraordinary revelation that
+would be expected in the present state of our knowledge and since
+the disappearance of the old positive religions. But we are not
+there yet: the proof of all this is still in the nursery-stage;
+and I do not know if it will ever get beyond that. Nevertheless
+the fact remains that, in these impenetrable regions of mystery
+which we are now exploring, the one weak spot lies here, the one
+wall in which there seems to be a chink--a strange one
+enough--giving a glimpse into the other world. It is narrow and
+vague and behind it there is still darkness; but it is not
+without significance and we shall do well not to lose sight of
+it.
+
+6
+
+Let us observe that this survival of the dead, as the
+neospiritualists conceive it, seems much less improbable since we
+have been studying more closely the manifestations of the
+extraordinary and incontestable spiritual force that lies hidden
+within ourselves. It is not dependent in our thought, nor on our
+consciousness, nor on our will; and very possibly it is not
+dependent either on our life. While we are still breathing on
+this earth it is already surmounting most of the great obstacles
+that limit and paralyse our existence. It acts at a distance and
+so to speak without organs. It passes through matter,
+disaggregates it and reconstitutes it. It seems to possess, the
+gift of ubiquity. It is not subject to the laws of gravity and
+lifts weights out of all proportion with the real and measurable
+strength of the body whence it is believed to emanate. It
+releases and removes itself from that body; it comes and goes
+freely and takes to itself substances and shapes which it borrows
+all around it; and therefore it is no longer so strange to see it
+surviving for a time that body to which it does not appear to be
+as indissolubly bound as is our conscious existence. Is it
+necessary to add that this survival of a part of ourselves which
+we hardly know and which besides seems incomplete, incoherent and
+ephemeral is wholly without prejudice to nor fate in the eternity
+of the worlds? But this is a question which we are not called
+upon to study here.
+
+I shall perhaps be asked:
+
+"If it is becoming increasingly difficult for all these
+facts--and there are more of them accumulating every day--to be
+embraced in the telepathic or psychometric theory, why not
+frankly accept the spiritualistic explanation, which is the
+simplest, which has an answer for everything and which is
+gradually encroaching on all the others?"
+
+That is true: it is the simplest theory, perhaps too simple; and,
+like the religious theory, it dispenses as from all effort or
+seeking. We have nothing to set against it but the mediumistic
+theory, which doubtless does not account exactly for a good many
+things, but which at least is on the same side of the hill of
+life as ourselves and remains among us, upon our earth, within
+reach of our eyes, our hands, our thoughts and our researches.
+There was a time when lightning, epidemics and earthquakes were
+attributed without distinction to the wrath of Heaven. Nowadays,
+when we are more or less familiar with the source of the great
+infectious diseases, the hand of Providence knows them no more;
+and, though we are still ignorant of the nature of electricity
+and the laws that regulate seismic shocks, we no longer dream,
+while waiting to learn more about them, of looking for their
+causes in the judgment or anger of an imaginary Being. Let us act
+likewise in the present case. It behooves us above all to avoid
+those rash explanations which, in their haste, leave by the
+roadside a host of things that appear to be unknown or unknowable
+only because the necessary effort has not yet been made to know
+them. After all, while we must not eliminate the spiritualistic
+theory, neither must we content ourselves with it. It is even
+preferable not to linger over it until it has supplied us with
+decisive arguments, for it is the duty of this theory which
+sweeps us roughly out of our sphere to furnish us with such
+arguments. For the present, it simply relegates to posthumous
+regions, phenomena that appear to occur within ourselves; it adds
+superfluous mystery and needless difficulty to the mediumistic
+mystery whence it springs. If we were concerned with facts that
+had no footing in this world, we should certainly have to turn
+our eyes in another direction; but we see a large number of
+actions performed which are of the same nature as those
+attributed to the spirits and equally inexplicable, actions with
+which, however, we know that they have nothing to do. When it is
+proved that the dead exercise some intervention, we will bow
+before the fact as willingly as we bow before the mediumistic
+mysteries: it is a question of order, of internal policy and of
+scientific method much more than of probability, preference or
+fear. The hour has not yet come to abandon the principle which I
+have formulated elsewhere with respect to our communications with
+the dead, namely, that it is natural that we should remain at
+home, in our own world, as long as we can, as long as we are not
+violently driven from it by a series of irresistible and
+incontrovertible proofs coming from the neighbouring abyss. The
+survival of a spirit is no more improbable than the prodigious
+faculties which we are obliged to attribute to the mediums if we
+deny them to the dead. But the existence of mediums is beyond
+dispute, whereas that of spirits is not; and it is therefore for
+the spirits or for those who make use of their name to begin by
+proving that they must. Before turning towards the mystery beyond
+the grave, let us first exhaust the possibilities of the mystery
+here on earth.
+
+
+CHAPTER II. PSYCHOMETRY
+
+1
+
+Now that we have eliminated the gods and the dead, what have we
+left? Ourselves and all the life around us; and that is perhaps
+enough. It is, at any rate, much more than we are able to grasp.
+
+Let us now study certain manifestations that are absolutely
+similar to those which we attribute to the spirits and quite as
+surprising. As for these manifestations, there is not the least
+doubt of their origin. They do not come from the other world;
+they are born and die upon this earth; and they arise solely and
+incontestably from our own actual living mystery. They are,
+moreover, of all psychic manifestations, those which are easiest
+to examine and verify, seeing that they can be repeated almost
+indefinitely and that a number of excellent and well-known
+mediums are always ready to reproduce them in the presence of any
+one interested in the question. It is no longer a case of
+uncertain and casual observation, but of scientific experiment.
+
+The manifestations in question are so many phenomena of
+intuition, of clairvoyance or clairaudience, of seeing at a
+distance and even of seeing the future. These phenomena may
+either be due to pure, spontaneous intuition on the part of the
+medium, in an hypnotic or waking state, or else produced or
+facilitated by one of the various empirical methods which
+apparently see only to arouse the medium's subconscious faculties
+and to release in some way his subliminal clairvoyance. Among
+such methods, those most often employed are, as we all know,
+cards, coffee-grounds, pins, the lines of the hand, crystal
+globes, astrology, and so on. They possess no importance in
+themselves, no intrinsic virtue, and are worth exactly what the
+medium who uses them is worth. As M. Duchatel well says:
+
+"In reality, there is only one solitary MANCY. The faculty of
+seeing in TIME, like the faculty of seeing in SPACE, is ONE,
+whatever its outward form or the process employed."
+
+We will not linger now over those manifestations which, under
+appearances that are sometimes childish and vulgar, often conceal
+surprising and incontestable truths, but will devote the present
+chapter exclusively to a series of phenomena which includes
+almost all the others and which has been classed under the
+generic and rather ill-chosen and ill-constructed title of
+"psychometry." Psychometry, to borrow Dr. Maxwell's excellent
+definition, is "the faculty possessed by certain persons of
+placing themselves in relation, either spontaneously or, for the
+most part, through the intermediary of some object, with unknown
+and often very distant things and people."
+
+The existence of this faculty is no longer seriously denied; and
+it is easy for any one who cares to do so to verify it for
+himself; for the mediums who possess it are not extremely rare,
+nor are they inaccessible. It has formed the subject of a number
+of experiments (see, among others, M. Warcollier's report in the
+Annales des Sciences Psychiques of July, 1911) and of a few
+treatises, in the front rank of which I would mention M.
+Duchatel's Enquete sur des Cas de Psychometrie and Dr. Otty's
+recently published book, Lucidite et Intuition, which is the
+fullest, most profound and most conscientious work that we
+possess on the matter up to the present. Nevertheless it may be
+said that these regions quite lately annexed by metaphysical
+science are as yet hardly explored and that fruitful surprises
+are doubtless awaiting earnest seekers.
+
+2
+
+The faculty in question is one of the strangest faculties of our
+subconsciousness and beyond a doubt contains the key to most of
+the manifestations that seem to proceed from another world. Let
+us begin by seeing, with the aid of a living and typical example,
+how it is exercised.
+
+Mme. M--, one of the best mediums mentioned by Dr. Osty, is given
+an object which belonged to or which has been touched and handled
+by a person about whom it is proposed to question her. Mme. M--
+operates in a state of trance; but there are other noted
+psychometers, such as Mme. F-- and M. Ph. M. de F--, who retain
+all their normal consciousness, so that hypnotism or the
+somnambulistic state is in no way indispensable to the awakening
+of this extraordinary faculty of clairvoyance.
+
+When the object, which is usually a letter, has been handed to
+Mme. M--, she is asked to place herself in communication with the
+writer of the letter or the owner of the object. Forthwith, Mme.
+M-- not only sees the person in question, his physical
+appearance, his character, his habits, his interests, his state
+of health, but also, in a series of rapid and changing visions
+that follow upon one another like cinematograph pictures,
+perceives and describes exactly his immediate surroundings, the
+scenery outside his window, the rooms in which he lives, the
+people who live with him and who wish him well or ill, the
+psychology and the most secret and unexpected intentions of all
+those who figure in his existence. If, by means of your
+questions, you direct her towards the past, she traces the whole
+course of the subject's history. If you turn her towards the
+future, she seems often to discover it as clearly as the past.
+But we will for the moment reserve this latter point, to which we
+shall return later in a chapter devoted to the knowledge of the
+future.
+
+3
+
+In the presence of these phenomena, the first thought that
+naturally occurs to the mind is that we are once more concerned
+with that astonishing and involuntary communication between one
+subconsciousness and another which has been invested with the
+name of telepathy. And there is no denying that telepathy plays a
+great part in these intuitions. However, to explain their
+working, nothing is equal to an example based upon a personal
+experience. Here is one which is in no way remarkable, but which
+plainly shows the normal course of the operation. In September,
+1913, while I was at Elberfeld, visiting Krall's horses, my wife
+went to consult Mme. M--, gave her a scrap of writing in my
+hand--a note dispatched previous to my journey and containing no
+allusion to it--and asked her where I was and what I was doing.
+Without a second's hesitation, Mme. M-- declared that I was very
+far away, in a foreign country where they spoke a language which
+she did not understand. She saw first a paved yard, shaded by a
+big tree, with a building on the left and a garden at the back: a
+rough but not inapt description of Krall's stables, which my wife
+did not know and which I myself had not seen at the time when I
+wrote the note. She next perceived me in the midst of the horses,
+examining them, studying them with an absorbed, anxious and tired
+air. This was true, for I found those visits, which overwhelmed
+me with a sense of the marvelous and kept my attention on the
+rack, singularly exhausting and bewildering. My wife asked her if
+I intended to buy the horses. She replied:
+
+"Not at all; he is not thinking of it."
+
+And, seeking her words as though to express an unaccustomed and
+obscure thought, she added:
+
+"I don't know why he is so much interested; it is not like him.
+He has no particular passion for horses. He has some lofty idea
+which I can't quite discover. . . ."
+
+She made two rather curious mistakes in this experiment. The
+first was that, at the time when she saw me in Krall's
+stable-yard, I was no longer there. She had received her vision
+just in the interval of a few hours between two visits.
+Experience shows, however, that this is a usual error among
+psychometers. They do not, properly speaking, see the action at
+the very moment of its performance, but rather the customary and
+familiar action, the principal thing that preoccupies either the
+person about whom they are being consulted or the person
+consulting them. They frequently go astray in time. There is not,
+therefore, necessarily any simultaneity between the action and
+the vision; and it is well never to take their statements in this
+respect literally.
+
+The other mistake referred to our dress: Krall and I were in
+ordinary town clothes, whereas she saw us in those long coats
+which stable-lads wear when grooming their horses.
+
+Let us now make every allowance for my wife's unconscious
+suggestions: she knew that I was at Elberfeld and that I should
+be in the midst of the horses, and she knew or could easily
+conjecture my state of mind. The transmission of thought is
+remarkable; but this is a recognized phenomenon and one of
+frequent occurrence and we need not therefore linger over it.
+
+The real mystery begins with the description of a place which my
+wife had never seen and which I had not seen either at the time
+of writing the note which established the psychometrical
+communication. Are we to believe that the appearance of what I
+was one day to see was already inscribed on that prophetic sheet
+of paper, or more simply and more probably that the paper which
+represented myself was enough to transmit either to my wife's
+subconsciousness or to Mme. M--, whom at that time I had never
+met, an exact picture of what my eyes beheld three or four
+hundred miles away? But, although this description is exceedingly
+accurate--paved yard, big tree, building on the left, garden at
+the back--is it not too general for all idea of chance
+coincidence to be eliminated? Perhaps, by insisting further,
+greater precision might have been obtained; but this is not
+certain, for as a role the pictures follow upon one another so
+swiftly in the medium's vision that he has no time to perceive
+the details. When all is said, experiences of this kind do not
+enable us to go beyond the telepathic explanation. But here is a
+different one, in which subconscious suggestion cannot play any
+part whatever.
+
+Some days after the experiment which I have related, I received
+from England a request for my autograph. Unlike most of those
+which assail an author of any celebrity, it was charming and
+unaffected; but it told me nothing about its writer. Without even
+noticing from what town it was sent to me, after showing it to my
+wife, I replaced it in its envelope and took it to Mme. M--. She
+began by describing us, my wife and myself, who both of us had
+touched the paper and consequently impregnated it with our
+respective "fluids."
+
+I asked her to pass beyond us and come to the writer of the note.
+She then saw a girl of fifteen or sixteen, almost a child, who
+had been in rather indifferent health, but who was now very well
+indeed. The girl was in a beautiful garden, in front of a large
+and luxurious house standing in the midst of rather hilly
+country. She was playing with a big, curly-haired, long-eared
+dog. Through the branches of the trees one caught a glimpse of
+the sea.
+
+On inquiry, all the details were found to be astonishingly
+accurate; but, as usual, there was a mistake in the time, that is
+to say, the girl and her dog were not in the garden at the
+instant when the medium saw them there. Here again an habitual
+action had obscured a casual movement; for, as I have already
+said, the vision very rarely corresponds with the momentary
+reality.
+
+4
+
+There is nothing exceptional in the above example; I selected it
+from among many others because it is simple and clear. Besides,
+this kind of experience is already, so to speak, classical, or at
+least should be so, were it not that everything relating to the
+manifestations of our subconsciousness is always received with
+extraordinary suspicion. In any case, I cannot too often repeat
+that the experiment is within everybody's reach; and it rarely
+fails to achieve absolute success with capable psychometers, who
+are pretty well known and whom it is open to any one to consult.
+
+Let us add that it can be extended much further. If, for
+instance, I had acted as I did in similar cases and asked the
+medium questions about the young girl's home-circle, about the
+character of her father, the health of her mother, the tastes and
+habits of her brothers and sisters, she would have answered with
+the same certainty, the same precision as one might do who was
+not only a close acquaintance of the girl's, but endowed with
+much more penetrating faculties of intuition than a normal
+observer. In short, she would have felt and expressed all that
+this girl's subconsciousness would have felt with regard to the
+persons mentioned. But it must be admitted that, as we are here
+no longer speaking of facts that are easily verified,
+confirmation becomes infinitely more difficult.
+
+There could be no question, in the circumstances, of transmission
+of thought, since both the medium and I were ignorant of
+everything. Besides, other experiments, easily devised and
+repeated and more rigourously controlled, do away with that
+theory entirely. For instance, I took three letters written by
+intimate friends, put each of them in a double envelope and gave
+them to a messenger unacquainted with the contents of the
+envelopes and also with the persons in question to take to Mme.
+M--. On arriving at the house, the messenger handed the
+clairvoyant one of the letters, selected at random, and did
+nothing further beyond putting the indispensable questions,
+likewise at random, and taking down the medium's replies in
+shorthand. Mme. M-- began by giving a very striking physical
+portrait of the lady who had written the letter; followed this up
+with an absolutely faithful description of her character, her
+habits, her tastes, her intellectual and moral qualities; and
+ended by adding a few details concerning her private life, of
+which I myself was entirely unaware and of which I obtained the
+confirmation shortly afterwards. The experiment yielded just as
+remarkable results when continued with the two other letters.
+
+In the face of this mystery, two explanations may be offered,
+both equally perplexing. On the one hand, we shall have to admit
+that the sheet of paper handed to the psychometer and impregnated
+with human "fluid" contains, after the manner of some
+prodigiously compressed gas, all the incessantly renewed,
+incessantly recurring images that surround a person, all his past
+and perhaps his future, his psychology, his state of health, his
+wishes, his intentions, often unknown to himself, his most secret
+instincts, his likes and dislikes, all that is bathed in light
+and all that is plunged in darkness, his whole life, in short,
+and more than his personal and conscious life, besides all the
+lives and all the influences, good or bad, latent or manifest, of
+all who approach him. We should have here a mystery as
+unfathomable and at least as vast as that of generation, which
+transmits, in an infinitesimal particle, the mind and matter,
+with all the qualities and all the faults, all the acquirements
+and all the history, of a series of lives of which none can tell
+the number.
+
+On the other hand, if we do not admit that so much energy can lie
+concealed in a sheet of paper, continuing to exist and develop
+indefinitely there, we must necessarily suppose that an
+inconceivable network of nameless forces is perpetually radiating
+from this same paper, forces which, cleaving time and space,
+detect instantaneously, anywhere and at any distance, the life
+that gave them life and place themselves in complete
+communication, body and soul, senses and thoughts, past and
+future, consciousness and subconsciousness, with an existence
+lost amid the innumerous host of men who people this earth. It
+is, indeed, exactly what happens in the experiments with mediums
+in automatic speech or writing, who believe themselves to be
+inspired by the dead. Yet, here it is no longer a discarnate
+spirit, but an object of any kind imbued with a living "fluid"
+that works the miracle; and this, we may remark in passing, deals
+a severe blow to the spiritualistic theory.
+
+Nevertheless, there are two rather curious objections to this
+second explanation. Granting that the object really places the
+medium in communication with an unknown entity discovered in
+space, how comes it that the image or the spectacle created by
+that communication hardly ever corresponds with the reality at
+the actual moment? On the other hand, it is indisputable that the
+psychometer's clairvoyance, his gift of seeing at a distance the
+pictures and scenes surrounding an unknown being, is exercised
+with the same certainty and the same power when the object that
+sets his strange faculty at work has been touched by a person who
+has been dead for years. Are we, then, to admit that there is an
+actual, living communication with a human being who is no more,
+who sometimes--, for instance, in a case of incineration--has
+left no trace of himself on earth, in short, with a dead man who
+continues to live at the place and at the moment at which he
+impregnated the object with his "fluid" and who seems to be
+unaware that he is dead?
+
+But these objections are perhaps less serious than one might
+believe. To begin with, there are seers, so-called
+"telepsychics," who are not psychometers, that is to say, they
+are able to communicate with an unknown and distant person
+without the intermediary of an object; and in these seers, as in
+the psychometers, the vision very rarely corresponds with the
+actual facts of the moment: they too perceive above all the
+general impression, the usual and characteristic actions. Next,
+as regards communications with a person long since dead, we are
+confronted with one of two things: either confirmation will be
+almost impossible when it concerns revelations on the subject of
+the dead man's private deeds and actions, which are unknown to
+any living person or else communication will be established not
+with the deceased, but with the living person, who necessarily
+knows the facts which he is called upon to confirm. As Dr. Osty
+very rightly says:
+
+"The conditions are then those of perception by the intermediary
+of the thoughts of a living person; and the deceased is perceived
+through a mental representation. The experiment, for this reason,
+is valueless as evidence of the reality of retrospective
+psychometry and consequently of the recording part played by the
+object.
+
+"The only class of experiment that could be of value from this
+point of view, would be that in which confirmation would come
+subsequently from documents whose contents remained unknown to
+any living person until after the clairvoyance sitting. It might
+then be proved that the object can latently register the human
+personalities which have touched it and that it is sufficient in
+itself to allow of a mental reconstruction of those personalities
+through the interpretation of the register by a clairvoyant or
+psychometer."
+
+5
+
+It may be imagined that experiments of this sort, in which there
+is no crack, no leak on the side of the living, are anything but
+easy to carry through. In the case of a murder, for instance, it
+can always be maintained that the medium discovers the body and
+the circumstances of the tragedy through the involuntary and
+unconscious intermediary of the murderer, even when the latter
+escapes prosecution and suspicion altogether. But a recent
+incident, related by Dr. Osty with the utmost precision of detail
+and the most scrupulous verification in the Annales des Sciences
+Psychiques of April, 1914, perhaps supplies us with one of those
+experiments which we have not been able to achieve until this
+day. I give the facts in a few words.
+
+On the 2nd of March of this year, M. Etienne Lerasle, an old man
+of eighty-two, left his son's house at Cours-les-Barres (Cher)
+for his daily walk and was not seen again. The house stands in
+the middle of a forest on Baron Jaubert's estate. Vain searches
+were made in every direction for the missing man's traces; the
+ponds and pools were dragged to no purpose; and on the 8th of
+March a careful and systematical exploration of the wood, in
+which no fewer than twenty-four people took part, led to no
+result. At last, on the 18th of March, M. Louis Mirault, Baron
+Jaubert's agent, thought of applying to Dr. Osty, and supplied
+him with a scarf which the old man had worn. Dr. Osty went to his
+favourite medium, Mme. M--. He knew only one thing, that the
+matter concerned an old man of eighty-two, who walked with a
+slight stoop; and that was all.
+
+As soon as Mme. M-- had taken the scarf in her hands, she saw the
+dead body of an old man lying on the damp ground, in a wood, in
+the middle of a coppice, beside a horse-shoe pond, near a sort of
+rock. She traced the road taken by the victim, depicted the
+buildings which he had passed, his mental condition impaired by
+age, his fixed intention of dying, his physical appearance, his
+habitual and characteristic way of carrying his stick, his soft
+striped shirt, and so on.
+
+The accuracy of the description caused the greatest astonishment
+among the missing man's friends. There was one detail that
+puzzled them a little: the mention of a rock in a part of the
+country that possessed none. The search was resumed on the
+strength of the data supplied by the clairvoyant. But all the
+rocks in a forest are more or less alike; the indications were
+not enough; and nothing was found.
+
+It so happened that the second and third interviews with Mme. M--
+had to be postponed until the 30th of March and the 6th of April
+following. At each of these sittings, the details of the vision
+and of the road taken became clearer and clearer and were given
+with startling precision, so much so that, by pursuing step by
+step the indications of the medium, the man's friends ended by
+discovering the body, dressed as stated, lying in the middle of a
+coppice, just as described, close to a huge stump of a tree all
+covered with moss, which might easily be mistaken for a rock, and
+on the edge of a crescent-shaped piece of water. I may add that
+these particular indications applied to no other part of the
+wood.
+
+6
+
+I refer the reader to Dr. Osty's conscientious and exhaustive
+article for the numerous details which I have been obliged to
+omit; but those which I have given are enough to show the
+character of this extraordinary case. To begin with, we have one
+certainty which appears almost unassailable, namely, that there
+can be no question of a crime. No one had the least interest in
+procuring the old man's death. The body bore no marks of
+violence; besides, the minds of those concerned did not for a
+moment entertain the thought of an assault. The poor man, whose
+mental derangement was known to all those about him, obsessed by
+the desire and thought of death, had gone quietly and obstinately
+to seek it in the nearest coppice. There was therefore no
+criminal in the case, in other words, there was no possible or
+imaginable communication between the medium's subconsciousness,
+and that of any living person. Hence we are compelled to admit
+that the communication was established with the dead man or with
+his subconsciousness, which continued to live for nearly a month
+after his death and to wander around the same places; or else we
+must agree that all this coming tragedy, all that the old man was
+about to see, do and suffer was already irrevocably contained and
+inscribed in the scarf at the moment when he last wore it.
+
+In this particular case, considering that all relations with the
+living were definitely and undeniably severed, I can see no other
+explanations beyond these two. They are both equally astounding
+and land us suddenly in a world of fable and enchantment which we
+thought that we had left for good and all. If we do not adopt the
+theory of the tell-tale scarf, we must accept that of the
+spiritualists, who maintain that the spirits communicate with us
+freely. It is possible that they may find a serious argument in
+this case. But a solitary fact is not enough to support a theory,
+all the more so as the one in question will never be absolutely
+safe from the objection that could be raised if the case were one
+of murder, which is possible, after all, and cannot be actually
+disproved. We must, therefore, while awaiting other similar and
+more decisive facts, if any such are conceivable, return to those
+which are, so to speak, laboratory facts, facts which are only
+denied by those who will not take the trouble to verify them; and
+to interpret these facts there are only the two theories which we
+mentioned above, before this digression; for, in these cases,
+which are unlike those of automatic speech or writing, we have
+not as a rule to consider the possibility of any intervention of
+the dead. As a matter of fact, the best-known psychometers are
+very rarely spiritualists and claim no connection with the
+spirits. They care but little, as a rule, about the source of
+their intuitions and seem very little interested in their exact
+working and origin. Now it would be exceedingly surprising if,
+acting and speaking in the name of the departed, they should be
+so consistently ignorant of the existence of those who inspire
+them; and more surprising still if the dead, whom in other
+circumstances we see so jealously vindicating their identity,
+should not here, when the occasion is so propitious, seek to
+declare themselves, to manifest themselves and to make themselves
+known.
+
+7
+
+Dismissing for the time being the intervention of the dead, I
+believe then that, in most of the cases which I will call
+laboratory cases, because they can be reproduced at will, we are
+not necessarily reduced to the theory of the vitalized object
+representing wholly, indefinitely and inexhaustibly, through all
+the vicissitudes of time and spice, every one of those who have
+held it in their hands for a little while. For we must not forget
+that, according to this theory, the object in question will
+conceal and, through the intermediary of the medium, will reveal
+as many distinct and complete personalities as it has undergone
+contacts. It will never confuse or mix those different
+personalities. They will remain there in definite strata,
+distinct one from another; and, as Dr. Osty puts it, "the medium
+can interpret each of them from beginning to end, as though he
+were in communication with the far-off entity."
+
+All this makes the theory somewhat incredible, even though it be
+not much more so than the many other phenomena in which the shock
+of the miraculous has been softened by familiarity. We can find
+more or less everywhere in nature that prodigious faculty of
+storing away inexhaustible energies and ineffaceable tram,
+memories and impressions in space. There is not a thing in this
+world that is lost, that disappears, that ceases to be, to retain
+and to propagate life. Need we recall, in this connection, the
+incessant mission of pictures perceived by the sensitized plate,
+the vibrations of sound that accumulate in the disks of the
+gramophone, the Hertzian waves that lose none of their strength
+in space, the mysteries of reproduction and, in a word, the
+incomprehensibility of everything around us?
+
+8
+
+Personally, if I had to choose, I should, in most of these
+laboratory cases, frankly adopt the theory that the object
+touched serves simply to detect, among the prodigious crowd of
+human beings, the one who impregnated it with his "fluid."
+
+"This object," says Dr. Osty, "has no other function than to
+allow the medium's sensitiveness to distinguish a definite force
+from among the innumerable forces that assail it."
+
+It seem more and more certain that, as the cells of an immense
+organism, we are connected with everything that exists by an
+inextricable network of vibrations, waves, influences, of
+nameless, numberless and uninterrupted fluids. Nearly always, in
+nearly all men, everything carried along by these invisible wires
+falls into the depths of the unconsciousness and passes
+unperceived, which does not mean that it remains inactive. But
+sometimes an exceptional circumstance--in the present case, the
+marvellous sensibility of a first-class medium--suddenly reveals
+to us, by the vibrations and the undeniable action of one of
+those wires, the existence of the infinite network. I will not
+speak here of trails discovered and followed in an almost
+mediumistic manner, after an object of some sort has been sniffed
+at. Such stories, though highly probable, as yet lack adequate
+support. But, within a similar order of ideas, and in a humbler
+world and one with more modest limits, the dog, for instance, is
+incessantly surrounded by different scents and smells to which he
+appears indifferent until his attention is aroused by one or
+other of these vagrant effluvia, when he extricates it from the
+hopeless tangle. It would seem as though the trail took life,
+vibrating like a chord in unison with the animal's wishes,
+becoming irresistible, and taking it to its goal after
+innumerable winds and turns.
+
+We see the mysterious network revealed also in
+"cross-correspondence." Two or three mediums who do not know one
+another, who are often separated by seas; or continents, who are
+ignorant of the whereabouts of the one who is to complete their
+thought, each write a part of a sentence which, as it stands,
+conveys no meaning whatever. On piecing the fragments together,
+we perceive that they fit to perfection and acquire an
+intelligible and obviously premeditated sense. We here find once
+more the same faculty that permits the medium to detect, among
+thousands of others, a definite force which was wandering in
+space. It is true that, in these cases, the spiritualists
+maintain that the whole experiment is organized and directed by a
+discarnate intelligence, independent of the mediums, which means
+to prove its existence and its identity in this manner. Without
+incontinently rejecting this theory, which is not necessarily
+indefensible, we will merely remark that, since the faculty is
+manifested in psychometry without the intervention of the
+spirits, there can be no sufficient reason for attributing it to
+them in cross-correspondence.
+
+9
+
+But in whom does it reside? Is it hidden in ourselves or in the
+medium? According to Dr. Osty, the clairvoyants are mirrors
+reflecting the intuitive thought that is latent in each of us. In
+other words--it is we ourselves who are clairvoyant, and they but
+reveal to us nor own clairvoyance. Their mission is to stir, to
+awaken, to galvanize, to illumine the secrets of our
+subconsciousness and to bring them to the surface of our normal
+lives. They act upon our inner darkness exactly as, in the
+photographic dark-room, the developing-bath acts upon the
+sensitized plate, I am convinced that the theory is accurate as
+regards intuition and clairvoyance proper, that is to say, in all
+cases where we are in the medium's presence and more or less
+directly in touch with him. But is it so in psychometry? Is it we
+who, unknown to ourselves, know all that the object contains, or
+is it the medium alone who discovers it in the object itself,
+independently of the person who produces the object? When, for
+instance, we receive a letter from a stranger, does this letter,
+which has absorbed like a sponge the whole life and by choice the
+subconscious life of the writer, disgorge all that it contained
+into our subconsciousness? Do we instantly learn all that
+concerns its author, absolutely as though he were standing before
+us in the flesh and, above all, with his soul laid bare, though
+we remain profoundly ignorant of the fact that we have learnt it
+until the medium's intervention tells us so?
+
+This, if you like, is simply shifting the question. Let it be the
+medium or myself that discovers the unknown personality in the
+object or tracks it across time and space: all that we do is to
+widen the scope of our riddle, while leaving it no less obscure.
+Nevertheless, there is some interest in knowing whether we have
+to do with a general faculty latent in all men or an inexplicable
+privilege reserved to rare individuals. The exceptional should
+always be eliminated, if possible, and not left to hang over the
+abyss like an unfinished bridge leading to nothing. I am well
+aware that the compulsory intervention of the medium implies
+that, in spite of all, we recognize his possession of abnormal
+faculties; but at any rate we reduce their power and their extent
+appreciably and we return sooner and more easily to the ordinary
+laws of the great human mystery. And it is of importance that we
+should be ever coming back to that mystery and ever bringing all
+things back to it. But, unfortunately, actual experience does not
+admit of this generalization. It is clearly a case of a special
+faculty, one peculiar to the medium, one which is wholly unknown
+to our latent intuition. We can easily assure ourselves of this
+by causing the medium to receive through a third party and
+enclosed in a series of three envelopes, as in the experiment
+described above, a letter of which we know the writer, but of
+which both the source and the contents are absolutely unknown to
+the messenger. These unusual circumstances, in which all
+subconscious communications between consultant and consulted are
+strictly cut off, will in no way hamper the medium's
+clairvoyance; and we may fairly conclude that it is actually the
+medium himself who discovers directly, without any intermediary,
+without "relays," to use M. Duchatel's expression, all that the
+object holds concealed. It, therefore, seems certain that there
+is, at least in psychometry, something more than the mere mirror
+of which Dr. Osty speaks.
+
+10
+
+I consider it necessary to declare for the last time that these
+psychometric phenomena, astonishing though they appear at first,
+are known, proved and certain and are no longer denied or doubted
+by any of those who have studied them seriously. I could have
+given full particulars of a large number of conclusive
+experiments; but this seemed to me as superfluous and tedious as
+would be, for instance, a string of names of the recognized
+chemical reactions that can be obtained in a laboratory. Any one
+who pleases is at liberty to convince himself of the reality of
+the facts, provided that he applies to genuine mediums and keeps
+aloof from the inferior "seers" and especially the shams and
+imposters who swarm in this region more than in any other. Even
+with the best of them, he will have to be careful of the
+involuntary, unconscious and almost inevitable interference of
+telepathy, which is also very interesting, though it is a
+phenomenon of a different class, much less surprising and
+debatable than pure psychometry. He must also learn the art of
+interrogating the medium and refrain from asking incoherent and
+random questions about casual or future events. He will not
+forget that "clairvoyance is strictly limited to the perception
+of human personality," according to the role so well formulated
+by Dr. Osty. Experiments have been made in which a psychometer,
+on touching the tooth of a prehistoric animal, saw the landscapes
+and the cataclysms of the earth's earliest ages displayed before
+his eyes; in which another medium, on handling a jewel, conjured
+up, it would seem with marvellous exactness, the games and
+processions of ancient Greece, as though the objects permanently
+retained the recollection or rediscovered the "astral negatives"
+of all the events which they once witnessed. But it will be
+understood that, in such cases, any effective control is, so to
+speak, impossible and that the part played by telepathy cannot be
+decided. It is important, therefore, to keep strictly to that
+which can be verified.
+
+Even when thus limiting his scope, the experimenter will meet
+with many surprises. For instance, though the revelations of two
+psychometers to whom the same letter is handed in succession most
+often agree remarkably in their main outlines, it can also happen
+that one of them perceives only what concerns the writer of the
+letter, whereas the other will be interested only in the person
+to whom the letter was addressed or to a third person who was in
+the room where the letter was written. It is well to be forearmed
+against these first mistakes, which, for that matter, in the
+frequent cases where strict control is possible, but confirm the
+existence and the independence of the astounding faculty.
+
+11
+
+As for the theories that attempt to explain it, I am quite
+willing to grant that they are still somewhat confused. The
+important thing for the moment is the accumulation of claims and
+experiments that go feeling their way farther and farther along
+all the paths of the unknown. Meanwhile, that one unexpected door
+which sheds at the back of our old convictions more than one
+unexpected door, which sheds upon the life and habits of our
+secret being sufficient light to puzzle us for many a long day.
+This brings us back once more to the omniscience and perhaps the
+omnipotence of our hidden guest, to the brink of the mysterious
+reservoir of every manner of knowledge which we shall meet with
+again when we come to speak of the future, of the talking horses,
+of the divining-rod, of materializations and miracles, in short,
+in every circumstance where we pass beyond the horizon of our
+little daily life. As we thus advance, with slow and cautious
+footsteps, in them as yet deserted and very nebulous regions of
+metapsychics, we are compelled to recognize that there must exist
+somewhere, in this world or in others, a spot in which everything
+is known, in which everything is possible, to which everything
+goes, from which everything comes, which belongs to all, to which
+all have access, but of which the long-forgotten roads must be
+learnt again by our stumbling feet. We shall often meet those
+difficult roads in the course of our present quest and we shall
+have more than one occasion to refer again to those depths into
+which all the supernatural facts of our existence flow, unless
+indeed they take their source there. For the moment, that which
+most above all engage our attention in these psychometric
+phenomena is their purely and exclusively human character. They
+occur between the living and the living, on this solid earth of
+ours, in the world that lies before our eyes; and the spirits,
+the dead, the gods and the interplanetary intelligences know them
+not. Hardly anywhere else, except in the equally perplexing
+manifestations of the divining-rod and in certain
+materializations, shall we find with the same clearness this same
+specific character, if we may call it so. This is a valuable
+lesson. It tells us that our every-day life provides phenomena as
+disturbing and of exactly the same kind and nature as those
+which, in other circumstances, we attribute to other forces than
+ours. It teaches us also that we must first direct and exhaust
+our enquiries here below, among ourselves, before passing to the
+other side; for our first care should be to simplify the
+interpretations and explanations and not to seek elsewhere, in
+opposition, what probably lies hidden within us in reality.
+Afterwards, if the unknown overwhelm us utterly, if the darkness
+engulf us beyond all hope, there will still be time to go, none
+can tell where, to question the deities or the dead.
+
+
+CHAPTER III. THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE FUTURE
+
+1
+
+Premonition or precognition leads us to still more mysterious
+regions, where stands, half merging from an intolerable darkness,
+the gravest problem that can thrill mankind, the knowledge of the
+future. The latest, the best and the most complete study devoted
+to it is, I believe, that recently published by M. Ernest
+Bozzano, under the title Des Phenomenes Premonitoires. Availing
+himself of excellent earlier work, notably that of Mrs. Sidgwick
+and Myers[1] and adding the result of his own researches, the
+author collects some thousand cases of precognition, of which he
+discusses one hundred and sixty, leaving the great majority of
+the others on one side. Not because they are negligible, but
+because he does not wish to exceed too flagrantly the normal
+limits of a monograph.
+
+[1] Proceedings, Vols.  V. and XI.
+
+
+He begins by carefully eliminating all the episodes which, though
+apparently premonitory, may be explained by self-suggestion (as
+in the case, for instance, where some one smitten with a disease
+still latent seems to foresee this disease and the death which
+will be its conclusion), by telepathy (when a sensitive is aware
+beforehand of the arrival of a person or a letter), or lastly by
+clairvoyance (when a man dreams of a spot where he will find
+something which he has mislaid, or an uncommon plant, or an
+insect sought for in vain, or of the unknown place which he will
+visit at some later date).
+
+In all these cases, we have not, properly speaking, to do with a
+pure future, but rather with a present that is not yet known.
+Thus reduced and stripped of all foreign influences and
+intrusions the number of instances in which there is a really
+clear and incontestable perception of a fragment of the future
+remains large enough, contrary to what is generally believed, to
+make it impossible for us to speak of extraordinary accidents or
+wonderful coincidences. There must be a limit to everything, even
+to distrust, even to the most extensive incredulity, otherwise
+all historical research and a good deal of scientific research
+would become decidedly impracticable. And this remark applies as
+much to the nature of the incidents related as to the actual
+authenticity of the narratives. We can contest or suspect any
+story whatever, any written proof, any evidence; but
+thenceforward we must abandon all certainty or knowledge that is
+not acquired by means of mathematical operations or laboratory
+experiments, that is to say, three-fourths of the human phenomena
+which interest us most. Observe that the records collected by the
+investigators of the S. P. R., like those discussed by M.
+Bozzano, are all told at first hand and that those stories of
+which the narrators were not the protagonists or the direct
+witnesses have been ruthlessly rejected. Furthermore, some of
+these narratives are necessarily of the nature of medical
+observations; as for the others, if we attentively examine the
+character of those who have related them and the circumstances
+which corroborate them, we shall agree that it is more just and
+more reasonable to believe in them than to look upon every man
+who has an extraordinary experience as being a priori a liar, the
+victim of an hallucination, or a wag.
+
+2
+
+There could be no question of giving here even a brief analysis
+of the most striking cases. It would require a hundred pages and
+would alter the whole nature of this essay, which, to keep within
+its proper dimensions, most take it for granted that most of the
+materials which it examines are familiar. I therefore refer the
+reader who may wish to form an opinion for himself to the
+easily-accessible sources which I have mentioned above. It will
+suffice, to give an accurate idea of the gravity of the problem
+to any one who has not time or opportunity to consult the
+original documents if I sum up in a few words some of these
+pioneer adventures, selected among those which seem least open to
+dispute; for it goes without saying that all have not the same
+value, otherwise the question would be settled. There are some
+which, while exceedingly striking at first sight and offering
+every guarantee that could be desired to authenticity,
+nevertheless do not imply a real knowledge of the future and can
+be interpreted in another manner. I give one, to serve as an
+instance; it is reported by Dr. Alphonse Teste in his Manuel
+pratique du magnetisme animal.
+
+On the 8th of May, Dr. Teste magnetizes Mme. Hortense--in the
+presence of her husband. She is no sooner asleep than she
+announces that she has been pregnant for a fortnight, that she
+will not go her full time, that "she will take fright at
+something," that she will have a fall and that the result will be
+a miscarriage. She adds that, on the 12th of May, after having
+had a fright, she will have a fainting-fit which will last for
+eight minutes; and she then describes, hour by hour, the course
+of her malady, which will end in three days' loss of reason, from
+which she will recover.
+
+On awaking, she retains no recollection of anything that has
+passed; it is kept from her; and Dr. Teste communicates his notes
+to Dr. Amidee Latour. On the 12th of May, he calls on M. and
+Mme.--, finds them at table and puts Mme.-- to sleep again,
+whereupon she repeats word for word what she told him four days
+before. They wake her up. The dangerous hour is drawing near.
+They take every imaginable precaution and even close the
+shutters. Mme.--, made uneasy by these extraordinary measures
+which she is quite unable to understand, asks what they are going
+to do to her. Half-past three o'clock strikes. Mme.-- rises from
+the sofa on which they have made her sit and wants to leave the
+room. The doctor and her husband try to prevent her.
+
+"But what is the matter with you?" she asks. "I simply must go
+out."
+
+"No, madame, you shall not: I speak in the interest of your
+health."
+
+"Well, then, doctor," she replies, with a smile, "if it is in the
+interest of my health, that is all the more reason why you should
+let me go out."
+
+The excuse is a plausible one and even irresistible; but the
+husband, wishing to carry the struggle against destiny to the
+last, declares that he will accompany his wife. The doctor
+remains alone, feeling somewhat anxious, in spite of the rather
+farcical turn which the incident has taken. Suddenly, a piercing
+shriek is heard and the noise of a body falling. He runs out and
+finds Mme.-- wild with fright and apparently dying in her
+husband's arms. At the moment when, leaving him for an instant,
+she opened the door of the place where she was going, a rat, the
+first seen there for twenty years, rushed at her and gave her so
+great a start that she fell flat on her back. And all the rest of
+the prediction was fulfilled to the letter, hour by hour and
+detail by detail.
+
+3
+
+To make it quite clear in what spirit I am undertaking this study
+and to remove at the beginning any suspicion of blind or
+systematic credulity, I am anxious, before going any further, to
+say that I fully realize that cases of this kind by no means
+carry conviction. It is quite possible that everything happened
+in the subconscious imagination of the subject and that she
+herself created, by self-suggestion, her illness, her fright, her
+fall and her miscarriage and adapted herself to most of the
+circumstances which she had foretold in her secondary state. The
+appearance of the rat at the fatal moment is the only thing that
+would suggest a precise and disquieting vision of an inevitable
+future event. Unfortunately, we are not told that the rat was
+perceived by other witnesses than the patient, so that there is
+nothing to prove that it also was not imaginary. I have therefore
+quoted this inadequate instance only because it represents fairly
+well the general aspect and the indecisive value of many similar
+cases and enable us to note once and for all the objections which
+can be raised and the precautions which we should take before
+entering these suspicious and obscure regions.
+
+We now come to an infinitely more significant and less
+questionable case related by Dr. Joseph Maxwell, the learned and
+very scrupulous author of Les Phenomenes Psychiques, a work which
+has been translated into English under the title of Metapsychical
+Phenomena. It concerns a vision which was described to him eight
+days before the event and which he told to many people before it
+was accomplished. A sensitive perceived in a crystal the
+following scene: a large steamer, flying a flag of three
+horizontal bars, black, white and red, and bearing the name
+Leutschland, was sailing in mid-ocean. The boat was suddenly
+enveloped in smoke; a great number of sailors, passengers and men
+in uniform rushed to the upper deck; and the boat went down.
+
+Eight days afterwards, the newspapers announced the accident to
+the Deutschland, whose boiler had burst, obliging the steamboat
+to stand to.
+
+The evidence of a man like Dr. Maxwell, especially when we have
+to do with a so-to-speak personal incident, possesses an
+importance on which it is needless to insist. We have here,
+therefore, several days beforehand, the very clear prevision of
+an event which, moreover, in no way concerns the percipient: a
+curious detail, but one which is not uncommon in these cases. The
+mistake in reading Leutschland for Deutschland, which would have
+been quite natural in real life, adds a note of probability and
+authenticity to the phenomenon. As for the final act, the
+foundering of the vessel in the place of a simple heaving to, we
+must see in this, as Dr. J. W. Pickering and W. A. Sadgrove
+suggest, "the subconscious dramatization of a subliminal
+inference of the percipient." Such dramatization, moreover, are
+instinctive and almost general in this class of visions.
+
+If this were an isolated case, it would certainly not be right to
+attach decisive importance to it; "but," Dr. Maxwell observes,
+"the same sensitive has given me other curious instances; and
+these cases, compared with others which I myself have observed or
+with those of which I have received first-hand accounts, render
+the hypothesis of coincidence very improbable, though they do not
+absolutely exclude it."[1]
+
+[1] Maxwell: Metapsychical Phenomena, p. 202.
+
+
+4
+
+Another and perhaps more convincing case, more strictly
+investigated and established, a case which clearly does not admit
+of explanation, by the theory of coincidence, worthy of all
+respect though this theory be, is that related by M. Theodore
+Flournoy, science professor at the university of Geneva, in his
+remarkable work, Esprits et Mediums. Professor Flournoy is known
+to be one of the most learned and most critical exponents of the
+new science of metapsychics. He even carries his fondness for
+natural explanations and his repugnance to admit the intervention
+of superhuman powers to a point where it is often difficult to
+follow him. I will give the narrative as briefly as possible. It
+will be found in full on pp. 348 to 362 of his masterly book.
+
+In August, 1883, a certain Mme. Buscarlet, whom he knew
+personally, returned to Geneva after spending three years with
+the Moratief family at Kazan as governess to two girls. She
+continued to correspond with the family and also with a Mme.
+Nitchinof, who kept a school at Kazan to which Mlles. Moratief,
+Mme. Buscarlet's former pupils, went after her departure.
+
+On the night of the 9th of December (O. S.) of the same year,
+Mme. Buscarlet had a dream which she described the following
+morning in a letter to Mme. Moratief, dated 10 December. She
+wrote, to quote her own words:
+
+"You and I were on a country-road when a carriage passed in front
+of us and a voice from inside called to us. When we came up to
+the carriage, we saw Mlle. Olga Popoi lying across it, clothed in
+white, wearing a bonnet trimmed with yellow ribbons. She said to
+you:
+
+"'I called you to tell you that Mme. Nitchinof will leave the
+school on the 17th.'
+
+"The carriage then drove on."
+
+A week later and three days before the letter reached Kazan, the
+event foreseen in the dream was fulfilled in a tragic fashion.
+Mme. Nitchinof died on the 16th of an infectious disease; and on
+the 17th her body was carried out of the school for fear of
+infection.
+
+It is well to add that both Mme. Buscarlet's letter and the
+replies which came from Russia were communicated to Professor
+Flournoy and bear the postmark dates.
+
+Such premonitory dreams are frequent; but it does not often
+happen that circumstances and especially the existence of a
+document dated previous to their fulfilment give them such
+incontestable authenticity.
+
+We may remark in passing the odd character of this premonition,
+which however is fully in accordance with the habits of our
+unknown guest. The date is fixed precisely; but only a veiled and
+mysterious allusion (the woman lying across the carriage and
+cloaked in white) is made to the essential part of the
+prediction, the illness and death.
+
+Was there a coincidence, a vision of the future pure and simple,
+or a vision of the future suggested by telepathic influence? The
+theory of coincidence can be defended, if need be, here as
+everywhere else, but would be very extraordinary in this case. As
+for telepathic influence, we should have to suppose that, on the
+9th of December, a week before her death, Mme. Nitchinof had in
+her subconsciousness a presentiment of her end and that she
+transmitted this presentiment across some thousands of miles,
+from Kazan to Geneva, to a person with whom she had never been
+intimate. It is very complex, but possible, for telepathy often
+has these disconcerting ways. If this were so, the case which
+would be one of latent illness or even of self-suggestion; and
+the preexistence of the future, without being entirely disproved,
+would be less clearly established.
+
+5
+
+Let us pass to other examples. I quote from an excellent article
+of the importance of precognitions, by Messrs. Pickering and
+Sadgrove, which appeared in the Annales des Sciences Psychiques
+for 1 February 1908, the summary of an experiment by Mrs. A. W.
+Verrall told in full detail in Vol. XX of the Proceedings. Mrs.
+Verrall is a celebrated "automatist"; and her
+"cross-correspondence" occupy a whole volume of the Proceedings.
+Her good faith, her sincerity, her fairness and her scientific
+precision are above suspicion; and she is one of the most active
+and respected members of the Society for Psychical Research.
+
+On the 11th of May, 1901, at 11.10 p.m., Mrs. Verrall wrote as
+follows:
+
+"Do not hurry date this hoc est quod volui--tandem. {greek
+here} A. W. V. {greek here}. calx pedibus inhaerens difficultatem
+superavit. magnopere adiuvas persectando semper. Nomen inscribere
+iam possum--sic, en tibi!"[1]
+
+[1] Xenoglossy is well known not to be unusual in automatic
+writing; sometimes even the 'automatist' speaks or writes
+languages of which he is completely ignorant. The Latin and Greek
+passages are translated as follows:
+
+"This is what I have wanted at last. Justice and joy speak a word
+to the wise. A.W.V. and perhaps someone else. Chalk sticking to
+the feet has got over the difficulty. You help greatly by always
+persevering. Now I can write a name--thus, here it is!"
+
+
+After the writing comes a humorous drawing representing a bird
+walking.
+
+That same night, as there were said to be "uncanny happenings" in
+some rooms near the London Law Courts, the watchers arranged to
+sit through the night in the empty rooms. Precautions were taken
+to prevent intrusion and powdered chalk was spread on the floor
+of the two smaller rooms, "to trace anybody or anything that
+might come or go." Mrs. Verrall knew nothing of the matter. The
+phenomena began at 12:43 A.M. and ended at 2:09 A.M. The watchers
+noticed marks on the powdered chalk. On examination it was seen
+that the marks were "clearly defined bird's footprints in the
+middle of the floor, three in the left-hand room and five in the
+right-hand room." The marks were identical and exactly 2 3/4
+inches in width; they might be compared to the footprints of a
+bird about the size of a turkey. The footprints were observed at
+2:30 A. M.; the unexplained phenomena had begun at 12:43 that
+same morning. The words about "chalk sticking to the feet" are a
+singularly appropriate comment on the events; but the remarkable
+point is that Mrs. Verrall wrote what we have said ONE HOUR AND
+THIRTY-THREE MINUTES BEFORE THE EVENTS TOOK PLACE.
+
+The persons who watched in the two rooms were questioned by Mr.
+J. G. Piddington, a member of the council of the S. P. R., and
+declared that they had not any expectation of what they
+discovered.
+
+I need hardly add that Mrs. Verrall had never heard anything
+about the happenings in the haunted house and that the watchers
+were completely ignorant of Mrs. Verrall's existence.
+
+Here then is a wry curious prediction of an event, insignificant
+in itself, which is to happen, in a house unknown to the one who
+foretells it, to people whom she does not know either. The
+spiritualists, who score in this case, not without some reason,
+will have it that a spirit, in order to prove its existence and
+its intelligence, organized this little scene in which the
+future, the present and the past are all mixed up together. Are
+they right? Or is Mrs. Verrall's subconsciousness roaming like
+this, at random, in the future? It is certain that the problem
+has seldom appeared under a more baffling aspect.
+
+6
+
+We will now take another premonitory dream, strictly controlled
+by the committee of the S. P. R.[1] Early in September, 1893,
+Annette, wife of Walter Jones, tobacconist, of Old Gravel Lane,
+East London, had her little boy ill. One night she dreamt that
+she saw a cart drive up and stop near when she was. It contained
+three coffins, "two white and one blue. One white coffin was
+bigger than the other; and the blue was the biggest of the
+three." The driver took out the bigger white coffin and left it
+at the mother's feet, driving off with the others. Mrs. Jones
+told her dream to her husband and to a neighbour, laying
+particular stress on the curious circumstance that one of the
+coffins was blue.
+
+[1] Proceedings, vol. xi., p. 493.
+
+
+On the 10th of September, a friend of Mr. and Mrs. Jones was
+confined of a boy, who died on the 29th of the same month. Their
+own little boy died on the following Monday, the 2nd of October,
+being then sixteen months old. It was decided to bury the two
+children on the same day. On the morning of the day chosen, the
+parish priest informed Mr. and Mrs. Jones that another child had
+died in the neighbourhood and that its body would be brought into
+church along with the two others. Mrs. Jones remarked to her
+husband:
+
+"If the coffin is blue, then my dream will come true. For the two
+other coffins were white."
+
+The third coffin was brought; it was blue. It remains to be
+observed that the dimensions of the coffins corresponded exactly
+with the dream premonitions, the smallest being that of the child
+who died first, the next that of the little Jones boy, who was
+sixteen months old, and the largest, the blue one, that of a boy
+six years of age.
+
+Let us take, more or less at random, another case from the
+inexhaustible Proceedings.[1] The report is written by Mr. Alfred
+Cooper and attested by the Duchess of Hamilton, the Duke of
+Manchester and another gentleman to whom the duchess related the
+incident before the fulfilment of the prophetic vision:
+
+[1] Proceedings, vol. xi., p. 505.
+
+
+"A fortnight before the death of the late Earl of L.--," says Mr.
+Cooper, "in 1882, I called upon the Duke of Hamilton, in Hill
+Street, to see him professionally. After I had finished seeing
+him, we went into the drawing-room where the duchess was, and the
+duke said to me:
+
+"'Oh, Cooper, how is the earl?'
+
+"The duchess said, 'What earl?' and, on my answering, 'Lord L--,'
+she replied:
+
+"'That is very odd. I have had a most extraordinary vision. I
+went to bed, but, after being in bed a short time, I was not
+exactly asleep, but thought I saw a scene as if from a play
+before me. The actors in it were Lord L--, in a chair, as if in a
+fit, with a man standing near him with a red beard. He was by the
+side of a bath, over which bath a red lamp was distinctly shown.'
+
+"I then said:
+
+"'I am attending Lord L-- at present; there is very little the
+matter with him; he is not going to die; he will be all right
+very soon.'
+
+"Well, he got better for a week and was nearly well, but, at the
+end of six or seven days after this, I was called to see him
+suddenly. He had inflammation of both lungs.
+
+"I called in Sir William Jenner, but in six days he was a dead
+man. There were two male nurses attending on him; one had been
+taken ill. But, when I saw the other, the dream of the duchess
+was exactly represented. He was standing near a bath over the
+earl and, strange to say, his beard was red. There was the bath
+with the red lamp over it; and this brought the story to my mind.
+
+"The vision seen by the duchess was told two weeks before the
+death of Lord L--. It is a most remarkable thing."
+
+7
+
+But it is impossible to find space for the many instances
+related. As I have said, there are hundreds of them, making their
+tracks in every direction across the plains of the future. Those
+which I have quoted give a sufficient idea of the predominating
+tone and the general aspect of this sort of story. It is
+nevertheless right to add that many of them are not at all tragic
+and that premonition opens its mysterious and capricious vistas
+of the future in connection with the most diverse and
+insignificant events. It cares but little for the human value of
+the occurrence and puts the vision of a number in a lottery in
+the same plane as the most dramatic death. The roads by which it
+reaches us are also unexpected and varied. Often, as in the
+examples quoted, it comes to us in a dream. Sometimes, it is an
+auditory or visual hallucination which seizes upon us while
+awake; sometimes, an indefinable but clear and irresistible
+presentiment, a shapeless but powerful obsession, an absurd but
+imperative certainty which rises from the depths of our inner
+darkness, where perhaps lies hidden the final answer to every
+riddle.
+
+One might illustrate each of these manifestations with numerous
+examples. I will mention only a few, selected not among the most
+striking or the most attractive, but among those which have been
+most strictly tested and investigated.[1] A young peasant from
+the neighbourhood of Ghent, two months before the drawing for the
+conscription, announces to all and sundry that he will draw
+number 90 from the urn. On entering the presence of the
+district-commissioner in charge, he asks if number 90 is still
+in. The answer is yes.
+
+[1] Proceedings, vol. xi., p. 545.
+
+
+"Well then, I shall have it!"
+
+And, to the general amazement, he does draw number 90.
+
+Questioned as to the manner in which he acquired this strange
+certainty, he declared that, two months ago, just after he had
+gone to bed, he saw a huge, indescribable form appear in a corner
+of his room, with the number 90 standing out plainly in the
+middle, in figures the size of a man's hand. He sat up in bed and
+shut and opened his eyes to persuade himself that he was not
+dreaming. The apparition remained in the same place, distinctly
+and undeniably.
+
+Professor Georges Hulin, of the university of Ghent, and M. Jules
+van Dooren, the district commissioner, who report the incident,
+mention three other similar and equally striking cases witnessed
+by M. van Dooren during his term of office. I am the less
+inclined to doubt their declaration inasmuch as I am personally
+acquainted with them and know that their statements, as regards
+the objective reality of the facts, are so to speak equivalent to
+a legal deposition. M. Bozzano mentions some previsions which are
+quite as remarkable in connection with the gaming-tables at Monte
+Carlo.
+
+I repeat, I am aware that, in the case of these occurrences and
+those which resemble them, it is possible once again to invoke
+the theory of coincidence. It will be contended that there are
+probably a thousand predictions of this kind which are never
+talked about, because they were not fulfilled, whereas, if one of
+them is accomplished, which is bound by the law of probabilities
+to happen some day or other, the astonishment is general and free
+rein is given to the imagination. This is true; nevertheless, it
+is well to enquire whether these predictions are as frequent as
+is loosely stated. In the matter of those which concern the
+conscription-drawings, for instance, I have had the opportunity
+of interrogating more than we constant witness of these little
+dramas of fate; and all admitted that, on the whole, they are
+much clearer than one would believe. Next, we must not forget
+that there can be no question here of scientific proofs. We are
+in the midst of a slippery and nebulous region, where we would
+not dare to risk a step if we were not allowing ourselves to be
+guided by our feelings rather than by certainties which we are
+not forbidden to hope for, but which are not yet in sight.
+
+8
+
+We will abridge our subject still further, referring readers who
+wish to know the details to the originals, lest we should never
+have done; or rather, instead of attempting an abridgment, which
+would still be too long, so plentiful are the materials, we will
+content ourselves with enumerating a few instances, all taken
+from Bozzano's Des Phenomenes premonitoires. We read there of a
+funeral procession seen on a high-road several days before it
+actually passed that way; or, again, of a young mechanic who, in
+the beginning of November, dreamt that he came home at half-past
+five in the afternoon and saw his sister's little girl run over
+by a tram-car while crossing the street in front of the house. He
+told his dream, in great distress; and, on the 13th of the same
+month, in spite of all the precautions that had been taken, the
+child was run over by the tram-car and killed at the hour named.
+We find the ghost, the phantom animal or the mysterious noise
+which, in certain families, is the traditional herald of a death
+or of an imminent catastrophe. We find the celebrated vision
+which the painter Segantini had thirteen days before his decease,
+every detail of which remained in his mind and was represented in
+his last picture, Death. We find the Messina disaster dearly
+foreseen, twice over, by a little girl who perished under the
+ruins of the ill-fated city; and we read of a dream which, three
+months before the French invasion of Russia, foretold to Countess
+Toutschkoff that her husband would fall at Borodino, a village so
+little known at the time that those interested in the dream
+looked in vain for its name on the maps. Until now we have spoken
+only of the spontaneous manifestations of the future. It would
+seem as though coming events, gathered in front of our lives,
+bear with crushing weight upon the uncertain and deceptive dike
+of the present, which is no longer able to contain them. They
+ooze through, they seek a crevice by which to reach us. But, side
+by side with these passive, independent and intractable
+premonitions, which are but so many vagrant and furtive
+emanations of the unknown, are others which do yield to entreaty,
+allow themselves to be directed into channels, are more or less
+obedient to our orders and will sometimes reply to the questions
+which we put to them. They come from the same inaccessible
+reservoir, are no less mysterious, but yet appear a little more
+human than the others; and, without drugging ourselves with
+puerile or dangerous illusions, we may be permitted to hope that,
+if we follow them and study them attentively, they will one day
+open to us the hidden paths that join that which is no more to
+that which is not yet.
+
+It is true that here, where we must needs mix with the somewhat
+lawless world of professional mystery-mongers, we have to
+increase our caution and walk with measured steps on very
+suspicious ground. But in this region of pitfalls we glean a
+certain number of facts that cannot reasonably be contested. It
+will be enough to recall, for instance, the symbolic premonitions
+of the famous "seeress of Prevorst," Frau Hauffe, whose prophetic
+spirit was awakened by soap bubbles, crystals and mirrors;[1] the
+clairvoyant who, eighteen years before the event, foretold the
+death of a girl by the hand of her rival in 1907, in a written
+prophecy which was presented to the court by the mother of the
+murdered girl;[1] A. J. C. Kerner: Die Scherin von Prevorst 141
+[1] the gypsy who, also in writing, foretold all the events in
+Miss Isabel Arundel's life, including the name of her husband,
+Burton, the famous explorer;[2] the sealed letter addressed to M.
+Morin, vice-president of the Societe du Mesmerisme, describing
+the most unexpected circumstances of a death that occurred a
+month later;[3] the famous "Marmontel prediction," obtained by
+Mrs. Verrall's cross-correspondences, which gives a vision, two
+months and a half before their accomplishment, of the most
+insignificant actions of a traveller in an hotel bedroom;[4] and
+many others.
+
+[1] Light, 1907, p. 219. The crime was committed in Paris and
+made a great stir at the time.
+
+[2] Lady Burton: The Life of Captain Sir Richd. F. Burton,
+K.C.M.G., vol.i., p.253.
+
+[3] Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, vol. ix., p.
+15.
+
+[4] Proceedings, vol. xx., p. 331.
+
+
+9
+
+I will not review the various and very often grotesque methods of
+interrogating the future that are most frequently practised
+to-day: cards, palmistry, crystal-gazing, fortune-telling by
+means of coffee-grounds, tea-leaves, magnetic needles and white
+of egg, graphology, astrology and the rest. These methods, as I
+have already said, are worth exactly what the medium who employs
+them is worth. They have no other object than to arouse the
+medium's subconsciousness and to bring it into relation with that
+of the person questioning him. As a matter of fact, all these
+purely empirical processes are but so many, often puerile forms
+of self-manifestation adopted by the undeniable gift which is
+known as intuition, clairvoyance or, in certain cases,
+psychometry. I have spoken at sufficient length of this last
+faculty not to linger over it now. All that we have still to do
+is to consider it for a moment in its relations with the
+foretelling of the future. A large number of investigations,
+notably those conducted by M. Duchatel and Dr. Osty, show that,
+in psychometry, the notion of time, as Dr. Joseph Maxwell
+observes, is very loose, that is to say, the past, present and
+future nearly always overlap. Most of the clairvoyant or
+psychometric subjects, when they are honest, do not know, "do not
+feel," as M. Duchatel very ably remarks, "what the future is.
+They do not distinguish it from the other tenses; and
+consequently they succeed in being prophets, but unconscious
+prophets." In a word--and this is a very important indication
+from the point of view of the probable coexistence of the three
+tenses--it appears that they see that which is not yet with the
+same clearness and on the same plane as that which is no more,
+but are incapable of separating the two visions and picking out
+the future which alone interests us. For a still stronger reason,
+it is impossible for them to state dates with precision.
+Nevertheless, the fact remains that, when we take the trouble to
+sift their evidence and have the patience to await the
+realization of certain events which are sometimes not due for a
+long time to come, the future is fairly often perceived by some
+of these strange soothsayers.
+
+There are psychometers, however, and notably Mme. M--, Dr. Osty's
+favorite medium, who never confuse the future and the past. Mme.
+M-- places her visions in time according to the position which
+they occupy in space. Thus she sees the future in front of her,
+the past behind her and the present beside her. But,
+notwithstanding these distinctly-graded visions, she also is
+incapable of naming her dates exactly; in fact, her mistakes in
+this respect are so general that Dr. Osty looks upon it as a pure
+chronological coincidence when a prediction is realized at the
+moment foretold.
+
+We should also observe that, in psychometry, only those events
+can be perceived which relate directly to the individual
+communicating with the percipient, for it is not so much the
+percipient that sees into us as we that read in our own
+subconsciousness, which is momentarily lighted by his presence.
+We must not therefore ask him for predictions of a general
+character, whether, for instance, there will be a war in the
+spring, an epidemic in the summer or an earthquake in the autumn.
+The moment the question concerns events, however important, with
+which we are not intimately connected, he is bound to answer, as
+do all the genuine mediums, that he sees nothing.
+
+The area of his vision being thus limited, does he really
+discover the future in it? After three years of numerous,
+cautious and systematic experiments with some twenty mediums, Dr.
+Osty categorically declares that he does:
+
+"All the incidents," he says, "which filled these three years of
+my life, whether wished for by me or not, or even absolutely
+contrary to the ordinary routine of my life, had always been
+foretold to me, not all by each of the clairvoyant subjects, but
+all by one or other of them. As I have been practising these
+tests continually, it seems to me that the experience of three
+years wholly devoted to this object should give some weight to my
+opinion on the subject of predictions."
+
+This is incontestable; and the sincerity, scientific
+conscientiousness and high intellectual value of Dr. Osty's fine
+work inspire one with the most entire confidence. Unfortunately,
+he contents himself with quoting too summarily a few facts and
+does not, as he ought, give us in extenso the details of his
+experiments, controls and tests. I am well aware that this would
+be a thankless and wearisome task, necessitating a large volume
+which a mass of puerile incidents and inevitable repetitions
+would make almost readable. Moreover, it could scarcely help
+taking the form of an intimate and indiscreet autobiography; and
+it is not easy to bring one's self to make this sort of public
+confession. But it has to be done. In a science which is only in
+its early stages, it is not enough to show the object attained
+and to state one's conviction; it is necessary above all to
+describe every path that has been taken and, by an incessant and
+infinite accumulation of investigated and attested facts, to
+enable every one to draw his own conclusions. This has been the
+cumbrous and laborious method of the Proceedings for over thirty
+years; and it is the only right one. Discussion is possible and
+fruitful only at that price. In all these extraconscious matters,
+we have not yet reached the stage of definite deduction, we are
+still bringing up materials to the scene of operations.
+
+Once more, I know that, in these cases, as I have seen for
+myself, the really convincing facts are necessarily very rare;
+indeed, nowhere else do we meet with the same difficulty. If the
+medium tells you, for instance, as Mme. M. seems easily to do,
+how you will employ your day from the morning onwards, if she
+sees you in a certain house in a certain street meeting this or
+that person, it is impossible to say that, on the one hand, she
+is not already reading your as yet unconscious plans or
+intentions, or that, on the other hand, by doing what she has
+foreseen, you are not obeying a suggestion against which you
+could not fight except by violently doing the opposite to what it
+demands of you, which again would be a case of inverted
+suggestion. None therefore would have any value save predictions
+of unlikely happenings, clearly defined and outside the sphere of
+the person interested. As Dr. Osty says:
+
+"The ideal prognostication would obviously be that of an event so
+rare, so sudden and unexpected, implying such a change in one's
+mode of life that the theory of coincidence could not decently be
+put forward. But, as everybody is not, in the peaceful course of
+his threatened by such an absolutely convincing event, the
+clairvoyant cannot always reveal to the person experimenting--and
+reveal it for a more or less approximate date--one of those
+incidents whose accomplishment would carry irresistible
+conviction."
+
+In any case, the question of psychometric prognostications calls
+for further enquiry, although it is easy even at the present day
+to forsee the results.
+
+10
+
+Let us now return to our spontaneous premonitions, in which the
+future comes to seek us of its own accord and, so to speak, to
+challenge us at home. I know from personal experience that, when
+we embark upon these disconcerting matters, the first impression
+is scarcely favourable. We are very much inclined to laugh, to
+treat as wearisome tales, as hysterical hallucinations, as
+ingenious or interested fictions most or those incidents which
+give too violent a shock to the narrow and limited idea which we
+have of our human life. To smile, to reject everything beforehand
+and to pass by with averted head, as was done, I remember, in the
+time of Galvani, and in the early days of hypnotism, is much more
+easy and seems more respectable and prudent than to stop, admit
+and examine. Nevertheless we must not forget that it is to some
+who did not smile so lightly that we owe the best part of the
+marvels from whose heights we are preparing to smile in our turn.
+For the rest, I grant that, thus presented, hastily and
+summarily, without the details that throw light upon them and the
+proofs that support them, the incidents in question do not show
+to advantage and, inasmuch as they are isolated and sparingly
+chosen, lose all the weight and authority derived from the
+compact and imposing mass whence they are arbitrarily detached.
+As I said above, nearly a thousand cases have been collected,
+representing probably not the tenth part of those which a more
+active and general search might bring together. The number is
+evidently of importance and denotes the enormous pressure of the
+mystery; but, if there were only half a dozen genuine cases--and
+Dr. Maxwell's, Professor Flournoy's, Mrs. Verrall's, the
+Marmontel, Jones and Hamilton cases and some others are
+undoubtedly genuine--they would be enough to show that, under the
+erroneous idea which we form of the past and the present, a new
+verity is living and moving, eager to come to light.
+
+The efforts of that verity, I need hardly say, display a very
+different sort of force after we have actually and attentively
+read those hundreds of extraordinary stories which, without
+appearing to do so, strike to the very roots of history. We soon
+lose all inclination to doubt. We penetrate into another world
+and come to a stop all out of countenance. We no longer know
+where we stand; before and after overlap and mingle. We no longer
+distinguish the insidious and factitious but indispensable line
+which separates the years that have gone by from the years that
+are to come. We clutch at the hours and days of the past and
+present to reassure ourselves, to fasten on to some certainty, to
+convince ourselves that we are still in our right place in this
+life where that which is not yet seems as substantial, as real,
+as positive, as powerful as that which is no more. We discover
+with uneasiness that time, on which we based our whole existence,
+itself no longer exists. It is no longer the swiftest of our
+gods, known to us only by its flight across all things: it alters
+its position no more than space, of which it is doubtless but the
+incomprehensible reflex. It reigns in the centre of every event;
+and every event is fixed in its centre; and all that comes and
+all that goes passes from end to end of our little life without
+moving by a hair's breadth around its motionless pivot. It is
+entitled to but one of the thousand names which we have been wont
+to lavish upon its power, a power that seemed to us manifold and
+innumerable: yesterday, recently, formerly, erewhile, after,
+before, tomorrow, soon, never, later fall like childish masks,
+whereas to-day and always completely cover with their united
+shadows the idea which we form in the end of a duration which has
+no subdivisions, no breaks and no stages, which is pulseless,
+motionless and boundless.
+
+11
+
+Many are the theories which men have imagined in their attempts
+to explain the working of the strange phenomenon; and many others
+might be imagined.
+
+As we have seen, self-suggestion and telepathy explain certain
+cases which concern events already in existence, but still latent
+and perceived before the knowledge of them can reach us by the
+normal process of the senses or the intelligence. But, even by
+extending these two theories to their uttermost point and
+positively abusing their accommodating elasticity, we do not
+succeed in illumining by their aid more than a rather restricted
+portion of the vast undiscovered land. We must therefore look for
+something else.
+
+The first theory which suggests itself and which on the surface
+seems rather attractive is that of spiritualism, which may be
+extended until it is scarcely distinguishable from the
+theosophical theory and other religious suppositions. It assumes
+the revival of spirits, the existence of discarnate or other
+superior and more mysterious entities which surround us, interest
+themselves in our fate, guide our thoughts and our actions and,
+above all, know the future. It is, as we recognized when speaking
+of ghosts and hanted houses, a very acceptable theory; and any
+one to whom it appears can adopt it without doing violence to his
+intelligence. But we must confess that it seems less necessary
+and perhaps even less clearly proved in this region than in that.
+It starts by begging the question: without the intervention of
+discarnate beings, the spiritualists say, it is impossible to
+explain the majority of the premonitory phenomena; therefore we
+must admit the existence of these discarnate beings. Let us grant
+it for the moment, for to beg the question, which is merely an
+indefensible trick of the superficial logic of our brain, does
+not necessarily condemn a theory and neither takes away from nor
+adds to the reality of things. Besides, as we shall insist later,
+the intervention or non-intervention of the spirits is not the
+point at issue; and the crux of the mystery does not lie there.
+What most interest us is far less the paths or intermediaries by
+which prophetic warnings reach us than the actual existence of
+the future in the present. It is true--to do complete justice to
+neospiritualism--that its position offers certain advantages from
+the point of view of the almost inconceivable problem of the
+preexistence of the future. It can evade or divert some of the
+consequences of that problem. The spirits, it declares, do not
+necessarily see the future as a whole, as a total past or
+present, motionless and immovable, but they know infinitely
+better than we do the numberless causes that determine any agent,
+so that, finding themselves at the luminous source of those
+causes, they have no difficulty in foreseeing their effects. They
+are, with respect to the incidents still in process of formation,
+in the position of an astronomer who foretells, within a second,
+all the phases of an eclipse in which a savage sees nothing but
+an unprecedented catastrophe which he attributes to the anger of
+his idols of straw or clay. It is indeed possible that this
+acquaintance with a greater number of causes explains certain
+predictions; but there are plenty of others which presume a
+knowledge of so many causes, causes so remote and so profound,
+that this knowledge is hardly to be distinguished from a
+knowledge of the future pure and simple. In any case, beyond
+certain limits, the preexistence of causes seems no clearer than
+that of effects. Nevertheless, it must be admitted that the
+spiritualists gain a slight advantage here.
+
+They believe that they gain another when they say or might say
+that it is still possible that the spirits stimulate us to
+realize the events which they foretell without themselves clearly
+perceiving them in the future. After announcing, for instance,
+that on a certain day we shall go to a certain place and do a
+certain thing, they urge us irresistibly to proceed to the spot
+named and there to perform the act prophesied. But this theory,
+like those of self-suggestion and telepathy, would explain only a
+few phenomena and would leave in obscurity all those cases,
+infinitely more numerous because they make up almost the whole of
+our future, in which either chance intervenes or some event in no
+way dependent upon our will or the spirit's, unless indeed we
+suppose that the latter possesses an omniscience and an
+omnipotence which take us back to the original mysteries of the
+problem.
+
+Besides, in the gloomy regions of precognition, it is almost
+always a matter of anticipating a misfortune and very rarely, if
+ever, of meeting with a pleasure or a joy. We should therefore
+have to admit that the spirits which drag me to the fatal place
+and compel me to do the act that will have tragic consequences
+are deliberately hostile to me and find diversion only in the
+spectacle of my suffering. What could those spirits be, from what
+evil world would they arise and how should we explain why our
+brothers and friends of yesterday, after passing through the
+august and peace-bestowing gates of death, suddenly become
+transformed into crafty and malevolent demons? Can the great
+spiritual kingdom, in which all passions born of the flesh should
+be stilled, be but a dismal abode of hatred, spite and envy? It
+will perhaps be said that they lead us into misfortune in order
+to purify us; but this brings us to religious theories which it
+is not our intention to examine.
+
+12
+
+The only attempt at an explanation that can hold its own with
+spiritualism has recourse once again to the mysterious powers of
+our subconsciousness. We must needs to recognize that, if the
+future exists to-day, already such as it will be when it becomes
+for us the present and the past, the intervention of discarnate
+minds or of any other spiritual entity adrift from another sphere
+is of little avail. We can picture an infinite spirit
+indifferently contemplating the past and future in their
+coexistence; we can imagine a whole hierarchy of intermediate
+intelligences taking a more or less extensive part in the
+contemplation and transmitting it to our subconsciousness. But
+all this is practically nothing more than inconsistent
+speculation and ingenious dreaming in the dark; in any case, it
+is adventitious, secondary and provisional. Let us keep to the
+facts as we see them: an unknown faculty, buried deep in our
+being and generally inactive, perceives, on rare occasions,
+events that have not yet taken place. We possess but one
+certainty on this subject, namely, that the phenomenon
+actually occurs within ourselves; it is therefore within
+ourselves that we must first study it, without burdening
+ourselves with suppositions which remove it from its centre and
+simply shift the mystery. The incomprehensible mystery is the
+preexistence of the future; once we admit this--and it seems very
+difficult to deny--there is no reason to attribute to imaginary
+intermediaries rather than to ourselves the faculty of descrying
+certain fragments of that future. We see, in regard to most of
+the mediumistic manifestations, that we possess within ourselves
+all the unusual forces with which the spiritualists endow
+discarnate spirits; and why should it be otherwise as concerns
+the powers of divination? The explanation taken from the
+subconsciousness is the most direct, the simplest, the nearest,
+whereas the other is endlessly circuitous, complicated and
+distant. Until the spirits testify to their existence in an
+unanswerable fashion, there is no advantage in seeking in the
+grave for the solution of a riddle that appears indeed to lie at
+the roots of our own life.
+
+13
+
+It is true that this explanation does not explain much; but the
+others are just as ineffectual and are open to the same
+objections. These objections are many and various; and it is
+easier to raise them than to reply to them. For instance, we can
+ask ourselves why the subconsciousness or the spirits, seeing
+that they read the future and are able to announce an impending
+calamity, hardly ever give us the one useful and definite
+indication that would allow us to avoid it. What can be the
+childish or mysterious reason of this strange reticence? In many
+cases it is almost criminal; for instance, in a case related by
+Professor Hyslop[1] we see the foreboding of the greatest
+misfortune that can befall a mother germinating, growing, sending
+out shoots, developing, like some gluttonous and deadly plant, to
+stop short on the verge of the last warning, the one detail,
+insignificant in itself but indispensable, which would have saved
+the child. It is the case of a woman who begins by experiencing a
+vague but powerful impression that a grievous "burden" was going
+to fall upon her family. Next month, this premonitory feeling
+repeats itself very frequently, becomes more intense and ends by
+concentrating itself upon the poor woman's little daughter. Each
+time that she is planning something for the child's future, she
+hears a voice saying:
+
+"She'll never need it."
+
+[1] Proceedings, vol. xiv., p. 266.
+
+
+A week before the catastrophe, a violent smell of fire fills the
+house. From that time, the mother begins to be careful about
+matches, seeing that they are in safe places and out of reach.
+She looks all over the house for them and feels a strong impulse
+to burn all matches of the kind easily lighted. About an hour
+before the fatal disaster, she reaches for a box to destroy it;
+but she says to herself that her eldest boy is gone out, thinks
+that she may need the matches to light the gas-stove and decides
+to destroy them as soon as he comes back. She takes the child up
+to its crib for its morning sleep and, as she is putting it into
+the cradle, she hears the usual mysterious voice whisper in her
+ear:
+
+"Turn the mattress."
+
+But, being in a great hurry, she simply says that she will turn
+the mattress after the child has taken its nap. She then goes
+downstairs to work. After a while, she hears the child cry and,
+hurrying up to the room, finds the crib and its bedding on fire
+and the child so badly burnt that it dies in three hours.
+
+14
+
+Before going further and theorizing about this case, let us once
+more state the matter precisely. I know that the reader may
+straightway and quite legitimately deny the value of anecdotes of
+this kind. He will say that we have to do with a neurotic who has
+drawn upon her imagination for all the elements that give a
+dramatic setting to the story and surround with a halo of mystery
+a sad but commonplace domestic accident. This is quite possible;
+and it is perfectly allowable to dismiss the case. But it is none
+the less true that, by thus deliberately rejecting everything
+that does not bear the stamp of mathematical or judicial
+certainty, we risk losing as we go along most of the
+opportunities or clues which the great riddle of this world
+offers us in its moments of inattention or graciousness. At the
+beginning of an enquiry we must know how to content ourselves
+with little. For the incident in question to be convincing,
+previous evidence in writing, more or less official statements
+would be required, whereas we have only the declarations of the
+husband, a neighbour and a sister. This is insufficient, I agree;
+but we must at the same time confess that the circumstances are
+hardly favourable to obtaining the proofs which we demand. Those
+who receive warnings of this kind either believe in them or do
+not believe in them. If they believe in them, it is quite natural
+that they should not think first of all of the scientific
+interest of their trouble, or of putting down in writing and thus
+authenticating its premonitory symptoms and gradual evolution. If
+they do not believe in them, it is no less natural that they
+should not proceed to speak or take notice of inanities of which
+they do not recognize the value until after they have lost the
+opportunity of supplying convincing proofs of them. Also, do not
+forget that the little story in question is selected from among a
+hundred others, which in their turn are equally indecisive, but
+which, repeating the same facts and the same tendencies with a
+strange persistency, and by weakening the most inveterate
+distrust.[1]
+
+[1] See, in particular, Bozzano's cases xlix. and lxvii. These
+two, especially case xlix., which tells of a personal experience
+of the late W. T. Stead, are supported by more substantial
+proofs. I have quoted Professor Hyslop's case, because the
+reticence is more striking.
+
+
+15
+
+Having said this much, in order to conciliate or part company
+with those who have no intention of leaving the terra firma of
+science, let us return to the case before us, which is all the
+more disquieting inasmuch as we may consider it a sort of
+prototype of the tragic and almost diabolical reticence which we
+find in most premonitions. It is probable that under the mattress
+there was a stray match which the child discovered and struck;
+this is the only possible explanation of the catastrophe, for
+there was no fire burning on that floor of the house. If the
+mother had turned the mattress, she would have seen the match;
+and, on the other hand, she would certainly have turned the
+mattress if she had been told that there was a match underneath
+it. Why did the voice that urged her to perform the necessary
+action not add the one word that was capable of ensuring that
+action? The problem moreover is equally perturbing and perhaps
+equally insoluble whether it concerns our own subconscious
+faculties, or spirits, or strange intelligences. Those who give
+these warnings must know that they will be useless, because they
+manifestly foresee the event as a whole; but they must also know
+that one last word, which they do not pronounce, would be enough
+to prevent the misfortune that is already consummated in their
+prevision. They know it so well that they bring this word to the
+very edge of the abyss, hold it suspended there, almost let it
+fall and recapture it suddenly at the moment when its weight
+would have caused happiness and life to rise once more, to the
+surface of the mighty gulf. What then is this mystery? Is it
+incapacity or hostility? If they are incapable, what is the
+unexpected and sovereign force that interposes between them and
+us? And, if they are hostile, on what, on whom are they revenging
+themselves? What can be the secret of those inhuman games, of
+those uncanny and cruel diversions on the most slippery and
+dangerous peaks of fate? Why warn, if they know that the warning
+will be in vain? Of whom are they making sport? Is there really
+an inflexible fatality by virtue of which that which has to be
+accomplished is accomplished from all eternity? But then why not
+respect silence, since all speech is useless? Or do they, in
+spite of all, perceive a gleam, a crevice in the inexorable wall?
+What hope do they find in it? Have they not seen more clearly
+than ourselves that no deliverance can come through that crevice?
+One could understand this fluttering and wavering, all these
+efforts of theirs, if they did not know; but here it is proved
+that they know everything, since they foretell exactly that which
+they might prevent. If we press them with questions, they answer
+that there is nothing to be done, that no human power could avert
+or thwart the issue. Are they mad, bored, irritable, or accessory
+to a hideous pleasantry? Does our fate depend on the happy
+solution of some petty enigma or childish conundrum, even as our
+salvation, in most of the so-called revealed religious, is
+settled by a blind and stupid cast of the die? Is all the liberty
+that we are granted reduced to the reading of a more or less
+ingenious riddle? Can the great soul of the universe be the soul
+of a great baby?
+
+16
+
+But, rather than pursue this subject, let us be just and admit
+that there is perhaps no way out of the maze and that our
+reproaches are as incomprehensible as the conduct of the spirits.
+Indeed, what would you have them do in the circle in which our
+logic imprisons them? Either they foretell us a calamity which
+their predictions cannot avert, in which case there is no use in
+foretelling it, or, if they announce it to us and at the same
+time give us the means to prevent it, they do not really see the
+future and are foretelling nothing, since the calamity is not to
+take place, with the result that their action seems equally
+absurd in both cases.
+
+It is obvious: to whichever side we turn, we find nothing but the
+incomprehensible. On the one hand, the preestablished,
+unshakable, unalterable future which we have called destiny,
+fatality or what you will, which suppresses man's entire
+independence and liberty of action and which is the most
+inconceivable and the dreariest of mysteries; on the other,
+intelligences apparently superior to our own, since they know
+what we do not, which, while aware that their intervention is
+always useless and very often cruel, nevertheless come harassing
+us with their sinister and ridiculous predictions. Must we resign
+ourselves once more to living with our eyes shut and our reason
+drowned in the boundless ocean of darkness; and is there no
+outlet?
+
+17
+
+For the moment we will not linger in the dark regions of
+fatality, which is the supreme mystery, the desolation of every
+effort and every thought of man. What is clearest amid this
+incomprehensibility is that the spiritualistic theory, at first
+sight the most seductive, declares itself, on examination, the
+most difficult to justify. We will also once more put aside the
+theosophical theory or any other which assumes a divine intention
+and which might, to a certain extent, explain the hesitations and
+anguish of the prophetic warnings, at the cost, however, of other
+puzzles, a thousand times as hard to solve, which nothing
+authorizes us to substitute for the actual puzzle, formless and
+infinite, presented to our uninitiated vision.
+
+When all is said, it is perhaps only in the theory which
+attributes those premonitions to our subconsciousness that we are
+able to find, if not a justification, at least a sort of
+explanation of that formidable reticence. They accord fairly well
+with the strange, inconsistent, whimsical and disconcerting
+character of the unknown entity within us that seems to live on
+nothing but nondescript fare borrowed from worlds to which nor
+intelligence as yet has no access. It lives under our reason, in
+a sort of invisible and perhaps eternal palace, like a casual
+guest, dropped from another planet, whose interests, ideas,
+habits, passions have naught in common with ours. If it seems to
+have notions on the hereafter that are infinitely wider and more
+precise than those which we possess, it has only very vague
+notions on the practical needs of our existence. It ignores us
+for years, absorbed no doubt with the numberless relations which
+it maintains with all the mysteries of the universe; and, when
+suddenly it remembers us, thinking apparently to please us, it
+makes an enormous, miraculous, but at the same time clumsy and
+superfluous movement, which upsets all that we believed we knew,
+without teaching us anything. Is it making fun of us, is it
+jesting, is it amusing itself, is it facetious, teasing, arch, or
+simply sleepy, bewildered, inconsistent, absent-minded? In any
+case, it is rather remarkable that it evidently dislikes to make
+itself useful. It readily performs the most glamorous feats of
+sleight-of-hand, provided that we can derive no profit from them.
+It lifts up tables, moves the heaviest articles, produces flowers
+and hair, sets strings vibrating, gives life to inanimate objects
+and passes through solid matter, conjures up ghosts, subjugates
+time and space, creates light; but all, it seems, on one
+condition, that its performances should be without rhyme or
+reason and keep to the province of supernaturally vain and
+puerile recreations. The case of the divining-rod is almost the
+only one in which it lends us any regular assistance, this being
+a sort of game, of no great importance, in which it appears to
+take pleasure. Sometimes, to say all that can be said, it
+consents to cure certain ailments, cleanses an ulcer, closes a
+wound, heals a lung, strengthens or makes supple an arm or leg,
+or even sets bones, but always as it were by accident, without
+reason, method or object, in a deceitful, illogical and
+preposterous fashion. One would set it down as a spoilt child
+that has been allowed to lay hands on the most tremendous secrets
+of heaven and earth; it has no suspicion of their power, jumbles
+them all up together and turns them into paltry, inoffensive
+toys. It knows everything, perhaps, but is ignorant of the uses
+of its knowledge, It has its arms laden with treasures which it
+scatters in the wrong manner and at the wrong time, giving bread
+to the thirsty and water to the hungry, overloading those who
+refuse and stripping the suppliant bare, pursuing those who flee
+from it and fleeing from those who pursue it. Lastly, even at its
+best moments, it behaves as though the fate of the being in whose
+depths it dwells interested it hardly at all, as though it had
+but an insignificant share in his misfortunes, feeling assured,
+one might almost think, of an independent and endless existence.
+
+It is not surprising, therefore, when we know its habits, that
+its communications on the subject of the future should be as
+fantastic as the other manifestations of its knowledge or its
+power. Let us add, to be quite fair, that, in those warnings
+which we would wish to see efficacious, it stumbles against the
+same difficulties as the spirits or other alien intelligences
+uselessly foretelling the event which they cannot prevent, or
+annihilating the event by the very fact of foretelling it.
+
+18
+
+And now, to end the question, is our unknown guest alone
+responsible? Does it explain itself badly or do we not understand
+it? When we look into the matter closely, there is, under those
+anomalous and confused manifestations, in spite of efforts which
+we feel to be enormous and persevering, a sort of incapacity for
+self expression and action which is bound to attract our
+attention. Is our conscious and individual life separated by
+impenetrable worlds from our subconscious and probably universal
+life? Does our unknown guest speak an unknown language and do the
+words which it speaks and which we think that we understand
+disclose its thought? Is every direct road pitilessly barred and
+is there nothing left to it but narrow, dosed paths in which the
+best of what it had to reveal to us is lost? Is this the reason
+why it seeks those odd, childish, roundabout ways of automatic
+writing, cross-correspondence, symbolic premonition and all the
+rest? Yet, in the typical case which we have quoted, it seems to
+speak quite easily and plainly when it says to the mother:
+
+"Turn the mattress."
+
+If it can utter this sentence, why should it find it difficult or
+impossible to add:
+
+"You will find the matches there that will set fire to the
+curtains."
+
+What forbids it to do so and closes its mouth at the decisive
+moment? We relapse into the everlasting question: if it cannot
+complete the second sentence because it would be destroying in
+the womb the very event which it is foretelling, why does it
+utter the first?
+
+19
+
+But it is well in spite of everything to seek an explanation of
+the inexplicable; it is by attacking it on every side, at all
+hazards, that we cherish the hope of overcoming it; and we may
+therefore say to ourselves that our subconsciousness, when it
+warns us of a calamity that is about to fall upon us, knowing all
+the future as it does, necessarily knows that the calamity is
+already accomplished. As our conscious and unconscious lives
+blend in it, it distresses itself and flutters around our
+overconfident ignorance. It tries to inform us, through
+nervousness, through pity, so as to mitigate the lightning
+cruelty of the blow. It speaks all the words that can prepare us
+for its coming, define it and identify it; but it is unable to
+say those which would prevent it from coming, seeing that it has
+come, that it is already present and perhaps past, manifest,
+ineffaceable, on another plane than that on which we live, the
+only plane which we are capable of perceiving. It finds itself,
+in a word, in the position of the man who, in the midst of
+peaceful, happy and unsuspecting folk, alone knows some bad news.
+He is neither able nor willing to announce it nor yet to hide it
+completely. He hesitates, delays, makes more or less transparent
+allusions, but does not either say the last word that would, so
+to speak, let loose the catastrophe in the hearts of the people
+around him, for to those who do not know of it the catastrophe is
+still as though it were not there. Our subconsciousness, in that
+case, would act towards the future as we act towards the past,
+the two conditions being identical, so much so that it often
+confuses them, as we can see more particularly in the celebrated
+Marmontel case, where it evidently blunders and reports as
+accomplished an incident that will not take place until several
+months later. It is of course impossible for us, at the stage
+which we have reached, to understand this confusion or this
+coexistence of the past, the present and the future; but that is
+no reason for denying it; on the contrary, what man understands
+least is probably that which most nearly approaches the truth.
+
+20
+
+Lastly, to complicate the question, it may be very justly
+objected that, though premonitions in general are useless and
+appear systematically to withhold the only indispensable and
+decisive words, there are, nevertheless, some that often seem to
+save those who obey them. These, it is true, are rarer than the
+first, but still they include a certain number that are well
+authenticated. It remains to be seen how far they imply a
+knowledge of the future.
+
+Here, for instance, is a traveler who, arriving at night in a
+small unknown town and walking along the ill-lighted dock in the
+direction of an hotel of which he roughly knows the position, at
+a given moment tech an irresistible impulse to turn and go the
+other way. He instantly obeys, though his reason protests and
+"berates him for a fool" in taking a roundabout way to his
+destination. The next day he discovers that, if he had gone a few
+feet farther, he would certainly have slipped into the river;
+and, as he was but a feeble swimmer, he would just as certainly,
+being alone and unaided in the extreme darkness, have been
+drowned.[1]
+
+[1] Proceedings, vol. xi., p. 422.
+
+
+But is this a prevision of an event? No, for no event is to take
+place. There is simply an abnormal perception of the proximity of
+some unknown water and consequently of an imminent danger, an
+unexplained but fairly frequent subliminal sensitiveness. In a
+word, the problem of the future is not raised in this case, nor
+in any of the numerous cases that resemble it.
+
+Here is another which evidently belongs to the same class, though
+at first sight it seems to postulate the preexistence of a fatal
+event and a vision of the future corresponding exactly with a
+vision of the past. A traveler in South America is descending a
+river in a canoe; the party are just about to run close to a
+promontory when a sort of mysterious voice, which he has already
+heard at different momentous times of his life, imperiously
+orders him immediately to cross the river and gain the other
+shore as quickly as possible. This appears so absurd that he is
+obliged to threaten the Indians with death to force them to take
+this course. They have scarcely crossed more than half the river
+when the promontory falls at the very place where they meant to
+round it.[1]
+
+[1] Flournoy: Esprits et mediums, p. 316.
+
+
+The perception of imminent danger is here, I admit, even more
+abnormal than in the previous example, but it comes under the
+same heading. It is a phenomenon of subliminal hypersensitiveness
+observed more than once, a sort of premonition induced by
+subconscious perceptions, which has been christened by the
+barbarous name of "cryptaesthesia." But the interval between the
+moment when the peril is signalled and that at which it is
+consummated is too short for those questions which relate to a
+knowledge or a preexistence of the future to arise in this
+instance.
+
+The case is almost the same with the adventure of an American
+dentist, very carefully investigated by Dr. Hodgson. The dentist
+was bending over a bench on which was a little copper in which he
+was vulcanizing some rubber, when he heard a voice calling, in a
+quick and imperative manner, these words:
+
+"Run to the window, quick! Run to the window, quick!"
+
+He at once ran to the window and looked out to the street below,
+when suddenly he heard a tremendous report and, looking round,
+saw that the copper had exploded, destroying a great part of the
+workroom.[1]
+
+[1] Proceedings, vol. xi., p. 424.
+
+
+Here again, a subconscious cautiousness was probably amused by
+certain indications imperceptible to our ordinary senses. It is
+even possible that there exists between things and ourselves a
+sort of sympathy or subliminal communion which makes us
+experience the trials and emotions of matter that has reached the
+limits of its existence, unless, as is more likely, there is
+merely a simple coincidence between the chance idea of a possible
+explosion and its realization.
+
+A last and rather more complicated case is that of Jean Dupre,
+the sculptor, who was driving alone with his wife along a
+mountain road, skirting a perpendicular cliff. Suddenly they both
+heard a voice that seemed to come from the mountain crying:
+
+"Stop!"
+
+They turned round, saw nobody and continued their road. But the
+cries were repeated again and again, without anything to reveal
+the presence of a human being amid the solitude. At last the
+sculptor alighted and saw that the left wheel of the carriage,
+which was grazing the edge of the precipice, had lost its
+linch-pin and was on the point of leaving the axle-tree, which
+would almost inevitably have hurled the carriage into the abyss.
+
+Need we, even here, relinquish the theory of subconscious
+perceptions? Do we know and can the author of the anecdote, whose
+good faith is not in question, tell us that certain unperceived
+circumstances, such as the grating of the wheel or the swaying of
+the carriage, did not give him the first alarm? After all, we
+know how easily stories of this kind involuntarily take a
+dramatic turn even at the actual moment and especially
+afterwards.
+
+21
+
+These examples--and there are many more of a similar kind--are
+enough, I think, to illustrate this class of premonitions. The
+problem in these cases is simpler than when it relates to
+fruitless warnings; at least it is simpler so long as we do not
+bring into discussion the question of spirits, of unknown
+intelligences, or of an actual knowledge of the future; otherwise
+the same difficulty reappears and the warning, which this time
+seems efficacious, is in reality just as vain. In fact, the
+mysterious entity which knows that the traveler will go to the
+water's edge, that the wheel will be on the point of leaving the
+axle, that the copper will explode, or that the promontory will
+fall at a precise moment, must at the same time know that the
+traveler will not take the last fatal step, that the carriage
+will not be overturned, that the copper will not hurt anybody and
+that the canoe will pull away from the promontory. It is
+inadmissible that, seeing one thing, it will not see the other,
+since everything happens at the same point, in the course of the
+same second. Can we say that, if it had not given warning, the
+little saving movement would not have been executed? How can we
+imagine a future which, at one and the same time, has parts that
+are steadfast and others that are not? If it is foreseen that the
+promontory will fall and that the traveler will escape, thanks to
+the supernatural warning, it is necessarily foreseen that the
+warning will be given; and, if so, what is the point of this
+futile comedy? I see no reasonable explanation of it in the
+spiritist or spiritualistic theory, which postulates a complete
+knowledge of the future, at least at a settled point and moment.
+On the other hand, if we adhere to the theory of a subliminal
+consciousness, we find there an explanation which is quite worthy
+of acceptation. This subliminal consciousness, though, in the
+majority of cases, it has no clear and comprehensive vision of
+the immediate future, can nevertheless possess an intuition of
+imminent danger, thanks to indications that escape our ordinary
+perception. It can also have a partial, intermittent and so to
+speak flickering vision of the future event and, if doubtful, can
+risk giving an incoherent warning, which, for that matter, will
+change nothing in that which already is.
+
+22
+
+In conclusion, let us state once more that fruitful premonitions
+necessarily annihilate events in the bud and consequently work
+their own destruction, so that any control becomes impossible.
+They would have an existence only if they prophesied a general
+event which the subject would not escape but for the warning. If
+they had said to any one intending to go to Messina two or three
+months before the catastrophe, "Don't go, for the town will be
+destroyed before the month is out," we should have an excellent
+example. But it is a remarkable thing that genuine premonitions
+of this kind are very rare and nearly always rather indefinite in
+regard to events of a general order. In M. Bozzano's excellent
+collection, which is a sort of compendium of Premonitory
+phenomena, the only pretty clear cases are nos. cli, and clviii.,
+both of which are taken from the Journal of the S.P.R. In the
+first,[1] a mother sent a servant to bring home her little
+daughter, who had already left the house with the intention of
+going through the "railway garden," a strip of ground between the
+se. wall and the railway embankment, in order to sit on the great
+stone, by the seaside and see the trains pass by. A few minutes
+after the little girl's departure, the mother had distinctly and
+repeatedly heard a voice within her say:
+
+"Send for her back, or something dreadful will happen to her."
+
+[1] Journal, vol. viii., p. 45.
+
+
+Now, soon after, a train ran off the line and the engine and
+tender fell, breaking through the protecting wall and crashing
+down on the very stones where the child was accustomed to sit.
+
+In the other case,[1] into which Professor W. F. Barrett made a
+special enquiry, Captain MacGowan was in Brooklyn with his two
+boys, then on their holidays. He promised the boys that he would
+take them to the theatre and booked seats on the previous day;
+but on the day of the proposed visit he heard a voice within him
+constantly saying:
+
+"Do not go to the theatre; take the boys back to school."
+
+[1] Ibid., vol. i., p. 283.
+
+
+He hesitated, gave up his plan and resumed it again. But the
+words kept repeating themselves and impressing themselves upon
+him; and, in the end, he definitely decided not to go, much to
+the two boys' disgust. That night the theatre was destroyed by
+fire, with a loss of three hundred lives.
+
+We may add to this the prevision of the Battle of Borodino, to
+which I have already alluded, I will give the story in fuller
+detail, as told in the journal of Stephen Grellet the Quaker.
+
+About three months before the French army entered Russia, the
+wife of General Toutschkoff dreamt that she was at an inn in a
+town unknown to her and that her father came into her room,
+holding her only son by the hand, and said to her, in a pitiful
+tone:
+
+"Your happiness is at an end. He"--meaning Countess Toutschkoff's
+husband--"has fallen. He has fallen at Borodino."
+
+The dream was repeated a second and a third time. Her anguish of
+mind was such that she woke her husband and asked him:
+
+"Where is Borodino?" They looked for the name on the map and did
+not find it.
+
+Before the French armies reached Moscow, Count Toutschkoff was
+placed at the head of the army of reserve; and one morning her
+father, holding her son by the hand, entered her room at the inn
+where she was staying. In great distress, as she had beheld him
+in her dream, he cried out:
+
+"He has fallen. He has fallen at Borodino."
+
+Then she saw herself in the very same room and through the
+windows beheld the very same objects that she had seen in her
+dreams. Her husband was one of the many who perished in the
+battle fought near the River Borodino, from which an obscure
+village takes its name.[1]
+
+[1] Memoirs of the Life and Labours of Stephen Grellet, vol i.,
+p. 434.
+
+
+23
+
+This is evidently a very rare and perhaps solitary example of a
+long-dated prediction of a great historic event which nobody
+could foresee. It stirs more deeply than any other the enormous
+problems of fatality, free-will and responsibility. But has it
+been attested with sufficient rigour for us to rely upon it? That
+I cannot say. In any case, it has not been sifted by the S.P.R.
+Next, from the special point of view that interests us for the
+moment, we are unable to declare that this premonition had any
+chance of being of avail and preventing the general from going to
+Borodino. It is highly probable that he did not know where he was
+going or where he was; besides, the irresistible machinery of war
+held him fast and it was not his part to disengage his destiny.
+The premonition, therefore, could only have been given because it
+was certain not to be obeyed.
+
+As for the two previous cases, nos. clv. and clviii., we must
+here again remark the usual strange reservations and observe how
+difficult it is to explain these premonitions save by attributing
+them to our subconsciousness. The main, unavoidable event is not
+precisely stated; but a subordinate consequence seems to be
+averted, as though to make us believe in some definite power of
+free will. Nevertheless, the mysterious entity that foresaw the
+catastrophe must also have foreseen that nothing would happen to
+the person whom it was warning; and this brings us back to the
+useless farce of which we spoke above. Whereas, with the theory
+of a subconscious self, the latter may have--as in the case of
+the traveler, the promontory, the copper or the carriage-not this
+time by inferences or indications that escape our perception, but
+by other unknown means, a vague presentiment of an impending
+peril, or, as I have already said, a partial, intermittent and
+unsettled vision of the future event, and, in its doubt, may
+utter its cry of alarm.
+
+Whereupon let us recognize that it is almost forbidden to human
+reason to stray in these regions; and that the part of a prophet
+is, next to that of a commentator of prophecies, one of the most
+difficult and thankless that a man can attempt to sustain the
+world's stage.
+
+24
+
+I am not sure if it is really necessary, before closing this
+chapter, to follow in the wake of many others and broach the
+problem of the preexistence of the future, which includes those
+of fatality, of free will, of time and of space, that is to say,
+all the points that touch the essential sources of the great
+mystery of the universe. The theologians and the metaphysicians
+have tackled these problems from every side without giving us the
+least hope of solving them. Among those which life sets us, there
+is none to which our brain seems more definitely and strictly
+closed; and they remain, if not as unimaginable, at least as
+incomprehensible as on the day when they were first perceived.
+What corresponds, outside us, with what we call time and space?
+We know nothing about it; and Kant, speaking in the name of the
+"apriorists," who hold that the idea of time is innate in us,
+does not teach us much when he tells us that time, like space, is
+an a priori form of our sensibility, that is to say, an intuition
+preceding experience, even as Guyau, among the "empiricists," who
+consider that this idea is acquired only by experience, does not
+enlighten us any more by declaring that this same time is the
+abstract formula of the changes in the universe. Whether space,
+as Leibnitz maintains, be an order of coexistence and time an
+order of sequences, whether it be by space that we succeed in
+representing time or whether time be an essential form of any
+representation, whether time be the father of space or space the
+father of time, one thing is certain, which is that the efforts
+of the Kantian or neo-Kantian apriorists and of the pure
+empiricists and the idealistic empiricists all end in the same
+darkness; that all the philosophers who have grappled with the
+formidable dual problem, among whom one may mention
+indiscriminately the names of the greatest thinkers of yesterday
+and to-day--Herbert Spencer, Helmholtz, Renouvier, James Sully,
+Stumpf, James Ward, William James, Stuart Mill, Ribot, Fouillee,
+Guyau, Bain, Lechalas, Balmes, Dunan and endless others--have
+been unable to tame it; and that, however much their theories may
+contradict one another, they are all equally defensible and alike
+struggle vainly in the darkness against shadows that are not of
+our world.
+
+25
+
+To catch a glimpse of this strange problem of the preexistence of
+the future, as it shows itself to each of us, let us essay more
+humbly to translate it into tangible images, to place it as it
+were upon the stage. I am writing these lines sitting on a stone,
+in the shade of some tall beeches that overlook a little Norman
+village. It is one of those lovely summer days when the sweetness
+of life is almost visible in the azure vase of earth and sky. In
+the distance stretches the immense, fertile valley of the Seine,
+with its green meadows planted with restful trees, between which
+the river flows like a long path of gladness leading to the misty
+hills of the estuary. I am looking down on the village-square,
+with its ring of young lime-trees. A procession leaves the church
+and, amid prayers and chanting, they carry the statue of the
+Virgin around the sacred pile. I am conscious of all the details
+of the ceremony: the sly old cure perfunctorily bearing a small
+reliquary; four choirmen opening their mouths to bawl forth
+vacantly the Latin words which convey nothing to them; two
+mischievous serving-boys in frayed cassocks; a score of little
+girls, young girls and old maids in white, all starched and
+flounced, followed by six or seven village notables in baggy
+frockcoats. The pageant disappears behind the trees, comes into
+sight again at the bend of the road and hurries back into the
+church. The clock in the steeple strikes five, as though to ring
+down the curtain and mark in the infinite history of events which
+none will recollect the conclusion of a spectacle which never
+again, until the end of the world and of the universe of worlds,
+will be just what it was during those seconds when it beguiled my
+wandering eyes.
+
+For in vain will they repeat the procession next year and every
+year after: never again will it be the same. Not only will
+several of the actors probably have disappeared, but all those
+who resume their old places in the ranks will have undergone the
+thousand little visible and invisible changes wrought by the
+passing days and weeks. In a word, this insignificant moment is
+unique, irrecoverable, inimitable, as are all the moments in the
+existence of all things; and this little picture, enduring for a
+few seconds suspended in boundless duration, has lapsed into
+eternity, where henceforth it will remain in its entirety to the
+end of time, so much so that, if a man could one day recapture in
+the past, among what some one has called the "astral negatives,"
+the image of what it was, he would find it intact, unchanged,
+ineffaceable and undeniable.
+
+26
+
+It is not difficult for us to conceive that one can thus go back
+and see again the astral negative of an event that is no more; and
+retrospective clairvoyance appears to us a wonderful but not an
+impossible thing. It astonishes but does not stagger our reason.
+But, when it becomes a question of discovering the same picture
+in the future, the boldest imagination flounders at the first
+step. How are we to admit that there exists somewhere a
+representation or reproduction of that which has not yet existed?
+Nevertheless, some of the incidents which we have just been
+considering seem to prove in an almost conclusive manner not only
+that such representations are possible, but that we may arrive at
+them more frequently, not to say more conveniently, than at those
+of the past. Now, once this representation preexists, as we are
+obliged to admit in the case of certain number of premonitions,
+the riddle remains the same whether the preexistence be one of a
+few hours, a few years or several centuries. It is therefore
+possible--for, in these matters, we must go straight to extremes
+or else leave them alone--it is therefore possible that a seer
+mightier than any of to-day, some god, demigod or demon, some
+unknown, universal or vagrant intelligence, saw that procession a
+million years ago, at a time when nothing existed of that which
+composes and surrounds it and when the very earth on which it
+moves had not yet risen from the ocean depths. And other seers,
+as mighty as the first, who from age to age contemplated the same
+spot and the same moment, would always have perceived, through
+the vicissitudes and upheavals of seas, shores and forests, the
+same procession going round the same little church that still lay
+slumbering in the oceanic ooze and made up of the same persons
+sprung from a race that was perhaps not yet represented on the
+earth.
+
+27
+
+It is obviously difficult for us to understand that the future
+can thus precede chaos, that the present is at the same time the
+future and the past, or that that which does not yet exists
+already at the same time at which it is no more. But, on the
+other hand, it is just as hard to conceive that the future does
+not preexist, that there is nothing before the present and that
+everything is only present or past. It is very probable that, to
+a more universal intelligence than ours, everything is but an
+eternal present, an immense punctum stans, as the metaphysicians
+say, in which all the events are on one plane; but it is no less
+probable that we ourselves, so long as we are men, in order to
+understand anything of this eternal present, will always be
+obliged to divide it into three parts. Thus caught between two
+mysteries equally baffling to our intelligence, whether we deny
+or admit the preexistence of the future, we are really only
+wrangling over words: in the one case, we give the name of
+"present," from the point of view of a perfect intelligence, to
+that which to us is the future; in the other, we give the name of
+"future" to that which, from the point of view of a perfect
+intelligence, is the present. But, after all, it is incontestable
+in both cases that, at least from our point of view, the future
+preexists, since preexistence is the only name by which we can
+describe and the only form under which we can conceive that which
+we do not yet see in the present.
+
+28
+
+Attempts have been made to shed light on the riddle by
+transferring it to space. It is true that it there loses the
+greater part of its obscurity; but this apparently is because, in
+changing its environment, it has completely changed its nature
+and no longer bears any relation to what it was when it was
+placed in time. We are told, for instance, that innumerable
+cities distributed over the surface of the earth are to us as if
+they were not, so long as we have not seen them, and only begin
+to exist on the day when we visit them. That is true; but space,
+outside all metaphysical speculations, has realities for us which
+time does not possess. Space, although very mysterious and
+incomprehensible once we pass certain limits, is nevertheless
+not, like time, incomprehensible and illusory in all its parts.
+We are certainly quite able to conceive that those towns which we
+have never seen and doubtless never will see indubitably exist,
+whereas we find it much more difficult to imagine that the
+catastrophe which, fifty years hence, will annihilate one of them
+already exists as really as the town itself. We are capable of
+picturing a spot whence, with keener eyes than these which we
+boast to-day, we should see in one glance all the cities of the
+earth and even those of other worlds, but it is much less easy
+for us to imagine a point in the ages whence we should
+simultaneously discover the past, the present and the future
+because the past, the present and the future are three orders of
+duration which cannot find room at the same time in our
+intelligence and which inevitably devour one other. How can we
+picture to ourselves, for instance, a point in eternity at which
+our little procession already exists, while it is not yet and
+although it is no more? Add to this the thought that it is
+necessary and inevitable, from the millenaries which had no
+beginning, that, at a given moment, at a given place, the little
+procession should leave the little church in a given manner and
+that no known or imaginable will can change anything in it, in
+the future any more than in the past; and we begin to understand
+that there is no hope of understanding.
+
+29
+
+We find among the cases collected by M. Bozzano a singular
+premonition wherein the unknown factors of space and time are
+continued in a very curious fashion. In August, 1910, Cavalliere
+Giovanni de Figueroa, one of the most famous fencing masters at
+Palermo, dreamt that he was in the country, going along a road
+white with dust, which brought him to a broad ploughed field. In
+the middle of the field stood a rustic building, with a
+ground-floor used for store-rooms and cow-sheds and on the right
+a rough hut made of branches and a cart with some harness lying
+in it.
+
+A peasant wearing dark trousers, with a black felt hat on his
+head, came forward to meet him, asked him to follow him and took
+him round behind the house. Through a low, narrow door they
+entered a little stable with a short, winding stone staircase
+leading to a loft over the entrance to the house. A mule fastened
+to a swinging manger was blocking the bottom step; and the
+chevalier had to push it aside before climbing the staircase. On
+reaching the loft, he noticed that from the ceiling were
+suspended strings of melons, tomatoes, onions and Indian corn. In
+this room were two women and a little girl; and through a door
+leading to another room he caught sight of an extremely high bed,
+unlike any that he had ever seen before. Here the dream broke
+off. It seemed to him so strange that he spoke of it to several
+of his friends, whom he mentions by name and who are ready to
+confirm his statements.
+
+On the 12th of October in the same year, in order to support a
+fellow-townsman in a duel, he accompanied the seconds, by
+motorcar, from Naples to Marano, a place which he had never
+visited nor even heard of. As soon as they were some way in the
+country, he was curiously impressed by the white and dusty road.
+The car pulled up at the side of a field which he at once
+recognized. They lighted; and he remarked to one of the seconds:
+"This is not the first time that I have been here. There should
+be a house at the end of this path and on the right a hut and a
+cart with some harness in it."
+
+As a matter of fact, everything was as he described it. An
+instant later, at the exact moment foreseen by the dream, the
+peasant in the dark trousers and the black felt hat came up and
+asked him to follow him. But, instead of walking behind him, the
+chevalier went in front, for he already knew the way. He found
+the stable and, exactly at the place which it occupied two months
+before, near its swinging manger, the mule blocking the way to
+the staircase. The fencing master went up the steps and once more
+saw the loft, with the ceiling hung with melons, onions and
+tomatoes, and, in a corner on the right, the two silent women and
+the child, identical with the figures in his dream, while in the
+next room he recognized the bed whose extraordinary height had so
+much impressed him.
+
+It really looks as if the facts themselves, the extramundane
+realities, the eternal verities, or whatever we may be pleased to
+call them, have tried to show us here that time and space are one
+and the same illusion, one and the same convention and have no
+existence outside our little day-spanned understanding; that
+"everywhere" and "always" are exactly synonymous terms and reign
+alone as soon as we cross the narrow boundaries of the obscure
+consciousness in which we live. We are quite ready to admit that
+Cavaliere de Figueroa may have had by clairvoyance an exact and
+detailed vision of places which he was not to visit until later:
+this is a pretty frequent and almost classical phenomenon, which,
+as it affects the realities of space, does not astonish us beyond
+measure and, in any case, does not take us out of the world which
+our senses perceive. The field, the house, the hut, the loft do
+not move; and it is no miracle that they should be found in the
+same place. But, suddenly, quitting this domain where all is
+stationary, the phenomenon is transferred to time and, in those
+unknown places, at the foretold second, brings together all the
+moving actors of that little drama in two acts, of which the
+first was performed some two and a half months before, in the
+depths of some mysterious other life where it seemed to be
+motionlessly and irrevocably awaiting its terrestrial
+realization. Any explanation would but condense this vapour of
+petty mysteries into a few drops in the ocean of mysteries. Let
+us note here again, in passing, the strange freakishness of the
+premonitions. They accumulate the most precise and circumstantial
+details as long as the scene remains insignificant, but come to a
+sudden stop before the one tragic and interesting scene of the
+drama: the duel and its issue. Here again we recognize the
+inconsistent, impotent, ironical or humorous habits of our
+unknown guest.
+
+30
+
+But we will not prolong these somewhat vain speculations
+concerning space and time. We are merely playing with words that
+represent very badly ideas which we do not put into form at all.
+To sum up, if it is difficult for us to conceive that the future
+preexists, perhaps it is even more difficult for us to understand
+that it does not exist; moreover, a certain number of facts tend
+to prove that it is as real and definite and has, both in time
+and in eternity, the same permanence and the same vividness as
+the past. Now, from the moment that it preexists, it is not
+surprising that we should be able to know it; it is even
+astonishing, granted that it overhangs us on every side, that we
+should not discover it oftener and more easily. It remains to be
+learnt what would become of our life if everything were foreseen
+in it, if we saw it unfolding beforehand, in its entirety, with
+its events which would have to be inevitable, because, if it were
+possible for us to avoid them, they would not exist and we could
+not perceive them. Suppose that, instead of being abnormal,
+uncertain, obscure, debatable and very unusual, prediction
+became, so to speak, scientific, habitual, clear and infallible:
+in a short time, having nothing more to foretell, it would die of
+inanition. If, for instance, it was prophesied to me that I must
+die in the course of a journey in Italy, I should naturally
+abandon the journey; therefore it could not have been predicted
+to me; and thus all life would soon be nothing but inaction,
+pause and abstention, a soft of vast desert where the embryos of
+still-born events would be gathered in heaps and where nothing
+would grow save perhaps one or two more or less fortunate
+enterprises and the little insignificant incidents which no one
+would trouble to avoid. But these again are questions to which
+there is no solution; and we will not pursue them further.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV. THE ELBERFELD HORSES
+
+1
+
+I will first sum up as briefly as possible, for who so may still
+be ignorant of them, the facts which it is necessary to know if
+one would fully understand the marvelous story of the Elberfeld
+horses. For a detailed account, I can refer him to Herr Karl
+Krall's remarkable work, Denkende Tiere (Leipsig, 1912), which is
+the first and principal source of information amid a bibliography
+that is already assuming considerable dimensions.
+
+Some twenty years ago there lived in Berlin an old misanthrope
+named Wilhelm von Osten. He was a man with a small private
+income, a little eccentric in his ways and obsessed by one idea,
+the intelligence of animals. He began by undertaking the
+education of a horse that gave him no very definite results. But,
+in 1900, he became the owner of a Russian stallion who, under the
+name of Hans, to which was soon added the Homeric and well-earned
+prefix of Kluge, or Clever, was destined to upset all our notions
+of animal psychology and to raise questions that rank among the
+most unexpected and the most absorbing problems which man has yet
+encountered.
+
+Thanks to Von Osten, whose patience, contrary to what one might
+think, was in no wise angelic but resembled rather a frenzied
+obstinacy, the horse made rapid and extraordinary progress. This
+progress is very aptly described by Professor E. Clarapede, of
+the university of Geneva, who says, in his excellent monograph on
+the Elberfeld horses:
+
+"After making him familiar with various common ideas, such as
+right, left, top, bottom and so on, his master began to teach him
+arithmetic by the intuitive method. Hans was brought to a table
+on which were placed first one, then two, then several small
+skittles. Von Osten, kneeling beside Hans, uttered the
+corresponding numbers, at the same time making him strike as many
+blows with his hoof as there were skittles on the table. Before
+long, the skittles were replaced by figures written on a
+blackboard. The results were astonishing. The horse was capable
+not only of counting (that is to say, of striking as many blows
+as he was asked), but also of himself making real calculations,
+of solving little problems. . . .
+
+"But Hans could do more than mere sums: he knew how to read; he
+was a musician, distinguishing between harmonious and dissonant
+chords. He also had an extraordinary memory: he could tell the
+date of each day of the current week. In short, he got through
+all the tasks which an intelligent schoolboy of fourteen is able
+to perform."
+
+2
+
+The rumour of these curious experiments soon spread; and visitors
+flocked to the little stable-yard in which Von Osten kept his
+singular pupil at work. The newspapers took the matter up; and a
+fierce controversy broke forth between those who believed in the
+genuineness of the phenomenon and those who saw no more in it
+than a barefaced fraud. A scientific committee was appointed in
+1904, consisting of professors of psychology and physiology, of
+the director of a zoological garden, of a circus manager and of
+veterinary surgeons and cavalry-officers. The committee
+discovered nothing suspicious, but ventured upon no explanation.
+A second committee was then appointed, numbering among its
+members Herr Oskar Pfungst, of the Berlin psychological
+laboratory. Herr Pfungst, after a long series of experiments,
+drew up a voluminous and crushing report, in which he maintained
+that the horse was gifted with no intelligence, that it did not
+recognize either letters or figures, that it really knew neither
+how to calculate nor how to count, but merely obeyed the
+imperceptible, infinitesimal and unconscious signs which escaped
+from its master.
+
+Public opinion veered round suddenly and completely. People felt
+a sort of half-cowardly relief at beholding the prompt collapse
+of a miracle which was threatening to throw confusion into the
+self satisfied little fold of established truths. Poor Von Osten
+protested in vain: no one listened to him; the verdict was given.
+He never recovered from this official blow; he became the
+laughing-stock of all those whom he had at first astounded; and
+he died, lonely and embittered, on the 29th of June, 1909, at the
+age of seventy-one.
+
+3
+
+But he left a disciple whose faith had not been shaken by the
+general defection. A well-to-do Elberfeld manufacturer, Herr
+Krall, had taken a great interest in Von Osten's labours and,
+during the latter years of the old man's life, had eagerly
+followed and even on occasion directed the education of the
+wonderful stallion. Von Osten left Kluge Hans to him by will; on
+his own side, Krall had bought two Arab stallions, Mohammed and
+Zarif whose prowess soon surpassed that of the pioneer. The whole
+question was reopened, events took a vigorous and decisive turn
+and, instead of a weary, eccentric old man, discouraged almost to
+sullenness and with no weapons for the struggle, the critics of
+the miracle found themselves faced by a new adversary, young and
+high-spirited, endowed with remarkable scientific instinct,
+quick-witted, scholarly and well able to defend himself.
+
+His educational methods also differ materially from Von Osten's.
+It was a strange thing, but deep down in the rather queer,
+cross-grained soul of the old enthusiast there had grown up
+gradually a sort of hatred for his four-legged pupil. He felt the
+stallion's proud and nervous will resisting his with an obstinacy
+which he qualified as diabolical. They stood up to each other
+like two enemies: and the lessons almost assumed the form of a
+tragic and secret struggle in which the animal's soul rebelled
+against man's domination.
+
+Krall, on the other hand, adores his pupils; and this atmosphere
+of affection has in a manner of speaking humanized them. There
+are no longer those sudden movements of wild panic which reveal
+the ancestral dread of man in the quietest and best-trained
+horse. He talks to them long and tenderly, as a father might talk
+to his children; and we have the strange feeling that they listen
+to all that he says and understand it. If they appear not to
+grasp an explanation or a demonstration, he will begin it all
+over again, analyze it, paraphrase it ten times in succession,
+with the patience of a mother. And so their progress has been
+incomparably swifter and more astounding than that of old Hans.
+Within a fortnight of the first lesson Mohammed did simple little
+addition and subtraction sums quite correctly. He had learnt to
+distinguish the tens from the units, striking the latter with his
+right foot and the former with his left. He knew the meaning of
+the symbols plus and minus. Four days later, he was beginning
+multiplication and division. In four months' time, he knew how to
+extract square and cubic roots; and, soon after, he learnt to
+spell and read by means of the conventional alphabet devised by
+Krall.
+
+This alphabet, at the first glance, seems rather complicated. For
+that matter, it is only a makeshift; but how could one find
+anything better? The unfortunate horse, who is almost voiceless,
+has only one way in which to express himself: a clumsy hoof,
+which was not created to put thought into words. It became
+necessary, therefore, to contrive, as in table-turning, a special
+alphabet, in which each letter is designated by a certain number
+of blows struck by the right foot and the left. Here is the copy
+handed to visitors at Elberfeld to enable them to follow the
+horse's operations:
+
+-- 1  2  3  4  5  6
+10 E  N  R  S  M  C
+20 A  H  L  T  A: CH
+30 I  D  G  W  J SCH
+40 O  B  F  K  O: --
+50 U  V  Z  P  U: --
+60 EI AU EU X  Q  --
+
+To mark the letter E, for instance, the stallion will strike one
+blow with his left foot and one with his right; for the letter L,
+two blows with his left foot and three with his right; and so on.
+The horses have this alphabet so deeply imprinted in their memory
+that, practically speaking, they never make a mistake; and they
+strike their hoofs so quickly, one after the other, that at first
+one has some difficulty in following them.
+
+Mohammed and Zarif--for Zarif's progress was almost equal to that
+of his fellow-pupil, though he seems a little less gifted from
+the standpoint of higher mathematics-Mohammed and Zarif in this
+way reproduce the words spoken in their presence, spell the names
+of their visitors, reply to questions put to them and sometimes
+make little observations, little personal and spontaneous
+reflections to which we shall return presently. They have created
+for their own use an inconceivably fantastic and phonetic system
+of spelling which they stubbornly refuse to relinquish and which
+often makes their writing rather difficult to read. Deeming most
+of the vowels useless, they keep almost exclusively to the
+consonants; thus Zucker, for instance, becomes Z K R; Pferd, P F
+R T, or F R T, and so on.
+
+I will not set forth in detail the many different proofs of
+intelligence lavished by the singular inhabitants of this strange
+stable. They are not only first-class calculators, for whom the
+most repellent fractions and roots possess hardly any secrets:
+they distinguish sounds, colours, and scents, read the time on
+the face of a watch, recognize certain geometrical figures,
+likenesses and photographs.
+
+Following on these more and more conclusive experiments and
+especially after the publication of Krall's great work, Denkende
+Tiere, a model of precision and arrangement, men's minds were
+faced with clear and definite problem which, this time, could not
+be challenged. Scientific committees followed one another at
+Elberfeld; and their reports became legion. Learned men of every
+country--including Dr. Edinger, the eminent Frankfort
+neurologist; Professors Dr. H. Kraemer and H. E. Ziegler, of
+Stuttgart; Dr. Paul Saresin, of Bale; Professor Ostwald, of
+Berlin; Professor A. Beredka, of the Pasteur Institute; Dr. E.
+Clarapede, of the university of Geneva; Professor Schoeller and
+Professor Gehrke, the natural philosopher, of Berlin; Professor
+Goldstein, of Darmstadt; Professor von Buttel-Reepen, of
+Oldenburg; Professor William Mackenzie, of Genoa; Professor R.
+Assagioli, of Florence; Dr. Hartkopf, of Cologne; Dr.
+Freudenberg, of Brussels; Dr. Ferrari, of Bologna, etc., etc.,
+for the list is lengthening daily--came to study on the spot the
+inexplicable phenomenon which Dr. Clarapede proclaims to be "the
+most sensational event that has ever happened in the
+psychological world."
+
+With the exception of two or three sceptics or convinced
+misoneists and of those who made too short a stay at Elberfeld,
+all were unanimous in recognizing that the facts were as stated
+and that the experiments were conducted with absolute fairness.
+Disagreement begins only when it becomes a matter of commenting
+on them, interpreting them and explaining them.
+
+4
+
+To complete this short preamble, it is right to add that, for
+some time past, the case of the Elberfeld horses no longer stands
+quite alone. There exists at Mannheim a dog of a rather doubtful
+breed who performs almost the same feats as his equine rivals. He
+is less advanced than they in arithmetic, but does little
+additions, subtractions and multiplications of one or two figures
+correctly. He reads and writes by tapping with his paw, in
+accordance with an alphabet which, it appears, he has thought out
+for himself; and his spelling also is simplified and phoneticized
+to the utmost. He distinguishes the colour in a bunch of flowers,
+counts the money in a purse and separates the marks from the
+pfennigs. He knows how to seek and find words to define the
+object or the picture placed before him. You show him, for
+instance, a bouquet in a vase and ask him what it is.
+
+"A glass with little flowers," he replies.
+
+And his answers are often curiously spontaneous and original. In
+the course of a reading-exercise in which the word Herbst,
+autumn, chanced to attract attention, Professor William Mackenzie
+asked him if he could explain what autumn was.
+
+"It is the time when there are apples," Rolf replied.
+
+On the same occasion, the same professor, without knowing what it
+represented, held out to him a card marked with red and blue
+squares:
+
+"What's this?"
+
+"Blue, red, lots of cubes," replied the dog.
+
+Sometimes his repartees are not lacking in humour.
+
+"Is there anything you would like me to do for you?" a lady of
+his acquaintance asked, one day.
+
+And Master Rolf gravely answered:
+
+"Wedelen," which means, "Wag your tail!"
+
+Rolf, whose fame is comparatively young, has not yet, like his
+illustrious rivals of the Rhine Province, been the object of
+minute enquiries and copious and innumerable reports. But the
+incidents which I have just mentioned and which are vouched for
+by such men as Professor Mackenzie and M. Duchatel, the learned
+and clear-sighted vice-president of the Societe Universelle
+d'Etudes Psychiques,[1] who went to Mannheim for the express
+purpose of studying them, appear to be no more controvertible
+than the Elbenfeld occurrences, of which they are a sort of
+replica or echo. It is not unusual to find these coincidences
+amongst abnormal phenomena. They spring up simultaneously in
+different quarters of the globe, correspond with one another and
+multiply as though in obedience to a word of command. It is
+probable therefore that we shall see still more manifestations of
+the same class. One might almost say that a new spirit is passing
+over the world and, after awakening in man forces whereof he was
+not aware, is now reaching other creatures who with us inhabit
+this mysterious earth, on which they live, suffer and die, as we
+do, without knowing why.
+
+[1] See the interesting lecture by M. Edmond Duchatel, published
+in the Annales des Sciences Psychiques, October 1913.
+
+
+5
+
+I have not been to Mannheim, but I made my pilgrimage to
+Elberfeld and stayed long enough in the town to carry away with
+me the conviction shared by all those who have undertaken the
+journey.
+
+A few months ago, Herr Krall, whom I had promised the year before
+that I would come and see his wonderful horses, was kind enough
+to repeat his invitation in a more pressing fashion, adding that
+his stable would perhaps be broken up after the 15th of September
+and that, in any case, be would be obliged, by his doctor's
+orders, to interrupt for an indefinite period a course of
+training which he found exceedingly fatiguing.
+
+I at once left for Elberfeld, which, as everybody knows, is an
+important manufacturing-town in Rhenish Prussia and is, in fact,
+more quaint, pleasing and picturesque than one might expect. I
+had long since read everything that had been published on the
+question; and I was wholly persuaded of the genuineness of the
+incidents. Indeed it would be difficult to have any doubts after
+the repeated and unremitting supervision and verification to
+which the experiments are subjected, a supervision which is of
+the most rigorous type, often hostile and almost ill-mannered. As
+for their interpretation, I was convinced that telepathy, that is
+to say, the transmission of thought from one subconsciousness to
+another, remained, however strange it might be in this new
+region, the only acceptable theory; and this in spite of certain
+circumstances that seemed plainly to exclude it. In default of
+telepathy proper, I inclined toward the mediumistic or subliminal
+theory, which was very ably outlined by M. de Vesmes in a
+remarkable lecture delivered, on the 22nd of December, 1912,
+before the Societe Universelle d'Etudes Psychiques. It is true
+that telepathy, especially when carried to its extreme limits,
+appeals above all to the subliminal forces, so that the two
+theories overlap at more than one point and it is often difficult
+to make out where the first ends and the second begins. But this
+discussion will be more appropriate a little later.
+
+6
+
+I found Herr Krall in his goldsmith's shop, a sort of palace of
+Golconda, streaming and glittering with the most precious pearls
+and stones on earth. Herr Krall, it is well to remember, in order
+to dispel any suspicion of pecuniary interest, is a rich
+manufacturer whose family for three generations, from father to
+son, have conducted one of the most important jewelry businesses
+in Germany. His researches, so far from bringing him the least
+profit, cost him a great deal of money, take up all his leisure
+and some part of the time which he would otherwise devote to his
+business and, as usually happens, procure him from his fellow
+citizens and from not a few scientific men more annoyance, unfair
+criticism and sarcasm than consideration or gratitude. His work
+is preeminently the disinterested and thankless task of the
+apostle and pioneer.
+
+For the rest, Herr Kraft, though his faith is active, zealous and
+infectious, has nothing in common with the visionaries or
+illuminati. He is a man of about fifty, vigorous, alert and
+enthusiastic, but at the same time well-balanced; accesible to
+every idea and even to every dream, yet practical and methodical,
+with a ballast of the most invincible common-sense. He inspires
+from the outset that fine confidence, frank and unrestrained,
+which instantly disperses the instinctive doubt, the strange
+uneasiness and the veiled suspicion that generally separate two
+people who meet for the first time; and one welcomes in him, from
+the very depths of one's being, the honest man, the staunch
+friend whom one can trust and whom one is sorry not to have known
+earlier in life.
+
+We go together through the streets and along the bustling quays
+of Elberfeld to the stable, situated at a few hundred steps from
+the shop. The horses are taking the air outside the doors of
+their boxes, in the yard shaded by a lime-tree. There are four of
+them: Mohammed, the most intelligent, the most gifted of them
+all, the great mathematician of the party; his double, Zarif, a
+little less advanced, less tractable, craftier, but at the same
+time more fanciful, more spontaneous and capable of occasional
+disconcerting sallies; next, Hanschen, a little Shetland pony,
+hardly bigger than a Newfoundland dog, the street-urchin of the
+band, always quivering with excitement, roguish, flighty,
+uncertain and passionate, but ready in a moment to work you out
+the most difficult addition and multiplication sums with a
+furious scrape of the hoof; and lastly the latest arrival, the
+plump and placid Berto, an imposing black stallion, quite blind
+and lacking the sense of smell. He has been only a few months at
+school and is still, so to speak, in the preparatory class, but
+already does--a little more clumsily, but more good humouredly
+and conscientiously--small addition and subtraction sums quite as
+well as many a child of the same age.
+
+In a corner, Kama, a young elephant two or three years old, about
+the size of an outrageously "blown" donkey, rolls his mischievous
+and almost knavish eye, under the shelter of his wide ears, each
+resembling a great rhubarb-leaf, and with his stealthy,
+insinuating trunk carefully picks up whatever he considers fit to
+eat, that is to say, pretty well everything that lies about on
+the stones. Great things were hoped of him, but hitherto he has
+disappointed all expectations: he is the dunce of the
+establishment. Perhaps he is too young still: his little
+elephant-soul no doubt resembles that of a sucking-babe which, in
+the place of its feet and hands, plays with the stupendous nose
+that must first explore and question the universe. It is
+impossible to grip his attention; and, when they set out before
+him his alphabet of movable letters, instead of naming those
+which are pointed out to him he applies himself to pulling them
+off their stems, in order to swallow them surreptitiously. He has
+disheartened his kind master, who, pending the coming of the
+reason and wisdom promised by the proboscidian legends, leaves
+him in a contented state of ignorance made more blissful by an
+almost insatiable appetite.
+
+7
+
+But I ask to see the great pioneer, Kluge Hans, Clever Hans. He
+is still alive. He is old: he must be sixteen or seventeen; but
+his old age, alas, is not exempt from the baneful troubles from
+which men themselves suffer in their decline! Hans has turned out
+badly, it appears, and is never mentioned save in ambiguous
+terms. An imprudent or vindictive groom, I forget which, having
+introduced a mare into the yard, Hans the Pure, who till then had
+led an austere and monkish existence, vowed to celibacy, science
+and the chaste delights of figures, Hans the Irreproachable
+incontinently lost his head and cut himself open on the
+hanging-rail of his stall. They had to force back his intestines
+and sew up his belly. He is now rusticating miserably in a meadow
+outside the town. So true it is that a life cannot be judged
+except at its close and that we are sure of nothing until we are
+dead.
+
+8
+
+Before the sitting begins, while the master is making his morning
+inspection, I go up to Muhamed, speak to him and pat him, looking
+straight into his eyes meanwhile in order to catch a sign of his
+genius. The handsome creature, well-bred and in hard condition,
+is as calm and trusting as a dog; he shows himself excessively
+gracious and friendly and tries to give me some huge licks and
+mighty kisses which I do my best to avoid because they are a
+little unexpected and overdemonstrative. The expression of his
+limpid antelope-eyes is deep, serious and remote, but it differs
+in no wise from that of his brothers who, for thousands of years,
+have seen nothing but brutality and ingratitude in man. If we
+were able to read anything there, it would not be that
+insufficient and vain little effort which we call thought, but
+rather an indefinable, vast anxiety, a tear-dimmed regret for the
+boundless, stream-crossed plains where his sires sported at will
+before they knew man's yoke. In any case, to see him thus
+fastened by a halter to the stable-door, beating off the flies
+and absently pawing the cobbles, Muhamed is nothing more than a
+well-trained horse who seems to be waiting for his saddle or
+harness and who hide, his new secret as profoundly as all the
+others which nature has buried in him.
+
+9
+
+But they are summoning me to take my place in the stable where
+the lessons are given. It is a small room, empty and bare, with
+peat-moss litter bedding and white-washed walls. The horse is
+separated from the people present by breast-high wooden
+partitions. Opposite the four-legged scholar is a black-board,
+nailed to the wall; and on one side a corn-bin which forms a seat
+for the spectators. Muhamed is led in. Krall, who is a little
+nervous, makes no secret of his uneasiness. His horses are fickle
+animals, uncertain, capricious and extremely sensitive. A trifle
+disturbs them, confuses them, puts them off. At such times,
+threats, prayers and even the irresistible charm of carrots and
+good rye-bread are useless. They obstinately refuse to do any
+work and they answer at random. Everything depends on a whim, the
+state of the weather, the morning meal or the impression which
+the visitor makes upon them. Still, Krall seems to know, by
+certain imperceptible signs, that this is not going to be a bad
+day. Muhamed quivered with excitement, snorts loudly through his
+nostrils, utters a series of indistinct little whinnyings:
+excellent symptoms, it appears. I take my seat on the corn-bin.
+The master, standing beside the black-board, chalk in hand,
+introduces me to Muhamed in due form, as to a human being:
+
+"Muhamed, attention! This is your uncle"--pointing to me--"who
+has come all the way to honour you with a visit. Mind you don't
+disappoint him. His name is Maeterlinck." Krall pronounced the
+first syllable German-fashion: Mah. "You understand: Maeterlinck.
+Now show him that you know your letters and that you can spell a
+name correctly, like a clever boy. Go ahead, we're listening."
+Muhamed gives a short neigh and, on the small, movable board at
+his feet, strikes first with his right hoof and then with his
+left the number of blows which correspond with the letter M in
+the conventional alphabet used by the horses. Then, one after the
+other, without stopping or hesitating, he marks the letters A D R
+L I N S H, representing the unexpected aspect which my humble
+name assumes in the equine mind and phonetics. His attention is
+called to the fact that there is a mistake. He readily agrees and
+replaces the S H by a G and then the G by a K. They insist that
+he must put a T instead of the D; but Muhamed, content with his
+work, shakes his head to say no and refuses to make any further
+corrections.
+
+10
+
+I assure you that the first shock is rather disturbing, however
+much one expected it. I am quite aware that, when one describes
+these things, one is taken for a dupe too readily dazzled by the
+doubtless childish illusion of an ingeniously contrived scene.
+But what contrivances, what illusions have we here? Do they lie
+in the spoken word? Why, to admit that the horse understands and
+translates his master's words is just to accept the most
+extraordinary part of the phenomenon! Is it a case of
+surreptitious touches or conventional signs? However
+simple-minded one may be, one would nevertheless notice them more
+easily than a horse, even a horse of genius. Krall never lays a
+hand on the animal; he moves all round the little table, which
+contains no appliances of any sort; for the most part, he stands
+behind the horse which is unable to see him, or comes and sits
+beside his guest on the innocuous corn-bin, busying himself,
+while lecturing his pupil, in writing up the minutes of the
+lesson. He also welcomes with the most serene readiness any
+restrictions or tests which you propose. I assure you that the
+thing itself is much simple, and clearer than the suspicions of
+the arm-chair critics and that the most distrustful mind world
+not entertain the faintest idea of fraud in the frank, wholesome
+atmosphere of the old stable.
+
+"But," some one might have said, "Krall, who knew that you were
+coming to Elberfeld, had of course thoroughly rehearsed his
+little exercise in spelling, which apparently is only an exercise
+in memory."
+
+For conscience' sake, though I did not look upon the objection as
+serious, I submitted it to Krall, who at once said: "Try it for
+yourself. Dictate to the horse any German word of two or three
+syllables, emphasizing it strongly. I'll go out of the stable and
+leave you alone with him."
+
+Behold Muhamed and me by ourselves. I confess that I am a little
+frightened. I have many a time felt less uncomfortable in the
+presence of the great ones or the kings of the earth. Whom am I
+dealing with exactly? However, I summon my courage and speak
+aloud the first word that occurs to me, the name of the hotel at
+which I am staying: Weidenhof. At first, Muhamed, who seems a
+little puzzled by his master's absence, appears not to hear me
+and does not even deign to notice that I am there. But I repeat
+eagerly, in varying tones of voice, by turns insinuating,
+threatening, beseeching and commanding:
+
+"Weidenhof! Weidenhof! Weidenhof!"
+
+At last, my mysterious companion suddenly makes up his mind to
+lend me his ears and straightway blithely raps out the following
+letters, which I write down on the black-board as they come:
+
+WEIDNHOZ.
+
+It is a magnificent specimen of equine spelling! Triumphant and
+bewildered, I call in friend Krall, who, accustomed as he is to
+the prodigy, thinks it quite natural, but knits his brows:
+
+"What's this, Muhamed? You've made a mistake again. It's an F you
+want at the end of the word, not a Z. Just correct it at once,
+please."
+
+And the docile Muhamed, recognizing his blunder, gives the three
+blows with his right hoof, followed by the four blows with his
+left, which represent the most unexceptionable F that one could
+ask for.
+
+Observe, by the way, the logic of his phonetic writing: contrary
+to his habit, he strikes the mute E after the W, because it is
+indispensable; but, finding it included in the D, he considers it
+superfluous and suppresses it with a high hand.
+
+You rub your eyes, question yourself, ask yourself in the
+presence of what humanized phenomenon, of what unknown force, of
+what new creature you stand. Was all this what they hid in their
+eyes, those silent brothers of ours? You blush at arm's long
+injustice. You look around you for some sort of trace, obvious or
+subtle, of the mystery. You feel yourself attacked in your
+innermost citadel, where you held yourself most certain and most
+impregnable. You have felt a breath from the abyss upon your
+face. You would not be more astonished if you suddenly heard the
+voice of the dead. But the most astonishing thing is that you are
+not astonished for long. We all, unknown to ourselves, live in
+the expectation of the extraordinary; and, when it comes, it
+moves us much less than did the expectation. It is as though a
+sort of higher instinct, which knows everything and is not
+ignorant of the miracles that hang over our heads, were
+reassuring us in advance and helping us to make an easy entrance
+into the regions of the supernatural. There is nothing to which
+we grow accustomed more readily than to the marvellous; and it is
+only afterwards, upon reflection, that our intelligence, which
+knows hardly anything, appreciates the magnitude of certain
+phenomena.
+
+11
+
+But Muhamed gives unmistakable signs of impatience to show that
+he has had enough of spelling. Thereupon, as a diversion and a
+reward, his kind master suggests the extraction of a few square
+and cubic roots. Muhamed appears delighted: these are his
+favourite problems: for he takes less interest than formerly in
+the most difficult multiplications and divisions. He doubtless
+thinks them beneath him.
+
+Krall therefore writes on the blackboard various numbers of which
+I did not take note. Moreover, as nobody now contests the fact
+that the horse works them with ease, it would hardly be
+interesting to reproduce here several rather grim problems of
+which numerous variants will be found in the accounts and reports
+of experiments signed by Drs. Mackenzie and Hartkopff, by
+Overbeck, Clarapede and many others. What strikes one
+particularly is the facility, the quickness, I was almost saying
+the joyous carelessness with which the strange mathematician
+gives the answers. The last figure is hardly chalked upon the
+board before the right hoof is striking off the units, followed
+immediately by the left hoof marking the tens. There is not a
+sign of attention or reflection; one is not even aware of the
+exact moment at which the horse looks at the problem: and the
+answer seems to spring automatically from an invisible
+intelligence. Mistakes are rare or frequent according as it
+happens to be a good or bad day with the horse; but, when he is
+told of them, he nearly always corrects them. Not unseldom, the
+number is reversed: 47, for instance, becomes 74; but he puts it
+right without demur when asked.
+
+I am manifestly dumbfounded; but perhaps these problems are
+prepared beforehand? If they were, it would be very
+extraordinary, but yet less surprising than their actual
+solution. Krall does not read this suspicion in my eyes, because
+they do not show it; nevertheless, to remove the least shade of
+it, he asks me to write a number of my own on the black-board for
+the horse to find the root.
+
+I must here confess the humiliating ignorance that is the
+disgrace of my life. I have not the faintest idea of the
+mysteries concealed within these recondite and complicated
+operations. I did my humanities like everybody else; but, after
+crossing the useful and familiar frontiers of multiplication and
+division I found it impossible to advance any farther into the
+desolate regions, bristling with figures, where the square and
+cubic roots hold sway, together with all sorts of other monstrous
+powers, without shapes or faces, which inspired me with
+invincible terror. All the persecutions of my excellent
+instructors wore themselves out against a dead wall of stolidity.
+Successively disheartened, they left me to my dismal ignorance,
+prophesying a most dreary future for me, haunted with bitter
+regrets. I must say that, until now, I had scarcely experienced
+the effects of these gloomy predictions; but the hour has come
+for me to expiate the sins of my youth. Nevertheless, I put a
+good face upon it: and, taking at random the first figures that
+suggest themselves to my mind, I boldly write on the black-board
+an enormous and most daring number. Muhamed remains motionless.
+Krall speaks to him sharply, telling him to hurry up. Muhamed
+lifts his right hoof, but does not let it fall. Krall loses
+patience, lavishes prayers, promises and threats; the hoof
+remains poised, as though to bear witness to good intentions that
+cannot be carried out. Then my host turns round, looks at the
+problem and asks me:
+
+"Does it give an exact root?"
+
+Exact? What does he mean? Are there roots which. . .? But I dare
+not go on: my shameful ignorance suddenly flashes before my eyes.
+Krall smiles indulgently and, without making any attempt to
+supplement an education which is too much in arrears to allow of
+the slightest hope, laboriously works out the problem and
+declares that the horse was right in refusing to give an
+impossible solution.
+
+12
+
+Muhamed receives our thanks in the form of a lordly portion of
+carrots; and a pupil is introduced whose attainments do not tower
+so high above mine: Hanschen, the little pony, quick and lively
+as a big rat. Like me, he has never gone beyond elementary
+arithmetic: and so we shall understand each other better and meet
+on equal terms.
+
+Krall asks me for two numbers to multiply. I give him 63 X 7. He
+does the sum and writes the product on the board, followed by the
+sign of division: 441 / 7. Instantly Hanschen, with a celerity
+difficult to follow, gives three blows, or rather three violent
+scrapes with his right hoof and six with his left, which makes
+63, for we must not forget that in German they say not
+sixty-three, but three-and-sixty. We congratulate him; and, to
+evince his satisfaction, he nimbly reverses the number by marking
+36 and then puts it right again by scraping 63. He is evidently
+enjoying himself and juggling with the figures. And additions,
+subtractions, multiplications and divisions follow one after the
+other, with figures supplied by myself, so as to remove any idea
+of collusion. Hanschen seldom blunders; and, when he does, we
+receive a very clear impression that his mistake is voluntary: he
+is like a mischievous schoolboy playing a practical joke upon his
+master. The solutions fall thick as hail upon the little
+spring-board; the correct answer is released by the question as
+though you were pressing the button of an electric push. The
+pony's flippancy is as surprising as his skill. But in this
+unruly flippancy, in this hastiness which seems inattentive there
+is nevertheless a fixed and permanent idea. Hanschen paws the
+ground, kicks, prances, tosses his head, looks as if he cannot
+keep still, but never leaves his spring-board. Is he interested
+in the problems, does he enjoy them? It is impossible to say; but
+he certainly has the appearance of one accomplishing a duty or a
+piece of work which we do not discuss, which is important,
+necessary and inevitable.
+
+But the lesson suddenly ends with a joke carried rather too far
+by the pupil, who catches his good master by the seat of his
+trousers, into which he plants disrespectful teeth. He is
+severely reprimanded, deprived of his carrots and sent back in
+disgrace to his private apartments.
+
+13
+
+Next comes Bette, who is like a big, sleek Norman horse. He makes
+the calm, dignified, peaceful entrance of a blind giant. His
+large, dark, brilliant eyes are quite dead, deprived of any
+reflex power. He feels about with his hoof for the board on which
+he is to rap his answers. He has not yet gone beyond the
+rudiments of mathematics; and the early part of his education was
+particularly difficult. They managed to make him understand the
+value and meaning of the numbers and of the addition- and
+multiplication-signs by means of little taps on his sides. Krall
+speaks to him as a father might speak to the youngest of his
+sons. He explains to him fondly the easy sums which I suggest his
+doing: two plus three, eight minus four, four times three; he
+says:
+
+"Mind! It's not plus three or minus three this time, but four
+multiplied by three!"
+
+Berto hardly ever makes a mistake. When he does not understand
+the question, he waits for it to be written with the finger on
+his side; and the careful way in which he works it out like some
+backward and afflicted child is an infinitely pathetic sight. He
+is much more zealous and conscientious than his fellow-pupils;
+and we feel that, in the darkness wherein he dwells, this work
+is, next to his meals, the only spark of light and interest in
+his existence. He will certainly never rival Muhamed, for
+instance, who is the arithmetical prodigy, the Inaudi, of horses;
+but he is a valuable and living proof that the theory of
+unconscious and imperceptible signs, the only one which the
+German theorists have hitherto seriously considered, is now
+clearly untenable.
+
+I have not yet spoken of Zarif. He is not in the best of tempers;
+and besides, in arithmetic, he is only a less learned and more
+capricious Muhamed. He answers most of the questions at random,
+stubbornly raising his foot and declining to lower it, so as
+clearly to mark his disapproval; but he solves the last problem
+correctly when he is promised a panful of carrots and no more
+lessons for that morning. The groom enters to lead him away and
+makes some movement or other at which the horse starts, rears and
+shies.
+
+"That's his bad conscience," says Krall, gravely.
+
+And the expression assumes a singular meaning and importance in
+this hybrid atmosphere, steeped in an indefinable something from
+another world.
+
+But it is half-past one, the sacred German dinner-hour. The
+horses are taken back to their racks and the men separate,
+wishing one another the inevitable Mahlzeit.
+
+As he walks with me along the quays of the black and muddy
+Wupper, Krall says:
+
+"It is a pity that you did not see Zarif in one of his better
+moods. He is sometimes more startling than Muhamed and has given
+me two or three surprises that seem incredible. One morning, for
+instance, I came to the stable and was preparing to give him his
+lesson in arithmetic. He was no sooner in front of the
+spring-board than he began to stamp with his foot. I left him
+alone and was astounded to hear a whole sentence, an absolutely
+human sentence, come letter by letter from his hoof: 'Albert has
+beaten Hanschen,' was what he said to me that day. Another time,
+I wrote down from his dictation, 'Hanschen has bitten Kama.' Like
+a child seeing its father after an absence, he felt the need to
+inform me of the little doings of the stable; he provided me with
+the artless chronicle of a humble and uneventful life."
+
+Krall, for that matter, living in the midst of his miracle, seems
+to think this quite natural and almost inevitable. I, who have
+been immersed in it for only a few hours, accept it almost as
+calmly as he does. I believe without hesitation what he tells me;
+and, in the presence of this phenomenon which, for the first time
+in man's existence, gives us a sentence that has not sprung from
+a human brain, I ask myself whither we are tending, where we
+stand and what lies ahead of us.. . .
+
+14
+
+After dinner, the experiments begin again, for my host is
+untiring. First of all, pointing to me, he asks Muhamed if he
+remembers what his uncle's name is. The horse raps out an H.
+Krall is astonished and utters fatherly reprimands:
+
+"Come, take care! You know it's not an H."
+
+The horse raps out an E. Krall becomes a little impatient: he
+threatens, he implores, he promises in turn, carrots and the
+direst punishments, such as sending for Albert, the groom, who,
+on special occasions, recalls idle and inattentive pupils to a
+sense of duty and decorum, for Krall himself never chastises his
+horses, lest he should lose their friendship or their confidence.
+So he continues his reproaches:
+
+"Come now, are you going to be more careful and not rap out your
+letters anyhow?"
+
+Muhamed obstinately goes his own way and strikes an R. Then
+Krall's open face lights up:
+
+"He's right," he says. "You understand: H E R, standing for Herr.
+He wanted to give you the title to which every man wearing a top
+hat or a bowler has the right. He does it only very rarely and I
+had forgotten all about it. He probably heard me call you Herr
+Maeterlinck and wanted to get it perfectly. This special
+politeness and this excess of zeal augur a particularly good
+lesson. You've done very well, Mohammed, my child; you've done
+very well and I beg your pardon. Now kiss me and go on."
+
+But Mohammed, after giving his master a hearty kiss, still seems
+to be hesitating. Then Krall, to put him on the right track
+observes that the first letter of my name is the same as the
+first letter of his own. Mohammed strikes a K, evidently thinking
+of his master's name. At last, Krall draws a big M on the
+black-board, whereupon the horse, like one suddenly remembering a
+word which he could not think of, raps out, one after the other
+and without stopping, the letters M A Z R L K, which, stripped of
+useless vowels, represent the curious corruption which my name
+has undergone, since the morning, in a brain that is not a human
+brain. He is told that this is not correct. He seems to agree,
+gropes about a little and writes, M A R Z L E G K. Krall repeats
+my name and asks which is the first letter to be altered. The
+stallion marks an R.
+
+"Good, but what letter will you put instead?"
+
+Mohammed strikes an N.
+
+"No, do be careful!"
+
+He strikes a T.
+
+"Very good, but in what place will the T come?"
+
+"In the third," replies the horse; and the corrections continue
+until my patronomic comes out of its strange adventure almost
+unscathed.
+
+And the spelling, the questioning, the sums, the problems are
+resumed and follow upon one another, as wonderful, as bewildering
+as before, but already a little dimmed by familiarity, like any
+other prolonged miracle. It is important, besides, to notice that
+the instances which I have given are not to be classed among the
+most remarkable feats of our magic horses. Today's is a good
+ordinary lesson, a respectable lesson, not illumined by flashes
+of genius. But in the presence of other witnesses the horses
+performed more startling exploits which broke down even more
+decisively the barrier, which is undoubtedly an imaginary one,
+between animal and human nature. One day, for instance, Zarif;
+the scamp of the party, suddenly stopped in the middle of his
+lesson. They asked him the reason.
+
+"Because I am tired."
+
+Another time, he answered:
+
+"Pain in my leg."
+
+They recognize and identify pictures shown to them, distinguish
+colours and scents. I have made a point of stating only what I
+saw with my own eyes and heard with my own ears; and I declare
+that I have done so with the same scrupulous accuracy as though I
+were reporting a criminal trial in which a man's life depended on
+my evidence.
+
+But I was practically convinced of the truth of the incidents
+before going to Elberfeld; and it was not to check them that I
+made the journey. I was anxious to make certain if the telepathic
+theory, which was the only one that I considered admissible,
+would withstand the tests which I intended to apply to it. I
+opened my mind on the subject to Krall, who at first did not
+quite grasp what I was asking. Like most men who have not made a
+special study of the questions, he imagined that telepathy meant
+above all a deliberate and conscious transmission of thought; and
+he assured me that he never made any effort to transmit his and
+that, for the most part, the horses gave a reply which was the
+exact opposite of what he was expecting. I did not doubt this for
+a moment; in fact, direct and deliberate transmission of thought
+is, even among men, a very rare, difficult and uncertain,
+phenomenon, whereas involuntary, unpremeditated and unsuspected
+communications between one subconsciousness and another can no
+longer be denied except by those who of set purpose ignore
+studies and experiments that are within the reach of any one who
+will take the trouble to engage in them. I was persuaded
+therefore that the horses acted exactly like the "tipping-tables"
+which simply translate the subliminal ideas of one or another of
+those present by the aid of conventional little taps. When all is
+said, it is much less surprising to see a horse than a table lift
+its foot and much more natural that the living substance of an
+animal rather than the inert matter of a thing should be
+sensitive and susceptible to the mysterious influence of a
+medium. I knew quite well that experiments had been made in order
+to eliminate this theory. People, for instance, prepared a
+certain number of questions and put them in sealed envelopes.
+Then, on entering the presence of the horse, they would take one
+of the envelopes at random, open it and write down the problem on
+the black-board; and Mohammed or Zarif would answer with the same
+facility and the same readiness as though the solution had been
+known to all the onlookers. But was it really unknown to their
+subconsciousness? Who could say for certain? Tests of this kind
+require extraordinary precautions and a special dexterity; for
+the action of the subconsciousness is so subtle, takes such
+unexpected turns, delves in the museum of so many forgotten
+treasures and operates at such distances that one is never sure
+of escaping it. Were those precautions taken? I was not convinced
+that they were; and, without pretending to decide the question, I
+said to myself that my blissful ignorance of mathematics might
+perhaps be of service in shedding light upon some part of it.
+
+For this ignorance, however deplorable from other points of view,
+gave me a rare advantage in this case. It was in fact extremely
+unlikely that my subliminal consciousness, which had never known
+what a cubic root was or the root of any other power, could help
+the horse. I therefore took from a table a list containing
+several problems, all different and all equally unpleasant
+looking, covered up the solutions, asked Krall to leave the
+stable and, when alone with Zarif, copied out one of them on the
+black-board. In order not to overload these pages with details
+which would only be a repetition of one another, I will at once
+say that none of the antitelepathic tests succeeded that day. It
+was the end of the lesson and late in the afternoon; the horses
+were tired and irritable; and, whether Krall was there or not,
+whether the problem was elementary or difficult, they gave only
+absurd replies, wilfully "putting their foot in it," as one might
+say with very good reason. But, next morning, on resuming their
+task, when I proceeded as described above, Mohammed and Zarif,
+doubtless in a better temper and already more accustomed to their
+new examiner, gave in rapid succession correct answers to nearly
+every problem set them. I am bound in fairness to say that there
+was no appreciable difference between these results and those
+which are obtained in the presence of Krall or other onlookers
+who, consciously or unconsciously, are already aware of the
+answer required.
+
+I next thought of another and much simpler test, but one which,
+by virtue of its very simplicity, could not be exposed to any
+elaborate and farfetched suspicions. I saw on one of the shelves
+in the stable a panel of cards, about the size of an octavo
+volume, each bearing an arabic numeral on one of its sides. I
+once more asked my good friend Krall, whose courtesy is
+inexhaustible, to leave me alone with his pupil. I then shuffled
+the cards and put three of them in a row on the spring-board in
+front of the horse, without looking at them myself. There was
+therefore, at that moment, not a human soul on earth who knew the
+figures spread at the feet of my companion, this creature so full
+of mystery that already I no longer dare call him an animal.
+Without hesitation and unasked, he rapped out correctly the
+number formed by the cards. The experiment succeeded, as often as
+I cared to try it, with Hanschen, Mohammed and Zarif alike.
+Mohammed did even more: as each figure was of a different colour,
+I asked him to tell me the colour--of which I myself was
+absolutely ignorant--of the first letter on the right. With the
+aid of the conventional alphabet, he replied that it was blue,
+which proved to be the case. Of course, I ought to have
+multiplied these experiments and made them more exhaustive and
+complicated by combining, with the aid of the cards and under the
+same conditions, exercises in multiplication, division and the
+extracting of roots. I had not the time; but, a few days after I
+left, the subject was resumed and completed by Dr. H. Hamel. I
+will sum up his report of the experiments: the doctor, alone in
+the stable with the home (Krall was away, travelling), puts down
+on the black-board the sign + and then places before and after
+this sign, without looking at either of them, a card marked with
+a figure which he does not know. He next asks Mohammed to add up
+the two numbers. Mohammed at first gives a few heedless taps with
+his hoof. He is called to order and requested to be serious and
+to attend. He then gives fifteen distinct taps. The doctor next
+replaces the sign + by X and, again without looking at them,
+places two cards on the blackboard and asks the horse not to add
+up the two figures this time, but to multiply them. Mohammed taps
+out, "27," which is right, for the black-board says, "9 X 3." The
+same success follows with other multiplication sums: 9 X 2, 8 X
+6. Then the doctor takes from an envelope a problem of which he
+does not know the solution: fourth root of 7890481. Mohammed
+replies, "53." The doctor looks at the back of the paper: once
+more, the answer is perfectly correct.
+
+16
+
+Does this mean that every risk of telepathy is done away with? It
+would perhaps be rash to make a categorical assertion. The power
+and extent of telepathy are as yet, we cannot too often repeat,
+indefinite, indiscernible, untraceable and unlimited. We have but
+quite lately discovered it, we know only that its existence can
+no longer be denied; but, as for all the rest, we are at much the
+same stage as that whereat Galvani was when he gave life to the
+muscles of his dead frogs with two little plates of metal which
+roused the jeers of the scientists of his time, but contained the
+germ of all the wonders, of electricity.
+
+Nevertheless, as regards telepathy in the sense in which we
+understand and know it to-day, my mind is made up. I am persuaded
+that it is not in this direction that we must seek for an
+explanation of the phenomenon; or, if we are determined to find
+it there, the explanation becomes complicated with so many
+subsidiary mysteries that it is better to accept the prodigy as
+it stands, in its original obscurity and simplicity. When, for
+instance, I was copying out one of the grisly problems which I
+have mentioned, it is quite certain that my conscious
+intelligence could make neither head nor tail of it. I did not so
+much as know what it meant or whether the exponent 3. 4. 5 called
+for a multiplication, a division or some other mathematical
+operation which I did not even try to imagine; and, rack MY
+memory as I may, I cannot remember any moment in my life when I
+knew more about it than I do now. We should therefore have to
+admit that MY subliminal self is a born mathematician, quick,
+infallible and endowed with boundless learning. It is possible
+and I feel a certain pride at the thought. But the theory simply
+shifts the miracle by making it pass from the horse's soul to
+mine; and the miracle becomes no clearer by the transfer, which,
+for that matter, does not sound probable. I need hardly add that,
+a fortiori, Dr. Hamel's experiments and many others which I have
+not here the space to describe finally dispose of the theory.
+
+17
+
+Let us see how those who have interested themselves in these
+extraordinary manifestations have attempted to explain them.
+
+As we go along, we will just shear through the feeble undergrowth
+of childish theories. I shall not, therefore, linger over the
+suggestions of cheating, of manifest signs addressed to the eye
+or ear, of electrical installations that are supposed to control
+the answers, nor other idle tales of an excessively clumsy
+character. To realize their inexcusable inanity we have but to
+spend a few minutes in the honest Elberfeld stable.
+
+At the beginning of this essay, I mentioned the attack made by
+Herr Pfungst. Herr Pfungst, the reader will remember, claims to
+prove that all the horse's replies are determined by
+imperceptible and probably unconscious movement on the part of
+the person putting the questions. This interpretation, which
+falls to the ground, like all the others, in the face of the
+actual facts, would not deserve serious discussion, were it not
+that the Berlin psychologist's report created an immense
+sensation some years ago and has succeeded in intimidating the
+greater part of the official German scientific world to this day.
+It is true that the report in question is a monument of useless
+pedantry, but we are none the less bound to admit that, such as
+it was, it annihilated poor Von Oaten, who, being no
+controversialist and not knowing how to proclaim the truth which
+was struggling for utterance, died in gloom and solitude.
+
+To make an end of this cumbrous and puerile theory, is it
+necessary to emphasize again that experiments in which the animal
+does not see the questioner are as regularly successful as the
+others? Krall, if you ask him, will stand behind the horse, will
+speak from the end of the room, will leave the stable altogether;
+and the results are just the same. They are the same again when
+the tests are made in the dark or when the animal's head is
+covered with a close-fitting hood. They do not vary either in the
+case of Berto, who is stone-blind, or when any other person
+whatever sets the problem in Krall's absence. Will it be
+maintained that this outsider or that stranger is acquainted
+beforehand with the imperceptible signs that are to dictate the
+solution which he himself often does not know?
+
+But what is the use of prolonging this fight against a cloud of
+smoke? None of it can bear examination; and it calls for a
+genuine effort of the will to set one's self seriously to refute
+such pitiful objections.
+
+18
+
+On the ground thus cleared and at the portal of this unlooked-for
+riddle, which comes to disturb our peace in a region which we
+thought to be finally explored and conquered, there are only two
+ways, if not of explaining, at least of contemplating the
+phenomenon: to admit purely and simply the almost human
+intelligence of the horse, or to have recourse to an as yet very
+vague and indefinite theory which, for lack of a better
+designation, we will call the mediumistic or subliminal theory
+and of which we will strive presently--and no doubt vainly--to
+dispel the grosser darkness. But, whatever interpretation we
+adopt, we are bound to recognize that it plunges us into a
+mystery which is equally profound and equally astonishing on
+either side, one directly related to the greatest mysteries that
+overwhelm us; and it is open to us to accept it with resignation
+or rejoicing, according as we prefer to live in a world wherein
+everything is within the reach of our intelligence or a world
+wherein everything is incomprehensible.
+
+As for Krall, he does not doubt for an instant that his horses
+solve for themselves, without any assistance, without any outside
+influence, simply by their own mental powers, the most arduous
+problems set them. He is persuaded that they understand what is
+said to them and what they say, in short, that their brain and
+their will perform exactly the same functions as a human brain
+and will. It is certain that the facts seem to prove him right
+and that his opinion carries way great weight, for, after all, he
+knows his horses better than any one does; he has beheld the
+birth or rather the awakening of that dormant intelligence, even
+as a mother beholds the birth or the awakening of intelligence in
+her child; he has perceived its first gropings, known its first
+resistance and its first triumphs; he has watched it taking
+shape, breaking away and gradually rising to the point at which
+it stands to-day; in a word, he is the father and the principal
+and sole perpetual witness of the miracle.
+
+19
+
+Yes, but the miracle comes as such a surprise that, the moment we
+set foot in it, a sort of instinctive aberration seizes us,
+refusing to accept the evidence and compelling us to search in
+every direction to see if there is not another outlet. Even in
+the presence of those astounding horses and while they are
+working before our eyes, we do not yet sincerely believe that
+which fills and subdues our gaze. We accept the facts, because
+there is no means of escaping them; but we accept them only
+provisionally and with all reserve, putting off till later the
+comfortable explanation which will give us back our familiar,
+shallow certainties. But the explanation does not come; there is
+none in the homely and not very lofty regions wherein we hoped to
+find one; there is neither fault nor flaw in the mighty evidence;
+and nothing delivers us from the mystery.
+
+It must be confessed that this mystery, springing from a point
+where we least expected to come upon the unknown, bears enough
+within itself to scatter all our convictions. Remember that,
+since man appeared upon this earth, he has lived among creatures
+which, from immemorial experience, he thought that he knew as
+perfectly as he knows an object fashioned by his hands. Out of
+these creatures he chose the most docile and, as he called them,
+the most intelligent, attaching in this case to the word
+intelligence a sense so narrow as to be almost ridiculous. He
+observed them, scrutinized them, tried them, analyzed them and
+dissected them in every imaginable way; and whole lives were
+devoted to nothing but the study of their habits, their
+faculties, their nervous system, their pathology, their
+psychology, their instincts. All this led to certainties which,
+among those supported by our unexplained little existence on an
+inexplicable planet, would seem to be the least doubtful, the
+least subject to revision. There is no disputing, for instance,
+that the horse is gifted with an extraordinary memory, that he
+possesses the sense of direction, that he understands a few signs
+and even a few words and that he obeys them. It is equally
+undeniable that the anthropoid apes are capable of imitating a
+great number of our actions and of our attitudes: but it is also
+manifest that their bewildered and feverish imagination perceives
+neither their object nor their scope. As for the dog, the one of
+all these privileged animals who lives closest to us, who for
+thousands and thousands of years has eaten at our table and
+worked with us and been our friend, it is manifest that, now and
+then, we catch a rather uncanny gleam in his deep, watchful eyes.
+It is certain that he sometimes wanders in a curious fashion
+along the mysterious border that separates our own intelligence
+from that which we grant to the other creatures inhabiting this
+earth with us. But it is no less certain that he has never
+definitely passed it. We know exactly how far he can go; and we
+have invariably found that our efforts, our patience, our
+encouragement, our passionate appeals, have hitherto failed to
+draw him out of the somewhat narrow, darkly enchanted circle
+wherein nature seems to have imprisoned him once and for all.
+
+20
+
+There remains, it is true, the insect-world, in which marvellous
+things happen. It includes architects, geometricians,
+mechanicians, engineers, weavers, physicists, chemists and
+surgeons who have forestalled most of our human inventions. I
+need not here remind the reader of the wasps' and bees' genius
+for building, the social and economic organization of the hive
+and the ant-hill, the spider's snares, the eumenes' nest and
+hanging egg, the odynerus' cell with its neat stacks of game, the
+sacred beetle's filthy but ingenius ball, the leafcutter's
+faultless disks, the brick-laying of the mason-bee, the three
+dagger-thrusts which the aphex administers to the three
+nerve-centres of the cricket, the lancet of the cerceris, who
+paralyses her victims without killing them and preserves them for
+an indefinite period as fresh meat, nor a thousand other features
+which it would be impossible to enumerate without recapitulating
+the whole of Henri Fabre's work and completely altering the
+proportions of the present essay. But here such silence and such
+darkness reign that we have nothing to hope for. There exists, so
+to speak, no bench-mark, no means of communication between the
+world of insects and our own; and we are perhaps less far from
+grasping and fathoming what takes place in Saturn or Jupiter than
+what is enacted in the ant-hill or the hive. We know absolutely
+nothing of the quality, the number, the extent or even the nature
+of their senses. Many of the great laws on which our life is
+based do not exist for them: those, for instance, which govern
+fluids are completely reversed. They seem to inhabit our planet,
+but in reality move in an entirely different world. Understanding
+nothing of their intelligence pierced with disconcerting gaps, in
+which the blindest stupidity suddenly comes and destroys the
+ablest and most inspired schemes, we have given the name of
+instinct to that which we could not apprehend, postponing our
+interpretation of a word that touches upon life's most insoluble
+riddles. There is, therefore, from the point of view of the
+intellectual faculties, nothing to be gathered from those
+extraordinary creatures who are not, like the other animals, our
+"lesser brothers," but strangers, aliens from we know not where,
+survivors or percursors of another world.
+
+21
+
+We were at this stage, slumbering peacefully in our
+long-established convictions, when a man entered upon the scene
+and suddenly showed us that we were wrong and that, for long
+centuries, we had over looked a truth which was scarcely even
+covered with a very thin veil. And the strangest thing is that
+this astonishing discovery, is in no wise the natural consequence
+of a new invention, of processes or methods hitherto unknown. It
+owes nothing to the latest acquirements of our knowledge. It
+springs from the humblest idea which the most primitive man might
+have conceived in the first days of the earth's existence. It is
+simply a matter of having a little more patience, confidence and
+respect for all that which shares our lot in a world whereof we
+know none of the purposes. It is simply a matter of having a
+little less pride and of looking a little more fraternally upon
+existences that are much more fraternal than we believed. There
+is no secret about the almost puerile ingenuousness of Von
+Osten's methods and Krall's. They start with the principle that
+the horse is an ignorant but intelligent child; and they treat
+him as such. They speak, explain, demonstrate, argue and mete out
+rewards or punishments like a schoolmaster addressing little boys
+of five or six. They begin by placing a few skittle-pins in front
+of their strange pupil. They count them and make him count them
+by alternately lifting and lowering the horse's hoof. He thus
+obtains his first notion of numbers. They next add one or two
+more skittles and say, for instance:
+
+"Three skittles and two skittles are five skittles."
+
+In this way, they explain and teach addition; next, by the
+reverse process, subtraction, which is followed by
+multiplication, division and all the rest.
+
+At the beginning, the lessons are extremely laborious and demand
+an untiring and loving patience, which is the whole secret of the
+miracle. But; as soon as the first barrier of darkness is passed,
+the progress becomes bewilderingly rapid.
+
+All this is incontestable; and the facts are there, before which
+we must need bow. But what upsets all our convictions or, more
+correctly, all the prejudices which thousands of years have made
+as invincible as axioms, what we do not succeed in understanding
+is that the horse at once understands what we want of him; it is
+that first step, the first tremor of an unexpected intelligence,
+which suddenly reveals itself as human. At what precise second
+did the light appear and was the veil rent under? It is
+impossible to say; but it is certain that, at a given moment,
+without any visible sign to reveal the prodigious inner
+transformation, the horse acts and replies as though he suddenly
+understood the speech of man. What is it that sets the miracle
+working? We know that, after a time, the horse associates certain
+words with certain objects that interest him or with three or
+four events whose infinite repetition forms the humble tissue of
+his daily life. This is only a sort of mechanical memory which
+has nothing in common with the most elementary intelligence. But
+behold, one fine day, without any perceptible transition, he
+seems to know the meaning of a host of words which possess no
+interest for him; which represent to him no picture, no memory;
+which he has never had occasion to connect with any sensation,
+agreeable or disagreeable. He handles figures, which even to man
+are nothing but obscure and abstract ideas. He solves problems
+that cannot possibly be made objective or concrete. He reproduces
+letters which, from his point of view, correspond with nothing
+actual. He fixes his attention and makes observations on things
+or circumstances which in no way affect him, which remain and
+always will remain alien and indifferent to him. In a word, he
+steps out of the narrow ring in which he was made to turn by
+hunger and fear--which have been described as the two great
+moving powers of all that is not human--to enter the immense
+circle in which sensations go on being shed till ideas come into
+view.
+
+22
+
+Is it possible to believe that the horses really do what they
+appear to do? Is there no precedent for the marvel? Is there no
+transition between the Elberfeld stallions and the horses which
+we have known until this day? It is not easy to answer these
+questions, for it is only since yesterday that the intellectual
+powers of our defenseless brothers have been subjected to
+strictly scientific experiments. We have, it is true more than
+one collection of anecdotes in which the intelligence of animals
+is lauded to the skies; but we cannot rely upon these
+ill-authenticated stories. To find genuine and incontestable
+instances we must have recourse to the works, rare as yet, of
+scientific men who have made a special study of the subject. M.
+Hachet-Souplet, for example, the director of the Institut de
+Psychologie Zoologique, mentions the case of a dog who learnt to
+acquire an abstract idea of weight. You put in front of him eight
+rounded and polished stones, all of exactly the same size and
+shape, but of different weights. You tell him to fetch the
+heaviest or the lightest; he judges their weight by lifting them
+and, without mistake, picks out the one required.
+
+The same writer also tells the story of a parrot to whom he had
+taught the word "cupboard" by showing him a little box that could
+be hung up on the wall at different heights and in which his
+daily allowance of food was always ostentatiously put away;
+
+"I next taught him the names of a number of objects," says M.
+Hachet-Souplet, "by holding them out to him. Among them was a
+ladder; and I prevailed upon the bird to say, 'Climb,' each time
+that he saw me mount the steps. One morning, when the parrot's
+cage was brought into the laboratory, the cupboard was hanging
+near the ceiling, while the little ladder was stowed away in a
+corner among other objects familiar to the bird. Now the parrot,
+every day, when I opened the cupboard, used to scream, 'Cupboard!
+Cupboard! Cupboard!' with all his might. My problem was,
+therefore, this: seeing that the cupboard was out of my reach and
+that, therefore, I could not take his food out of it; knowing, on
+the other hand, that I was able to raise myself above the level
+of the floor by climbing the ladder; and having the words 'climb'
+and 'ladder' at his disposal: would he employ them to suggest to
+me the idea of using them in order to reach the cupboard? Greatly
+excited, the parrot flapped his wings, bit the bars of his cage,
+and screamed:
+
+"'Cupboard! Cupboard! Cupboard!'"
+
+"And I got no more out of him that day. The next day, the bird,
+having received nothing but millet, for which he did not much
+care, instead of the hemp-seed contained in the cupboard, was in
+paroxysms of anger; and, after he had made numberless attempts to
+force open his bars, his attention was at last caught by the
+ladder and he said:
+
+"'Ladder, climb, cupboard!'"
+
+We have here, as the author remarks, a marvellous intellectual
+effort. There is an evident association of ideas; cause is linked
+with effect; and examples such as this lesson appreciably the
+distance separating our learned horses from their less celebrated
+brethren. We must admit, however, that this intellectual effort,
+if we observe, animals a little carefully, is much less uncommon
+than we think. It surprises us in this case because a special
+and, when all is said, purely mechanical arrangement of the
+parrot's organ gives him a human voice. At every moment, I find
+in my own dog associations of ideas no less evident and often
+more complex. For instance, if he is thirsty, he seeks my eyes
+and next looks at the tap in the dressing-room, thus showing that
+he very plainly connects the notions of thirst, running water and
+human intervention. When I dress to go out, he evidently watches
+all my movements. While I am lacing my boots, he conscientiously
+licks my hands, in order that my divinity may be good to him and
+especially to congratulate me on my capital idea of going out for
+a constitutional. It is a sort of general and as yet vague
+approval. Boots promise an excursion out of doors, that is to
+say, space, fragrant roads, long grass full of surprises, corners
+scented with offal, friendly or tragic encounters and the pursuit
+of wholly illusory, game. But the fair vision is still in anxious
+suspense. He does not yet know if he is going with me. His fate
+is now being decided; and his eyes, melting with anguish, devour
+my mind. If I buckle on my leather gaiters, it means the sudden
+and utter extinction, of all that constitutes the joy of life.
+They leave not a ray of hope. They herald the hateful, lonely
+motorcycle, which he cannot keep up with; and he stretches
+himself sadly in a dark corner, where he goes back to the gloomy
+dreams of an unoccupied, forsaken dog. But, when I slip my arms
+into the sleeves of my heavy great-coat, one would think that
+they were opening the gates of the most dazzling paradise. For
+this implies the car, the obvious, indubitable motor-car, in
+other words, the radiant summit of the most superlative delight.
+And delirious barks, inordinate bounds, riotous, embarrassing
+demonstrations of affection greet a happiness which, for all
+that, is but an immaterial idea, built up of artless memories and
+ingenuous hopes.
+
+23
+
+I mention these matters only because they are quite ordinary and
+because there is nobody who has not made a thousand similar
+observations. As a rule, we do not notice that these humble
+manifestations represent sentiments, associations of ideas,
+inferences, deductions, an absolute and altogether human mental
+effort. They lack only speech; but speech is merely a mechanical
+accident which reveals the operations of thought more clearly to
+us. We are amazed that Mohammed or Zarif should recognize the
+picture of a horse, a donkey, a hat, or a man on horseback, or
+that they should spontaneously report to their master the little
+events that happen in the stable; but it is certain that our own
+dog is incessantly performing a similar work and that his eyes,
+if we could read them, would tell us a great deal more. The
+primary miracle of Elberfeld is that the stallions should have
+been given the means of expressing what they think and feel. It
+is momentous; but, when closely looked into, it is not
+incomprehensible. Between the talking horses and my silent dog
+there is an enormous distance, but not an abyss. I am saying this
+not to detract from the nature or extent of the prodigy, but to
+call attention to the fact that the theory of animal intelligence
+is more justifiable and less fanciful than one is at first
+inclined to think.
+
+24
+
+But the second and greater miracle is that man should have been
+able to rouse the horse from his immemorial sleep, to fix and
+direct his attention and to interest him in matters that are more
+foreign and indifferent to him than the variations of temperature
+in Sirius or Aldebaran are to us. It really seems, when we
+consider our preconceived ideas, that there is not in the animal
+an organic and insurmountable inability to do what man's brain
+does, a total and irremediable absence of intellectual faculties,
+but rather a profound lethargy and torpor of those faculties. It
+lives in a sort of undisturbed stolidity, of nebulous slumber. As
+Dr. Ochorowicz very justly remarks, "its waking state is very
+near akin to the state of a man walking in his sleep." Having no
+notion of space or time, it spends its life, one may say, in a
+perpetual dream. It does what is strictly necessary to keep
+itself alive; and all the rest passes over it and does not
+penetrate at all into its hermetically closed imaginings.
+Exceptional circumstances--some extraordinary need, wish, passion
+or shock--are required to produce what M. Hachet-Souplet calls
+"the psychic flash" which suddenly thaws and galvanizes its
+brain, placing it for a minute in the waking state in which the
+human brain works normally. Nor is this surprising. It does not
+need that awakening in order to exist; and we know that nature
+never makes great superfluous efforts.. "The intellect," as
+Professor Clarapede well says, "appears only as a makeshift, an
+instrument which betrays that the organism is not adapted to its
+environment, a mode of expression which reveals a state of
+impotence."
+
+It is probable that our brain at first suffered from the same
+lethargy, a condition, for that matter, from which many men have
+not yet emerged; and it is even more probable that, compared with
+other modes of existence, with other psychic phenomena, on
+another plane and in another sphere, the dense sleep in which we
+move is similar to that in which the lower animals have their
+being. It also is traversed, with increasing frequency, by
+psychic flashes of a different order and a different scope.
+Seeing, on the one side, the intellectual movement that seems to
+be spreading among our lesser brothers and, on the other, the
+ever more constantly repeated manifestations of our
+subconsciousness, we might even ask ourselves if we have not
+here, on two different planes, a tension, a parallel pressure, a
+new desire, a new attempt of the mysterious spiritual force which
+animates the universe and which seems to be incessantly seeking
+fresh outlets and fresh conducting rods. Be this as it may, when
+the flash has passed, we behave very much as the animals do: we
+promptly lapse into the indifferent sleep which suffices also for
+our miserable ways. We ask no more of it, we do not follow the
+luminous trail that summons us to an unknown world, we go on
+turning in our dismal circle, like contented sleep-walkers, while
+Isis' sistrum rattles without respite to rouse the faithful.
+
+25
+
+I repeat, the great miracle of Elberfeld is that of having been
+able to prolong and reproduce at will those isolated "psychic
+flashes." The horses, in comparison with the other animals, are
+here in the state of a man whose subliminal consciousness had
+gained the upper hand. That man would lead a higher existence, in
+an almost immaterial atmosphere, of which the phenomena of
+metaphysics, sparks falling from a region which we shall perhaps
+one day reach, sometimes give us an uncertain and fleeting
+glimpse. Our intelligence, which is really lethargy and which
+keeps us imprisoned in a little hollow of space and time, would
+there be replaced by intuition, or rather by a sort of imminent
+knowledge which would forthwith make us sharers in all that is
+known to a universe which perhaps knows all things.
+Unfortunately, we have not, or at least, unlike the horses, we
+are not acquainted with a superior being who interests himself in
+us and helps us to throw off our torpor. We have to become our
+own god, to rise above ourselves and to keep ourselves raised by
+our unaided strength. It is almost certain that the horse would
+never have come out of his nebulous sphere without man's
+assistance; but it is not forbidden to hope that man, with no
+other help than his own courage and high purpose, may yet succeed
+in breaking through the sleep that cramps him and blinds him.
+
+26
+
+To come back then to our horses and to the main point, which is
+the isolated "psychic flash," it is admitted that they know the
+values of figures, that they can distinguish and identify smells,
+colours, forms, objects and even graphic reproductions of those
+objects. They also understand a large number of words, including
+some of which they were, never taught the meaning, but which they
+picked up as they went along by hearing them spoken around them.
+They have learnt, with the assistance of an exceedingly
+complicated alphabet, to reproduce the words, thanks to which
+they manage to convey impressions, sensations, wishes,
+associations of ideas, observations and even spontaneous
+reflections. It has been held that all this implies real acts of
+intelligence. It is, in fact, often very difficult to decide
+exactly how far it is intelligence and how far memory, instinct,
+imitative genius, obedience or mechanical impulse, the effects of
+training, or happy coincidences.
+
+There are cases, however, which admit of little or no hesitation.
+I give a few.
+
+One day Krall and his collaborator, Dr. Scholler, thought that
+they would try and teach Mohammed to express himself in speech.
+The horse, a docile and eager pupil, made touching and fruitless
+efforts to reproduce human sounds. Suddenly, he stopped and, in
+his strange phonetic spelling, declared, by striking his foot on
+the spring-board:
+
+"Ig hb kein gud Sdim. I have not a good voice."
+
+Observing that he did not open his mouth, they strove to make him
+understand, by the example of a dog, with pictures, and so on,
+that, in order to speak, it is necessary to separate the jaws.
+They next asked him:
+
+"What must you do to speak?"
+
+He replied, by striking with his foot:
+
+"Open mouth."
+
+"Why don't you open yours?"
+
+"Weil kan nigd: because I can't."
+
+A few days after, Zarif was asked how he talks to Mohammed.
+
+"Mit Munt: with mouth."
+
+"Why don't you tell me that with your mouth?"
+
+"Weil ig kein Stim hbe: because I have no voice." Does not this
+answer, as Krall remarks, allow us to suppose that he has other
+means than speech of conversing with his stable-companion?
+
+In the course of another lesson, Mohammed was shown the portrait
+of a young girl whom he did not know.
+
+"What's that?" asked his master.
+
+"Metgen: a girl?"
+
+On the black-board:
+
+"Why is it a girl?"
+
+"Weil lang Hr hd: because she has long hair."
+
+"And what has she not?"
+
+"Moustache."
+
+They next produced the likeness of man with no moustache.
+
+"What's this?"
+
+"Why is it a man?"
+
+"Weil kurz Hr hd: because he has short hair."
+
+I could multiply these examples indefinitely by drawing on the
+voluminous Elberfeld minutes, which, I may say in passing, have
+the convincing force of photographic records. All this, it must
+be agreed, is unexpected and disconcerting, had never been
+foreseen or suspected and may be regarded as one of the strangest
+prodigies, one of the most stupefying revelations that have taken
+place since man has dwelt in this world of riddles, Nevertheless,
+by reflecting, by comparing, by investigating, by regarding
+certain forgotten or neglected landmarks and starting-points, by
+taking into consideration the thousand imperceptible gradations
+between the greatest and the least, the highest and the lowest,
+it is still possible to explain, admit and understand. We can, if
+it comes to that, imagine that, in his secret self, in his tragic
+silence, our dog also makes similar remarks and reflections. Once
+again, the miraculous bridge which, in this instance, spans the
+gulf between the animal and man is much more the expression of
+thought than thought itself. We may go further and grant that
+certain elementary calculations, such as little additions, little
+subtractions of one or two figures, are, after all, conceivable;
+and I, for my part, am inclined to believe that the horse really
+executes them. But where we get out of our depth, where we enter
+into the realm of pure enchantment is when it becomes a matter of
+mathematical operations on a large scale, notably of the finding
+of roots. We know, for instance, that the extraction of the
+fourth root of a number of six figures calls for eighteen
+multiplications, ten subtractions and three divisions and that
+the horse does thirty-one sums in five or six seconds, that is to
+say, during the brief, careless glance which he gives at the
+black-board on which the problem is inscribed, as though the
+answer came to him intuitively and instantaneously.
+
+Still, if we admit the theory of intelligence, we must also admit
+that the horse knows what he is doing, since it is not until
+after learning what a squared number or a square root means that
+he appears to understand or that, at any rate, he gradually works
+out correctly the ever more complicated calculations required of
+him. It is not possible to give here the details of this
+instruction, which was astonishingly rapid. The reader will find
+them on pages 117 et seq. of Krall's book, Denkende Tiere. Krall
+begins by explaining to Mohammed that 2 squared is equal to 2 X 2
+= 4; that 2 cubed is equal to 2 X 2 X 2 = 6; that 2 is the square
+root of 4; and so on. In short, the explanations and
+demonstrations are absolutely similar to those which one would
+give to an extremely intelligent child, with this difference,
+that the horse is much more attentive than the child and that,
+thanks to his extraordinary memory, he never forgets what he
+appears to have understood. Let us add, to complete the magical
+and incredible character of the phenomenon that, according to
+Krall's own statement, the horse was not taught beyond the point
+of extracting the square root of the number 144 and that he
+spontaneously invented the manner of extracting all the others.
+
+27
+
+Must we once more repeat, in connection with these startling
+performances, that those who speak of audible or visible signals,
+of telegraphy and wireless telegraphy, of expedients, trickery or
+deceit, are speaking of what they do not know and of what they
+have not seen? There is but one reply to be made to any one who
+honestly refuses to believe:
+
+"Go to Elberfeld---the problem is sufficiently important,
+sufficiently big with consequences to make the journey worth
+while--and, behind closed doors, alone with the horse, in the
+absolute solitude and silence of the stable, set Mohammed to
+extract half-a dozen roots which, like that which I have
+mentioned, require thirty-one operations. You must yourself be
+ignorant of the solutions, so as to do away with any transmission
+of unconscious thought. If he then gives you, one after the
+other, five or six correct solutions, as he did to me and many
+others, you will not go away with the conviction that the animal
+is able by its intelligence to extract those roots, because that
+conviction would upset too thoroughly the greater part of the
+certainties on which your life is based; but you will, at any
+rate, be persuaded that you have been for a few minutes in the
+presence of one of the greatest and strangest riddles that can
+disturb the mind of man; and it is always a good and salutary
+thing to come into contact with emotions of this order."
+
+28
+
+Truth to say, the theory of intelligence in the animal would be
+so extraordinary as to be almost untenable. If we are determined,
+at whatever cost, to pin our faith to it, we are bound to call in
+the aid of other ideas, to appeal, for instance, to the extremely
+mysterious and essentially uncomprehended and incomprehensible
+nature of numbers. It is almost certain that the science of
+mathematics lies outside the intelligence. It forms a mechanical
+and abstract whole, more spiritual than material and more
+material than spiritual, visible only through its shadow and yet
+constituting the most immovable of the realities that govern the
+universe. From first to last it declares itself a very strange
+force and, as it were, the sovereign of another element than that
+which nourishes our brain. Secret, indifferent, imperious and
+implacable, it subjugates and oppresses us from a great height or
+a great depth, in any case, from very far, without telling us
+why. One might say that figures place those who handle them in a
+special condition. They draw the cabalistic circle around their
+victim. Henceforth, he is no longer his own master, he renounces
+his liberty, he is literally "possessed" by the powers which he
+invokes. He is dragged he knows not whither, into a formless,
+boundless immensity, subject to laws that have nothing human
+about them, in which each of those lively and tyrannical little
+signs which move and dance in their thousands under the pen
+represents nameless, but eternal, invincible and inevitable
+verities. We think that we are directing them and they enslave
+us. We become weary and breathless following them into their
+uninhabitable spaces. When we touch them, we let loose a force
+which we are no longer able to control. They do with us what they
+will and always end by hurling us, blinded and benumbed, into
+blank infinity or upon a wall of ice against which every effort
+of our mind and will is shattered.
+
+It is possible, therefore, in the last resort, to explain the
+Elberfeld mystery by the no less obscure mystery that surrounds
+numbers. This really only means moving to another spot in the
+gloom; but it is often just by that moving to another spot that
+we end by discovering the little gleam of light which shows us a
+thoroughfare. In any case, and to return to more precise ideas,
+more than one instance has been cited to prove that the gift of
+handling great groups of figures is almost independent of the
+intelligence proper. One of the most curious is that of an
+Italian shepherd boy, Vito Mangiamele, who was brought before the
+Paris Academy of Science in 1837 and who, at the age of ten,
+though devoid of the most rudimentary education, was able in half
+a minute to extract the cubic root of a number of seven figures.
+Another, more striking still, also mentioned by Dr. Clarapede in
+his paper on the learned horses, is that of a man blind from
+birth, an inmate of the lunatic-asylum, at Armentieres. This
+blind man, whose name is Fleury, a degenerate and nearly an
+idiot, can calculate in one minute and fifteen seconds the number
+of seconds in thirty-nine years, three months and twelve days,
+not forgetting the leap-years. They explain to him what a square
+root is, without telling him the conventional method of finding
+it; and soon he extracts almost as rapidly as Inaudi himself,
+without a blunder, the square roots of numbers of four figures,
+giving the remainder. On the other hand, we know that a
+mathematical genius like Henri Pomcare confessed himself
+incapable of adding up a column of figures without a mistake.
+
+29
+
+>From the maybe enchanted atmosphere that surrounds numbers we
+shall pass more easily to the even more magic mists of the final
+theory, the only one remaining to us for the moment: the
+mediumistic or subliminal theory. This, we must remember, is not
+the telepathic theory proper which decisive experiments have made
+us reject. Let us have the courage to venture upon it. When one
+can no longer interpret a phenomenon by the known, we must needs
+try to do so by the unknown. We, therefore, now enter a new
+province of a great unexplored kingdom, in which we shall find
+ourselves without a guide.
+
+Mediumistic phenomena, manifestations of the secondary or the
+subliminal consciousness, between man and man, are, as we have
+more than once had occasion to assure ourselves, capricious,
+undisciplined, evasive and uncertain, but more frequent than one
+thought and, to one who examines, them seriously and honestly,
+often undeniable. Have similar manifestations been discovered
+between man and the animals? The study of these manifestations,
+which is very difficult even in the case of man, becomes still
+more so when we question witnesses doomed to silence. There are,
+however, some animals which are looked upon as "psychic," which,
+in other words, seem indisputably to be sensitive to certain
+subliminal influences. One usually classes the cat, the dog and
+the horse in this somewhat ill-defined category. To these
+superstitious animals one might perhaps add certain birds, more
+or less birds of omen, and even a few insects, notably the bees.
+Other animals, such as, for instance, the elephant and the
+monkey, appear to be proof against mystery. Be this as it may, M.
+Ernest Bozzano, in an excellent article on Les Perceptions
+psychiques des animaux,[1] collected in 1905 sixty-nine cases of
+telepathy, presentiments and hallucinations of sight or hearing
+in which the principal actors are cats, dogs and horses. There
+are, even among them, ghosts or phantoms of dogs which, after
+their death, return to haunt the homes in which they were happy.
+Most of these cases are taken from the Proceedings of the S. P.
+R., that is to say, they have nearly all been very strictly
+investigated. It is impossible, short of filling these pages with
+often striking and touching but rather cumbersome anecdotes, to
+enumerate them here, however briefly. It will be sufficient to
+note that sometimes the dog begins to howl at the exact moment
+when his master loses his life, for instance, on a battlefield,
+hundreds of miles from the place where the dog is. More commonly,
+the cat, the dog and the horse plainly manifest that they
+perceive, often before men do, telepathic apparitions, phantasms
+of the living or the dead. Horses in particular seem very
+sensitive to places that pass as haunted or uncanny. On the
+whole, the result of these observations is that we can hardly
+dispute that these animals communicate as much as we do and
+perhaps in the same fashion with the mystery that lies around us.
+There are moments at which, like man, they see the invisible and
+perceive events, influences and emotions that are beyond the
+range of their normal senses. It is, therefore, permissible to
+believe that their nervous system or some remote or secret part
+of their being contains the same psychic elements connecting them
+with an unknown that inspires them with as much terror as it does
+ourselves. And, let us say in passing, this terror is rather
+strange; for, after all, what have they to fear from a phantom or
+an apparition, they who, we are convinced have no after-life and
+who ought, therefore, to remain perfectly indifferent to the
+manifestations, of a world in which they will never set foot?
+
+[1] Annales des sciences psychiques, August, 1905, pp 422-469.
+
+
+I shall perhaps be told that it is not certain that these
+apparitions are objective, that they correspond with an external
+reality, but that it is exceedingly possible that they spring
+solely from the man's or the animal's brain. This is not the
+moment to discuss this very obscure point, which raises the whole
+question of the supernatural and all the problems of the
+hereafter. The only important thing to observe is that at one
+time it is man who transmits his terror, his perception or his
+idea of the invisible to the animal and at another the animal
+which transmits its sensations to man. We have here, therefore,
+intercommunications which spring from a deeper common source than
+any that we know and which, to issue from it or go back to it,
+pass through other channels than those of our customary senses.
+Now all this belongs to that unexplained sensibility, to that
+secret treasure, to that as yet undetermined psychic power which,
+for lack of a better term, we call subconsciousness or subliminal
+consciousness. Moreover, it is not surprising that in the
+animals, these subliminal faculties not only exist, but are
+perhaps keener and more active than in ourselves, because it is
+our conscious and abnormally individualized life that atrophies
+them by relegating them to a state of idleness wherein they have
+fewer and fewer opportunities of being exercised, whereas in our
+brothers who are less detached from the universe,
+consciousness--if we can give that name to a very uncertain and
+confused notion of the ego--is reduced to a few elementary
+actions. They are much less separated than ourselves from the
+whole of the circumambient life and they still possess a number
+of those more general and indeterminate senses whereof we have
+been deprived by the gradual encroachment of a narrow and
+intolerant special faculty, our intelligence. Among these senses
+which up to the present we have described as instincts, for
+want--and it is becoming a pressing want--of a more suitable and
+definite word, need I mention the sense of direction, migration,
+foreknowledge of the weather, of earthquakes and avalanches and
+many others which we doubtless do not even suspect? Does all this
+not belong to a subconsciousness which differs from ours only in
+being so much richer?
+
+30
+
+I am fully aware that this explanation by means of the subliminal
+consciousness will not explain very much and will at most invoke
+the aid of the unknown to illuminate the incomprehensible. But to
+explain a phenomenon, a Dr. J. de Modzelwski very truly says, "is
+to put forward a theory which is more familiar and more easily
+comprehensible to us than the phenomenon at issue." This is
+really what we are constantly and almost exclusively doing in
+physics, chemistry, biology and in every branch of science
+without exception. To explain a phenomenon is not necessarily to
+make it as clear and lucid as that two and two are four; and,
+even so, the fact that two and two are four is not, when we go to
+the bottom of things, as clear and lucid as it seems. What in
+this case, as in most others, we wrongfully call explaining is
+simply confronting the unexpected mystery which these horses
+offer us with a few phenomena which are themselves unknown, but
+which have been perceived longer and more frequently. And this
+same mystery, thus explained, will serve one day to explain
+others. It is in this way that science goes to work. We must not
+blame it: it does what it can; and it does not appear that there
+are other ways.
+
+31
+
+If we assent to this explanation by means of the subliminal
+consciousness, which is a sort of mysterious participation in all
+that happens in this world and the others, many obstacles
+disappear and we enter into a new region in which we draw
+strangely nearer to the animals and really become their brothers
+by closer links, perhaps the only essential links in life. They
+take part from that moment in the great human problems, in the
+extraordinary actions of our unknown guest; and, if, since we
+have been observing the indwelling force more attentively,
+nothing any longer surprises us of that which it realizes in us,
+no more should anything surprise us of that which it realizes in
+them. We are on the same plane with them, in some as yet
+undetermined element, when it is no longer the intelligence that
+reigns alone, but another spiritual power, which pays no heed to
+the brain, which passes by other roads and which might rather be
+the psychic substance of the universe itself, no longer set in
+grooves, isolated and specialized by man, but diffused, multiform
+and perhaps, if we could trace it, equal in everything that
+exists.
+
+There is, henceforth, no reason why the horses should not
+participate in most of the mediumistic, phenomena which we find
+existing between man and man; and their mystery ceases to be
+distinct from those of human metaphysics. If their subliminal is
+akin to ours, we can begin by extending to its utmost limits the
+telepathic theory, which has, so to speak, no limits, for, in the
+matter of telepathy, as Myers has said, all that we are permitted
+to declare is that "life has the power of manifesting itself to
+life." We may ask ourselves, therefore, if the problem which I
+set to the horse, without knowing the terms of it, is not
+communicated to my subliminal, which is ignorant of it, by that
+of the horse, who has read it. It is practically certain that
+this is possible between human subliminals. Is it I who see the
+solution and transmit it to the horse, who only repeats it to me?
+But, suppose that it is a problem which I myself am incapable of
+solving? Whence does the solution come, then? I do not know if
+the experiment has been attempted, under the same conditions,
+with a human medium. For that matter, if it succeeded, it would
+be very much the same as the no less subliminal phenomenon of the
+arithmetical prodigies, or lightning calculators, with which, in
+this rather superhuman atmosphere, we are almost forced to
+compare the riddle of the mathematical horses. Of all the
+interpretations, it is the one which, for the moment, appears to
+me the least eccentric and the most natural.
+
+We have seen that the gift of handling colossal figures is almost
+foreign to the intelligence proper; one can, even declare that,
+in certain cases, it is evidently and completely independent of
+such intelligence. In these cases, the gift is manifested prior
+to any education and from the earliest years of childhood. If we
+refer to the list of arithmetical prodigies given by Dr.
+Scripure,[1] we see that the faculty made its appearance in
+Ampere at the age of three, in Colburn at six, in Gauss at three,
+in Mangiamele at ten, in Safford at six, in Whateley at three,
+and so on. Generally, it lasts for only a few years, becoming
+rapidly enfeebled with age and usually vanishing suddenly at the
+moment when its possessor begins to go to school.
+
+[1] American Journal of Psychology, 1 April 1891.
+
+
+When you ask those children and even most of the lightning
+calculators who have come to man's estate how they go to work to
+solve the huge and complicated problems set them, they reply that
+they know nothing about it. Bidder, for instance, declares that
+it is impossible for him to say how he can instinctively tell the
+logarithm of a number consisting of seven or eight figures. It is
+the same with Safford, who, at the age of ten, used to do in his
+head, without ever making a mistake, multiplication-sums the
+result of which ran into thirty-six figures. The solution
+presents itself authoritatively and spontaneously; it is a
+vision, an impression, an inspiration, an intuition coming one
+knows not whence, suddenly and indubitably. As a role, they do
+not even try to calculate. Contrary to the general belief, they
+have no peculiar methods; or, if method there be, it is more a
+practical way of subdividing the intuition. One would think that
+the solution springs suddenly from the very enunciation of the
+problem, in the same way as a veridical hallucination. It appears
+to rise, infallible and ready-done, from a sort of eternal and
+cosmic reservoir wherein the answers to every question lie
+dormant. It must, therefore, be admitted that we have here a
+phenomenon that occurs above or below the brain, by the side of
+the consciousness and the mind, outside all the intellectual
+methods and habits; and it is precisely for phenomena of this
+kind that Myers invented the word "subliminal."[1]
+
+[1] I have no need to recall the derivation of the term
+subliminal: beneath (sub) the threshold (limen) of consciousness.
+Let us add, as M. de Vesme very rightly remarks, that the
+subliminal is not exactly what classical psychology calls the
+subconsciousness, which latter records only notions that are
+normally perceived and possesses only normal faculties, that is
+to say, faculties recognized to-day by orthodox science.
+
+
+32
+
+Does not all this bring us a little nearer to our calculating
+horses? From the moment that it is demonstrated that the solution
+of a mathematical problem no longer depends exclusively on the
+brain, but on another faculty, another spiritual power whose
+presence under various forms has been ascertained beyond a doubt
+in certain animals, it ceases to be wholly rash or extravagant to
+suggest that perhaps, in the horse, the same phenomenon is
+reproduced and developed in the same unknown, wherein moreover
+the mysteries of numbers and those of subconsciousness mingle in
+a like darkness. I am well aware that an explanation laden to
+such an extent with mysteries explains but very little more than
+silence does; nevertheless, it is at least a silence traversed by
+restless murmurs, and sedulous whispers that are better than the
+gloomy and hopeless ignorance to which we would have perforce to
+resign ourselves if we did not, in spite of all, to perform the
+great duty of man, which is to discover a spark in the darkness.
+
+It goes without saying that objections are raised from every
+side. Among men, arithmetical prodigies are looked upon as
+monsters, as a sort of extremely rare teratological phenomenon.
+We can count, at most, half-a-dozen in a century, whereas, among
+horses, the faculty would appear to be almost general, or at
+least quite common. In fact, out of six or seven stallions whom
+Krall tried to initiate into the secrets of mathematics, he found
+only two that appeared to him too poorly gifted for him to waste
+time on their education. These were, I believe, two thoroughbreds
+that were presented to him by the Grand-duke of Mecklenburg and
+sent back by Krall to their sumptuous stables. In the four or
+five others, taken at random as circumstances supplied them, he
+met with aptitudes unequal, it is true, but easily developed and
+giving the impression that they exist normally, latent and
+inactive, at the bottom of every equine soul. From the
+mathematical point of view, is the horse's subliminal
+consciousness then superior to man's? Why not? His whole
+subliminal being is probably superior to one, of greater range,
+younger, fresher, more alive and less heavy, since it is not
+incessantly attacked, coerced and humiliated by the intelligence
+which gnaws at it, stifles it, cloaks it and relegates it to a
+dark corner which neither light nor air can penetrate. His
+subliminal consciousness is always present, always alert; ours is
+never there, is asleep at the bottom of a deserted well and needs
+exceptional operations, results and events before it can be drawn
+from its slumber and its unremembered deeps. All this seems very
+extraordinary; but, in any case, we are here in the midst of the
+extraordinary; and this outlet is perhaps the least hazardous. It
+is not a question, we must remember, of a cerebral operation, an
+intellectual performance, but of a gift of divination closely
+allied to other gifts of the same nature and the same origin
+which are not the peculiar attribute of man. No observation, no
+experiment enables us, up to the present, to establish a
+difference between the subliminal of human beings and that of
+animals. On the contrary, the as yet restricted number of actual
+cases reveals constant and striking analogies between the two. In
+most of those arithmetical operations, be it noted, the
+subliminal of the horse behaves exactly like that of the medium
+in a rate of trance. The horse readily reverses the figures of
+the solution; he replies, "37," for instance, instead of "73,"
+which is a mediumistic phenomenon so well-known and so frequent
+that it has been styled "mirror-writing." He makes mistakes
+fairly often in the most elementary additions, and subtractions
+and much less frequently in the extraction of the most
+complicated roots, which again, in similar cases, such as
+"xenoglossy" and psychometry, is one of the eccentricities of
+human mediumism and is explained by the same cause, namely, the
+inopportune intervention of the ever fallible intelligence,
+which, by meddling in the matter, alters the certainties of a
+subliminal which, when left to itself, never makes a mistake. It
+is, in fact, quite probable that the horse, being really able to
+do the small sums, no longer relies solely on his intuition and,
+from that moment, gropes and flounders about. The solution hovers
+between the intelligence and the subliminal and, passing from the
+one, which is not quite sure of it, to the other, which is not
+urgently appealed to, comes out of the conflict as best it may.
+The case is the same with the psychometric or spiritualistic
+medium who seeks to profit by what he knows in the ordinary way,
+so as to complete the visions or revelations of his subconscious
+sensibility. He, too, in this instance, is nearly always guilty
+of flagrant and inexplicable blunders.
+
+Many other similarities will be found to exist, notably the way
+in which the lessons vary. Nothing is more uncertain and
+capricious than manifestations of human mediumism. Whether it be
+a question of automatic writing, psychometry, materializations or
+anything else, we meet with series of sittings that yield none
+but absurd results. Then, suddenly, for reasons as yet
+obscure--the state of the weather, the presence of this or that
+witness, or I know not what--the most undeniable
+and bewildering manifestations occur one after the other. The
+case is precisely the same with the horses: their queer fancies,
+their unaccountable and disconcerting freaks drive poor Krall to
+despair. He never opens the door of that uncertain stable, on
+important days, without a sinking at the heart. Let the beard or
+the frown of some learned professor fail to please the horses:
+they will, forthwith, take an unholy delight in giving the most
+irrelevant answer to the most elementary question, for hours and
+even days on end.
+
+Other common features are the strongly-marked personality of the
+mediumistic "raps" and the communications known as "deferred
+telepathic communications," that is to say, those in which the
+answer is obtained at the end of a sitting to a question put at
+the beginning and forgotten by all those present. What at first
+sight seems one of the strongest objections urged against the
+mediumism of the horse even tends to confirm it. If the reply
+comes from the horse's subconsciousness, it has been asked, how
+is it that it should be necessary first to teach him the elements
+of language, mathematics and so forth, and that Berto, for
+instance, is incapable of solving the same problems as Mohammed?
+This objection has been very ably refuted by M. de Vesme, who
+writes:
+
+"To produce automatic writing, a medium must have learnt to
+write; before Victorien Sardou or Mlle Helene Schmidt could
+produce their mediumistic drawings and paintings, they had to
+possess an elementary knowledge of drawing and painting; Tartini
+would never have composed The Devil's Sonata in a dream, if he
+had not known music; and so forth. Unconscious cerebration,
+however wonderful, can only take effect upon elements already
+acquired in some way or another. The subconscious cerebration of
+a man blind from birth will not make him see colours."
+
+Here, then, in this comparison which might easily be extended,
+are several fairly well- defined features of resemblance. We
+receive a vivid impression of the same habits, the same
+contradictions, and the same eccentricities; and we once more
+recognize the strange and majestic shadow of our unknown guest.
+
+33
+
+One great objection remains, based upon the very nature of the
+phenomenon, upon the really inseparable distance that separates
+the whole life of the horse from the abstract and impenetrable
+life of numbers. How can his subliminal consciousness interest
+itself for a moment in signs that represent nothing to him, have
+no relation to his organism and will never touch his existence?
+But in the first place, it is just the same with the child or the
+illiterate calculator. He is not interested either in the figures
+which he lets loose. He is completely ignorant of the
+consequences of the problems which he solves. He juggles with
+digits which have hardly any more meaning to him than to the
+horse. He is incapable of accounting for what he does; and his
+subconsciousness also  acts in a sort of indifferent and remote
+dream. It is true that, in his case, we can appeal to heredity
+and to memory; but is this difference enough to settle the
+difficulty and definitely to separate the two phenomena? To
+appeal to heredity is still to appeal to the subliminal; and it
+is not at all certain that the latter is limited by the interest
+of the organism sheltering it. It appears, on the contrary, in
+many circumstances, to spread and extend far beyond that organism
+in which it is domiciled, one would say, accidentally and
+provisionally. It likes to show, apparently, that it is in
+relation with all that exists. It declares itself, as often as
+possible, universal and impersonal. It has but a very indifferent
+care, as we have seen in the matter of apparitions and
+premonitions, for the happiness and even the safety of its host
+and protector. It prophesies to its companion of a lifetime
+events which he cannot avoid or which do not concern him. It
+makes him see beforehand, for instance, all the circumstances of
+the death of a stranger whom he will only hear of after the
+event, when this event is irrevocable. It brings a crowd of
+barren presentiments and conjures up veridical hallucinations
+that are wholly alien and idle. With psychometric, typtological
+or materializing mediums, it practises art for art's sake, mocks
+at space and time, passes through personalities, sees through
+solid bodies, brings into communication thoughts and motions
+worlds apart, reads souls and lives by the light of a flower, a
+rag of a scrap of paper; and all this for nothing, to amuse
+itself, to astonish us, because it adores the superfluous, the
+incoherent, the unexpected, the improbable, the bewildering, or
+rather, perhaps, because it is a huge, rough, undisciplined force
+still struggling in the darkness and coming to the surface only
+by wild fits and starts, because it is an enormous expansion of a
+spirit striving to collect itself, to achieve consciousness, to
+make itself of service and to obtain a hearing. In any case, for
+the time being, it appeals just what we have described, and would
+be unlike itself if it behaved any otherwise in the case that
+puzzles us.
+
+34
+
+Lastly, to close this chapter, let us remark that it is nearly
+certain that the solution given by calculating children and
+horses is not of a mathematical nature at all. They do not in any
+way consider the problem or the sum to be worked. They simply
+find the answer straight away to a riddle, the guessing of which
+is made easy by the actual nature of figures which keep their
+secrets badly. To any one in the requisite state of mind, it
+becomes a question of a sort of elementary charade, which hides
+its answer only from those who speak another language. It is
+evident that every problem, however complex it may appear,
+carries within its very enunciation its one, invariable solution,
+scarce veiled by the indiscreet signs that contain or cover it.
+It is there, under the numbers that have no other object than to
+give it life, coming, stirring and ceaselessly proclaiming itself
+a necessity. It is not surprising therefore that eyes sharper
+than ours and ears open to other vibrations should see and hear
+it without knowing what it represents, what it implies or from
+what prodigious mass of figures and operations it merges. The
+problem itself speaks; and the horse but repeats the sign which
+he hears whispered in the mysterious life of numbers or deep down
+in, the abyss where the eternal verities hold sway. He
+understands none of it, he has no need to understand, he is but
+the unconscious medium who lends his voice or his limbs to the
+mind that inspires him. There is here but a bare and simple
+answer, bearing no precise significance, seized in an alien
+existence. There is here but a mechanical revelation, so to
+speak, a sort of special reflex which we can only record and
+which, for the rest, is as inexplicable as any other phenomenon
+of consciousness or instinct. After all, when we think of it, it
+is just as, astonishing that we should not perceive the solution
+as it is that we should discover it. However, I grant that all
+this is but a venturesome interpretation to be taken for what it
+is worth, an experimental or interim theory with which we must
+needs content ourselves since all the others have hitherto been
+controverted by the facts.
+
+35
+
+Let us now briefly sum up what the Elberfeld experiments have
+yielded us. Having put aside telepathy in the narrow sense--which
+perhaps enters into more than one phenomenon but is not
+indispensable to it, for we see these same phenomena repeated
+when telepathy is practically impossible--we cannot help
+observing that, if we deny the existence or the influence of the
+subliminal, it is all the more difficult to contest the existence
+and the intervention of the intelligence, at any rate up to the
+extracting of roots, after which there is a steep precipice which
+ends in darkness. But, even if we stop at the roots, the sudden
+discovery of an intellectual force so similar to our own, where
+we were accustomed to see but an irremediable impotency, is no
+doubt one of the most unexpected revelations that we have
+received since the invisible and the unknown began to press upon
+us with a persistence and an impatience which they had not
+displayed heretofore. It is not easy to foresee as yet the
+consequences and the promises of this new aspect which the great
+riddle of the intelligence is suddenly adopting. But I believe
+that we shall soon have to revise some of the essential ideas
+which are the foundations of our life and that some rather
+strange horizons are appearing out of the mists in the history of
+psychology, of morality, of human destiny and of many other
+things.
+
+36
+
+So much for the intelligence. On the other hand, what we deny to
+the intelligence we are constrained to grant to the subliminal;
+and the revelation is even more disconcerting. We should then
+have to admit that them is in the horse--and hence most probably
+in everything that lives on this earth--a psychic power similar
+to that which is hidden beneath the veil of our reason and which,
+as we learn to know it, astonishes, surpasses and dominates our
+reason more and more. This psychic power, in which no doubt we
+shall one day be forced to recognize the genius of the universe
+itself, appears, as we have often observed, to be all-wise,
+all-seeing and all-powerful. It has, when it is pleased to
+communicate with us or when we are allowed to penetrate into it,
+an answer for every question,  and perhaps a remedy for every
+ill. We will not enumerate its virtues again. It will be enough
+for us to recall with what ease it mocks at space, time and all
+the obstacles that beset our poor human knowledge and
+understanding. We believed it, like all that seems to us superior
+and marvellous, the intangible, inalienable and incommunicable
+attribute of man, with even better reason than his intelligence.
+And now an accident, strangely belated, it is true, tells us
+that, at one precise point, the strangest and least foreseen of
+all, the horse and the dog draw more easily and perhaps more
+directly than ourselves upon its mighty reservoirs. By the most
+inexplicable of anomalies, though one that is fairly consistent
+with the fantastic character of the subliminal, they appear to
+have access to it only at the spot that is most remote from their
+habits and most unknown to their propensities, for there is
+nothing in the world about which animals trouble less than
+figures. But is this not, perhaps because we do not see what goes
+on elsewhere? It so happens that the infinite mystery of numbers
+can sometimes be expressed by a very few simple movements which
+are natural to most animals; but there is nothing to tell us
+that, if we could teach the horse and the dog to attach to these
+same movements the expression of other mysteries, they would not
+draw upon them with equal facility. It has been successfully
+attempted to give them a more or less clear idea of the value of
+a few figures and perhaps of the course and nature of certain
+elementary operations; and this appears to have been enough to
+open up to them the most secret regions of mathematics in which
+every question is answered beforehand. It is not wholly illusive
+to suppose that, if we could impart to them, for instance, a
+similar notion of the future, together with a manner of conveying
+to us what they see there, they might also have access to strange
+visions of another class, which are jealously kept from us by the
+too-watchful guardians of our intelligence. There is an
+opportunity here for experiments which will doubtless prove
+exceedingly arduous, for the future is not so easily seen and
+above all not so easily interpreted and expressed as a number. It
+is possible, moreover, that, when we know how to set about it, we
+shall obtain most of the human mediumistic phenomena; rapping,
+the moving of objects, materialization even and Heaven knows what
+other surprises held in store for us by that astounding
+subliminal to whose fancy there appears to be no bounds. In any
+case, if we accept the divining of numbers, as we are almost
+forced to do, it is almost certain that the divining of other
+matters must follow. An unexpected breach is made in the wall
+behind which lie heaped the great secrets that seem to us, as our
+knowledge and our civilization increase, to become stronger and
+more inaccessible. True, it is a narrow breach; but it is the
+first that has been opened in that part of the hitherto
+uncrannied wall which is not turned towards mankind. What will
+issue through it? No one can foretell what we may hope.
+
+37
+
+What astonishes us most is that this revelation has been so long
+delayed. How are we to explain that man has lived to this day
+with his domestic animals never suspecting that they harboured
+mediumistic or subliminal faculties as extraordinary as those
+which he vaguely felt himself to possess. One would have in this
+connection to study the mysterious practices of ancient India and
+of Egypt; the numerous and persistent legends of animals talking,
+guiding their masters and foretelling the future; and, nearer to
+ourselves, in history proper, all that science of augury and
+soothsaying which derived its omens from the flight of birds, the
+inspection of entrails, the appetite or attitude of the sacred or
+prophetic animals, among which horses were often numbered. We
+here find one of those innumerous instances of a lost or
+anticipated power which make us suspect that mankind has
+forestalled or forgotten all that we believe ourselves to be
+discovering. Remember that there is almost always some distorted,
+misapprehended or dimly--seen truth at the bottom of the most
+eccentric and wildest creeds, superstitions and legends. All this
+new science of metaphysics or of the investigation of our
+subconsciousness and of unknown powers, which has scarcely begun
+to unveil its first mysteries, thus finds landmarks and defaced
+but recognizable traces in the old religions, the most
+inexplicible traditions and the most ancient history. Besides,
+the probability of a thing does not depend upon undeniably
+established precedents. While it is almost certain that there is
+nothing new under the sun or in the eternity preceding the suns,
+it is quite possible that the same forces do not always act with
+the same energy. As I observed, nearly twenty years ago, in The
+Treasure of the Humble, at a time when I hardly knew at all what
+I know so imperfectly to-day:
+
+"A spiritual"--I should have said, a psychic-"epoch is perhaps
+upon us, an epoch to which a certain number of analogies are
+found in history. For there are periods recorded when the soul,
+in obedience to unknown laws, seemed to rise to the very surface
+of humanity, whence it gave clearest evidence of its existence
+and of its power. . . . It would seem, at moments such as these,
+as though humanity," --and, I would add to-day, all that lives
+with it on this earth--"were on the point of struggling from
+beneath the crushing burden of matter that weighs it down."
+
+One might in fact believe that a shudder which we have not yet
+experienced is passing over everything that breathes; that a new
+activity, a new restlessness is permeating the spiritual
+atmosphere which surrounds our globe; and that the very animals
+have felt its thrill. One might say that, by the side of the
+niggardly private spring which would only supply our
+intelligence, other streams are spreading and rising to the same
+level in every form of existence. A sort of word of command is
+being passed from rank to rank; and the same phenomena are
+bursting forth in every quarter of the globe in order to attract
+our attention, as though the obstinately dumb genius that lay
+hidden in the pregnant silence of the universe, from that of the
+stones, the flowers and the insects to the mighty silence of the
+stars, were at last trying to tell us some secret whereby it
+would be better known to us or to itself. It is possible that
+this is but an illusion. Perhaps we are simply more attentive and
+better informed than of old. We learn at the very instant what
+happens in every part of our earth and we have acquired the habit
+of more minutely observing and examining the things that happen.
+But the illusion would in this case have all the force, all the
+value and all the meaning of the reality and would enjoin the
+same hopes and the same obligation.
+
+
+CHAPTER V. THE UNKNOWN GUEST
+
+1
+
+We have now studied certain manifestations of that which we have
+called in turn and more or less indiscriminately the subconscious
+mind, the subliminal consciousness and the unknown guest, names
+to which we might add that of the superior subconsciousness or
+superior psychism invented by Dr. Geley. Granting that these
+manifestations are really proved, it is no longer possible to
+explain them or rather to classify them without having recourse
+to fresh theories. Now we can entertain doubts on many points, we
+can cavil and argue; but I defy anyone approaching these facts in
+a serious and honest spirit to reject them all. It is permissible
+to neglect the most extraordinary; but there are a multitude of
+others which have become or, to speak more accurately, are
+acknowledged to be as frequent and habitual as any fact whatever
+in normal, everyday life. It is not difficult to reproduce them
+at will, provided we place ourselves in the condition demanded by
+their very nature; and, this being so, there remains no valid
+reason for excluding them from the domain of science in the
+strict sense of the word.
+
+Hitherto, all that we have learnt regarding these occurrences is
+that their origin is unknown. It will be said that this is not
+much and that the discovery is nothing to boast of. I quite
+agree: to imagine that one can explain a phenomena by saying that
+it is produced by an unknown agency would indeed be childish. But
+it is already something to have marked its source; not to be
+still lingering in the thick of a fog, trying any and every
+direction in order to find a way out, but to be concentrating our
+attention on a single spot which is the starting-point of all
+these wonders, so that at each instant we recognize in each
+phenomenon the characteristic customs, methods or features of the
+same unknown agency. It is very nearly all that we can do for the
+moment; but this first effort is not wholly to be despised.
+
+2
+
+It has seemed to us then that it was our unknown guest that
+expressed itself in the name of the dead in table-turning and in
+automatic writing and speaking. This unknown guest has appeared
+to us to take within us the place of those who are no more, to
+unite itself perhaps with forces that do not die, to visit the
+grave with the object of bringing thence inexplicable phantoms
+which rise up in front of us fruitlessly or haunt our houses
+without telling us why. We have seen it, in experiments in
+clairvoyance and intuition, suppressing all the obstacles that
+banish or conceal thought and, through bodies that have become
+transparent, reading in our very souls forgotten secrets of the
+past, sentiments that have not yet taken shape, intentions as yet
+unborn. We have discovered that some object once handled by a
+person now far away is enough to make it take part in the
+innermost life of that person, to go deeper and rise higher than
+he does, to see what he sees and even what he does not see: the
+landscape that surrounds him, the house which he inhabits and
+also the dangers that threaten him and the secret passions by
+which he is stirred. We have surprised it wandering hither and
+thither, at haphazard, in the future, confounding it with the
+present and the past, not conscious of where it is but seeing far
+and wide, knowing perhaps everything but unaware of the
+importance of what it knows, or as yet incapable of turning it to
+account or of making itself understood, at once neglectful and
+overscrupulous, prolix and reticent, useless and indispensable.
+We have seen it, lastly, although we had hitherto looked upon it
+as indissolubly and unchangeably human, suddenly emerge from
+other creatures and there reveal faculties akin to ours, which
+commune with them deep down in the deepest mysteries and which
+equal them and sometimes surpass them in a region that wrongly
+appeared to us the only really unassailable province of mankind,
+I mean the obscure and abstruse province of numbers.
+
+It has many other no less strange and perhaps more important
+manifestations, which we propose to examine in a later volume,
+notably its surprising therapeutic virtues and its phenomena of
+materialization. But, without expressing a premature judgment on
+what we do not yet know, perhaps we have sketched it with
+sufficient clearness in the foregoing pages to enable us
+henceforward to disentangle certain general and characteristic
+features from a confusion of often contradictory lines.
+
+3
+
+But, in the first place, does it really exist, this tragic and
+comical, evasive and unavoidable figure which we make no claim to
+portray, but at most to divest of some of its shadows? It were
+rash to affirm it too loudly; but meanwhile, in the realms where
+we suppose it to reign, everything happens as though it did
+exist. Do away with it and you are obliged to people the world
+and burden your life with a host of hypothetical and imaginary
+beings: gods, demigods, angels, demons, saints, spirits, shells,
+elementals, etherial entities, interplanetary intelligences and
+so on; except it and all those phantoms, without disappearing,
+for they may very well continue to live in its shadow, become
+superfluous or accessory. It is not intolerant and does not
+definitely eliminate any of the hypotheses by the aid of which
+man has hitherto striven to explain what he did not understand,
+hypotheses which, in regard to some matters, are not
+inadmissible, although not one of them is confirmed; but it
+brings him back to itself, absorbs them and rules them without
+annihilating them. If, for instance, to select the most
+defensible theory, one which it is sometimes difficult to dismiss
+absolutely, if you insist that the discarnate spirits take part
+in your actions, haunt your house, inspire your thoughts, reveal
+your future, it will answer:
+
+"That is true, but it is still I; I am discarnate, or rather I am
+not wholly incarnate: it is only a small part of my being that is
+embodied in your flesh; and the rest, which is nearly all of me,
+comes and goes freely both among those who once were and among
+those who are yet to be; and, when they seem to speak to you, it
+is my own speech that borrows their customs and their voice in
+order to make you listen and to amuse your often slumbering
+attention. If you prefer to deal with superior entities of
+unknown origin, with interplanetary or supernatural
+intelligences, once more it is I; for, since I am not entirely in
+your body, I must needs be elsewhere; and to be elsewhere when
+one is not held back by the weight of the flesh is to be
+everywhere if one so pleases."
+
+We see, it has a reply to everything, it takes every name that we
+wish and there is nothing to limit it, because it lives in a
+world wherein bounds are as illusory as the useless words which
+we employ on earth.
+
+4
+
+While it has a reply to everything, certain manifestations which
+it deliberately ascribes to the spirits have brought upon it a
+not undeserved reproach. To begin with, as Dr. Maxwell observes,
+it has no absolutely fixed doctrine. In nearly every country in
+the world, when it speaks in the name of the spirits, it declares
+that they undergo reincarnation and readily relates their past
+existences. In England, on the contrary, it usually asserts that
+they do not become reincarnated. What does this mean? Surely this
+ignorance or this inconsistency on the part of that which appears
+to know everything is very strange! And worse, sometimes it
+attributes to the spirits, sometimes to itself or any one or
+anything the revelations which it makes to us. When exactly is it
+speaking the truth? At least on two occasions out of three, it
+deludes itself or deludes us. If it deceive itself, if it is
+mistaken about a matter in which it should be easy for it to know
+the truth, what can it teach us on the subject of a world of
+whose most elementary laws it is ignorant, since it does not even
+know whether it is itself or another that speaks to us in the
+name of that world? Are we to believe that it was in the same
+darkness as our poor superficial ego, which it pretends so often
+to enlighten and which it does in fact inspire in most of the
+great events of life? If it deceives us, why does it do so? We
+can see no object: it asks for nothing, not for alms, nor
+prayers, nor thoughts, on behalf of those whose mantle it assumes
+for the sole purpose of leading us astray. What is the use of
+those mischievous and puerile pranks, of those ghastly graveyard
+pleasantries? It must lie then for the mere pleasure of lying;
+and our unknown guest, that infinite and doubtless immortal
+subconsciousness in which we have placed out last hopes, is after
+all but an imbecile, a buffoon or a rank swindler!
+
+5
+
+I do not believe that the truth is as hideous as this. Our
+unknown guest does not deceive itself any more than it deceives
+us; but it is we who deceive ourselves. It has not the stage to
+itself; and its voice is not the voice that sounds in our ears,
+which were never made to catch the echoes of a world that is not
+like ours. If it could speak to us itself and tell us what it
+knows, we should probably at that instant cease to be on this
+earth. But we are immersed in our bodies, entombed prisoners with
+whom it cannot communicate at will. It roams around the walls, it
+utters warning cries. It knocks at every door, but all that
+reaches us is a vague disquiet, an indistinct murmur that is
+sometimes translated to us by a half-awakened gaoler who, like
+ourselves, is a lifelong captive. The gaoler does his best; he
+has his own way of speaking, his familiar expressions; he knows,
+and, with the aid of the words which he possesses and those which
+he hears repeated, he tries to make us understand what he hardly
+understands himself. He does not know exactly whence the sounds
+come which he hears; and, according as tempests, wars or riots
+happen to be uppermost at the moment, he attributes them to the
+winds, to tramping soldiers or to frenzied crowds. In other words
+and speaking without metaphor, it is the medium who draws from
+his habitual language and from that suggested to him by his
+audience the wherewithal to clothe and identify the strange
+presentiments, the unfamiliar visions that come from some unknown
+region. If he believes that the dead survive, he will naturally
+imagine that it is the dead who speak to him. If he has a
+favourite spirit, angel, demon or god, he will express himself in
+its name; if he has no preconceived opinion, he will not even
+allude to the origin of the revelations which he is making. The
+inarticulate language of the subconsciousness necessarily borrows
+that of the normal consciousness; and the two become confused
+into a sort of shifting and multiform jargon. And our unknown
+guest, which is not thinking of delivering a course of lectures
+upon its entity, but simply giving us as best it can a more or
+less warning or mark of its existence, seems to care but little
+as to the garments in which it is rigged out, having indeed no
+choice in the matter, for, either because it is unable to
+manifest itself or because we are incapable of understanding it,
+it has to be content with whatever comes to hand.
+
+Besides, if we attribute too exclusively to the spirits that
+which comes from another quarter, the mistake is doubtless no
+great one in its eyes; for it is not madness to believe that it
+lives with that which does not die in the dead even as with that
+which does not die in ourselves, with that which does not descend
+into the grave even as with that which does not take flesh at the
+hour of birth.
+
+6
+
+There is no reason therefore to condemn the other theories
+entirely. Most of them doubtless contain something more than a
+particle of truth; in particular, the great quarrel between the
+subconscious school and the spiritualists is based on the whole
+upon a misunderstanding. It is quite possible and even very
+probable that the dead are all around us, since it is impossible
+that the dead do not live. Our subconsciousness must mingle with
+all that does not die in them; and that which dies in them or
+rather disperses and loses all its importance is but the little
+consciousness accumulated on this earth and kept up until the
+last hour by the frail bonds of memory. In all those
+manifestations of our unknown guest, it is our posthumous ego
+that already lives in us while we are still in the flesh and at
+moments joins that which does not die in those who have quitted
+their body. Then does the existence of our unknown guest presume
+the immortality of a part of ourselves? Can one possibly doubt
+it? Have you ever imagined that you would perish entirely? As for
+me, what I cannot picture is the manner in which you would
+picture that total annihilation. But, if you cannot perish
+entirely, it is no less certain that those who came before you
+have not perished either; and hence it is not altogether
+improbable that we may be able to discover them and to
+communicate with them. In this wider sense, the spiritualistic
+theory is perfectly admissible; but what is not at all admissible
+is the narrow and pitiful interpretation which its proponents too
+often give it. They see the dead crowding around us like wretched
+puppets indissolubly attached to the insignificant scene of their
+death by the thousand little threads of insipid memories and
+infantile hobbies. They are supposed to be here, blocking up our
+homes, more abjectly human than if they were still alive, vague,
+inconsistent, garrulous, derelict, futile and idle, tossing
+hither and thither their desolate shadows, which are being slowly
+swallowed up by silence and oblivion, busying themselves
+incessantly with what no longer concerns them, but almost
+incapable of doing us a real service, so much so that, in short,
+they would end by persuading us that death serves no purpose,
+that it neither purifies nor exalts, that it brings no
+deliverance and that it is indeed a thing of terror and despair.
+
+7
+
+No, it is not the dead who thus speak and act. Besides, why bring
+them into the matter unnecessarily? I could understand that we
+should be obliged to do so if there were no similar phenomena
+outside them; but in the intuition and clairvoyance of
+nonspiritualistic mediums and particularly in psychometry we
+obtain communications between one subconsciousness and another
+and revelations of unknown, forgotten or future incidents which
+are equally striking, though stripped of the vapid gossip and
+tedium reminiscences with which we are overwhelmed by defunct
+persons who are all the more jealous to prove their identity
+inasmuch as they know that they do not exist.
+
+It is infinitely more likely that there is strange medley of
+heterogeneous forces in the uncertain regions into which we are
+venturing. The whole of this ambiguous drama, with its incoherent
+crowds, is probably enacted round about the dim estuary where our
+normal consciousness flows into our subconsciousness. The
+consciousness of the medium--for we must not forget that there is
+necessarily always a medium at the sources of these
+phenomena--the consciousness of the medium, obscured by the
+condition of trance but yet the only one that possesses our human
+speech and can make itself heard, takes in first and almost
+exclusively what it best understands and what most interests it
+in the stifled and mutilated revelations of our unknown guest,
+which for its part communicates with the dead and the living and
+everything that exists. The rest, which is the only thing that
+matters, but which is less clear and less vivid because it comes
+from afar, only very rarely makes its difficult way through a
+forest of insignificant talk. We may add that our
+subconsciousness, as Dr. Geley very rightly observes, is formed
+of superposed elements, beginning with the unconsciousness that
+governs the instinctive movements of the organic life of both the
+species and the individual and passing by imperceptible degrees
+till it rises to the superior psychism whose power and extent
+appear to have no bounds. The voice of the medium, or that which
+we hear within ourselves when, at certain moments of excitement
+or crisis in our lives, we become our own medium, has therefore
+to traverse three worlds or three provinces: that of the
+atavistic instincts which connect us with the animal; that of
+human or empirical consciousness; and lastly that of our unknown
+guest or our superior subconsciousness which links us to immense
+invisible realities and which we may, if we wish, call divine or
+superhuman. Hence it is not surprising that the intermediary, be
+he spiritualist, autonomist, palingenesist or what he will,
+should lose himself in those wild and troubled eddies and that
+the truth or message which he brings us, tossed and tumbled in
+every direction, should reach us broken, shattered and pulverized
+beyond recognition.
+
+For the rest, I repeat, were it not for the absurd prominence
+given to our dead in the spiritualistic interpretation, this
+question of origin would have little importance, since both life
+and death are incessantly joining and uniting in all things.
+There are assuredly dead people in all these manifestations,
+seeing that we are full of dead people and that the greater part
+of ourselves is at this moment steeped in death, that is to say,
+is already living the boundless life that awaits us on the
+farther side of the grave.
+
+8
+
+We should be wrong, however, to fix all our attention on these
+extraordinary phenomena, either those with which we unduly
+connect the deceased or those no less striking ones in which we
+do not believe that they take part. They are evidently precious
+points of emergence that enable us approximately to mark the
+extent, the forms and the habits of our mystery. But it is within
+ourselves, in the silence of the darkness of our being, where it
+is ever in motion, guiding our destiny, that we should strive to
+surprise that mystery and to discover it. And I am not speaking
+only of the dreams, the presumptions, the vague intuitions, the
+room or less brilliant inspirations which are so many more
+manifestations, specific as it were and analogous with those that
+have occupied us. There is another, a more secret and much more
+active existence which we have scarcely begun to study and which
+is, if we descend to the bed-rock of truth, our only real
+existence. From the darkest corners of our ego it directs our
+veritable life, the one that is not to die, and pays no heed to
+our thought or to anything emanating from our reason, which
+believes that it guides nor steps. It alone knows the long past
+that preceded our birth and the endless future that will follow
+our departure from this earth. It is itself that future and that
+past, all those from whom we have sprung and all those who will
+spring from us. It represents the individual not only the species
+but that which preceded it and that which will follow it; and it
+has neither beginning nor end: that is why nothing touches it,
+nothing moves it which does not concern that which it represents.
+When a misfortune or a joy befall us, it knows their value
+instantly, knows if they are going to open or to dose the wells
+of life. It is the one thing that is never wrong. In vain does
+reason demonstrate to it, by irresistible arguments, that it is
+hopelessly at fault: silent under its immovable mask, whose
+expression we have not yet been able to react it pursues its way.
+It treats us as insignificant children, void of understanding,
+never answers our objections, refuses what we ask and lavishes
+upon us that which we refuse. If we go to the right, it
+reconducts us to the left. If we cultivate this or that faculty
+which we think that we possess or which we would like to possess,
+it hides it under some other which we did not expect and did not
+wish for. It saves us from a danger by imparting to our limbs
+unforeseen and unerring movements and actions which they had
+never made before and which are contrary to those which they had
+been taught to make: it knows that the hour has not yet come when
+it will be useless to defend ourselves. It chooses our love in
+spite of the revolt of our intelligence or of our poor, ephemeral
+heart. It smiles when we are frightened and sometimes it is
+frightened when we smile. And it is always the winner,
+humiliating our reason, crushing our wisdom and silencing
+arguments and passions alike with the contemptuous hand of
+destiny. The greatest doctors surround our sick-bed and deceive
+themselves and us in foretelling our death or our recovery: it
+alone whispers in our car the truth that will not be denied. A
+thousand apparently mortal blows fall upon our head and not a
+lash of its eyelids quivers; but suddenly a tiny shock, which our
+senses had not even transmitted to our brain, wakes it with a
+start. It sits up, looks around and understands. It has seen the
+crack in the vault that separates the two lives. It gives the
+signal for departure. Forthwith panic spreads from cell to cell;
+and the innumerous city that we are utters yells of horror and
+distress and hustles around the gates of death.
+
+9
+
+That great figure, that new being has been there, in our
+darkness, from all time, though its awkward and extravagant
+actions, until recently attributed to the gods, the demons or the
+dead, am only now asking for our serious attention. It has been
+likened to an immense block of which our personality is but a
+diminutive facet; to an iceberg of which we see a few glistening
+prisms that represent our life, while nine-tenths of the enormous
+mass remain buried in the shadows of the sea. According to Sir
+Oliver Lodge, it is that part of our being that has not become
+carnate; according to Gustave Le Bon, it is the "condensed" soul
+of our ancestors, which is true, beyond a doubt, but only a part
+of the truth, for we find in it also the soul of the future and
+probably of many other forces which are not necessarily human.
+William James saw in it a diffuse cosmic consciousness and the
+chance intrusion into our scientifically organized world of
+remnants and bestiges of the primordial chaos. Here are a number
+of images striving to give us an idea of a reality so vast that
+we are unable to grasp it. It is certain that what we see from
+our terrestrial life is nothing compared with what we do not see.
+Besides, if we think of it, it would be monstrous and
+inexplicable that we should be only what we appear to be, nothing
+but ourselves, whole and complete in ourselves, separated,
+isolated, circumscribed by our body, our mind, our consciousness,
+our birth and our death. We become possible and probable only on
+the conditions that we project beyond ourselves on every side and
+that we stretch in every direction throughout time and space.
+
+10
+
+But how shall we explain the incredible contrast between the
+immeasurable grandeur of our unknown guest, the assurance, the
+calmness, the gravity of the inner life which it leads in us and
+the puerile and sometimes grotesque incongruities of what one
+might call its public existence? Inside us, it is the sovereign
+judge, the supreme arbiter, the prophet, almost the god
+omnipotent; outside us, from the moment that it quits its shelter
+and manifests itself in external actions, it is nothing more than
+a fortune-teller, a bone-setter, a sort of facetious conjuror or
+telephone-operator, I was on the verge of saying a mountebank or
+clown. At what particular instant is it really itself? Is it
+seized with giddiness when it leaves its lair? Is it we who no
+longer hear it, who no longer understand it, as soon as it ceases
+to speak in a whisper and to act in the dark recesses of our
+life? Are we in regard to it the terrified hive invaded by a huge
+and inexplicable hand, the maddened ant-hill trampled by a
+colossal and incomprehensible foot? Let us not venture yet to
+solve the strange riddle with the aid of the little that we know.
+Let us confine ourselves, for the moment, to noting on the way
+some other, rather easier questions which we can at least try to
+answer.
+
+First of all, are the facts at issue really new? Was it only
+yesterday that the existence of our unknown guest and its
+external manifestations were revealed to us? Is it our attention
+that makes them appear more numerous, or is it the increase in
+their number that at last attracts out attention?
+
+It does indeed seem that, however far we go back in history, we
+everywhere find the same extraordinary phenomena, under other
+names and often in a more glamorous setting. Oracles, prophecies,
+incantations, haruspication, "possession," evocation of the dead,
+apparitions, ghosts, miraculous cures, levitation, transmission
+of thought, apparent resurrections and the rest are the exact
+equivalent, though magnified by the aid of plentiful and obvious
+frauds of our latter-day supernaturalism. Turning in another
+direction, we are able to see that psychical phenomena are very
+evenly distributed over the whole surface of the globe. At all
+events, there does not appear to be any race that is absolutely
+or peculiarly refractory to them. One would be inclined to say,
+however, that they manifest themselves by preference among the
+most civilized nations--perhaps because that is where they are
+most carefully sought after--and among the most primitive. In
+short, it cannot be denied that we are in the presence of
+faculties or senses, more or less latent but at the same time
+universally distributed, which form part of the general and
+unvarying inheritance of mankind. But have these faculties or
+senses undergone evolution, like most of the others? And, if they
+have not done so on our earth, do they show traces of an
+extraplanetary evolution? Is there progress or reaction? Are they
+withered and useless branches, or buds swollen with sap and
+promise? Are they retreating before the march of intelligence or
+invading its domain?
+
+
+11
+
+M. Ernest Bozzano, one of the most learned, most daring and most
+subtle exponents of the new science that is in process of
+formation, in the course of a remarkable essay in the Annales des
+sciences psychiques,[1] gives it as his opinion that they have
+remained stationary and unchanged. He considers that they have
+become in no way diffused, generalized and refined, like so many
+others that are much less important and useful from the point of
+view of the struggle for life, such as the musical faculty, for
+instance. It does not even seem, says M. Bozzano, that it is
+possible to cultivate or develop them systematically. The Hindu
+race in particular, who for thousands of years have been devoting
+themselves to the study of these manifestations, have arrived at
+nothing but a better knowledge of the empirical methods
+calculated to produce them in individuals already endowed with
+these supernormal faculties. I do not know to what extent M.
+Bozzano's assertions are beyond dispute. They concern historical
+or remote facts which it is very difficult to verify. In any
+case, it is something to have perfected , as has been done in
+India, the empirical methods favourable to the production of
+supernormal phenomena. One might even say that it is about all
+that we have the right to expect, seeing that, by the author's
+own admission, these faculties are latent in every man and that,
+as has frequently been seen, it needs but an illness, a lesion,
+or sometimes even the slightest emotion or a mere passing
+faintness to make them suddenly reveal themselves in an
+individual who seemed most hopelessly devoid of them. It is
+therefore quite possible that, by improving the methods, by
+attacking the mystery from other quarters, we might obtain more
+decisive results than the Hindus. We must remember that our
+western science has but lately interested itself in these
+problems and that it has means of investigating and experimenting
+which the Asiatics never possessed. It may even be declared that
+at no time in the existence of our world has the scientific mind
+been better-equipped, better-suited to cope with every task, or
+more exact, more skilful and more penetrating than it is today.
+Because the oriental empirics have failed, there is no reason to
+believe that it will not succeed in awakening and cultivating in
+every man those faculties which would often be of greater use to
+him than those of the intellect itself. It is not overbold to
+suggest that, from certain points of view, the true history of
+mankind has hardly begun.
+
+[1] September, 1906.
+
+
+
+12
+
+Nevertheless, in so far as concerns the natural evolution of
+those faculties, M. Bozzano's assertion seem fairly well-
+justified. We do not, in fact, observe a startling or even
+appreciable difference between what they were and what they are.
+And this anomaly is the more surprising in as much as it is
+almost universally accepted that a sense or a faculty becomes
+developed in proportion to its usefulness; and there are few, I
+think, that would have been not only more useful but even more
+necessary to man. He has always had a keen and primitive interest
+in knowing without delay the most secret thoughts of his
+fellow-man, who is often his adversary and sometimes his mortal
+enemy. He has always had an interest no less great in immediately
+transmitting those thoughts through space, in seeing beyond the
+continents and seas, in going back into the past, in advancing
+into the future, in being able to find in his memory at will not
+only all the acquirements of his personal experience but also
+those of his ancestors, in communicating with the dead and
+perhaps with the sovereign intelligence diffused over the
+universe, in discovering hidden springs and treasures, in
+escaping the harsh and depressing laws of matter and gravity, in
+relieving pain, in curing the greater number of his disorders and
+even in restoring his limbs, not to mention many other miracles
+which he could work if he knew all the mighty forces that
+doubtless slumber in the dark recesses of his life.
+
+Is this once more an unexpected character of the eccentric
+physiology of our unknown guest? Here are faculties more precious
+than the most precious faculties that have made us what we are,
+faculties whose magic buds sprout on every side underneath our
+intelligence but have never burst into flower, as though a wind
+from another sphere had killed them with its icy breath. Is it
+because it occupies itself first and foremost with the species
+that it thus neglects the individual? But, after all, the species
+is only an aggregate of successive individuals; and its evolution
+consequently depends upon their evolution. There would therefore
+have been an evident advantage to the species in developing
+faculties that would perhaps have carried it much farther and
+much higher than has been done by its brain-power, which alone
+has progressed. If there is no evolution for them here, do they
+develop elsewhere? What are those powers which exist outside and
+independent of the laws of this earth? Do they then belong to
+other worlds? But, if so, what are they doing in ours? One would
+sometimes think, at the sight of so much neglectfulness,
+uncertainty and inconsistency, that man's evolution had been
+intentionally retarded by a superior will, as though that will
+feared that he was going too fast, that he was anticipating some
+pre established order and moving prematurely out of his appointed
+plane.
+
+13
+
+
+And the riddles accumulate which we cannot hope to solve. It has
+been said that these abnormal faculties are communications or
+infiltrations, themselves abnormal, which have found their way
+through the partitions that separate our consciousness from our
+subconsciousness. This is very likely, but it is only a minor
+side of the question. It would be important before all to know
+what that subconsciousness represents, whither it tends and with
+what it itself is communicating. Is the impersonal form of
+knowledge a necessary or an accidental stage? Is the impersonal
+form which it takes in the subconsciousness the only true one? Is
+there really, as everything seems to prove, a hopeless
+incompatibility between our intellectual faculties and those
+families of uncertain origin, to such an extent that the latter
+are unable to manifest themselves except when the former are
+weakened or temporarily suspended? It has, at any rate, been
+observed that they are hardly ever exercised simultaneously. Are
+we to believe that, at a given moment, mankind or the genius that
+presides over its destinies had to make an exclusive and awful
+choice between cerebral energy and the mysterious forces of the
+subconsciousness and that we still find traces of its hesitations
+in our organism? What would have become of a race of man in which
+the subconsciousness had triumphed over the brain? Is not this
+the case with animals; and would not the race have remained
+purely animal? Or else would not this preponderance of a
+subconscious more powerful than that of the animals and almost
+independent of our body have resulted in the disappearance of
+life as we know it; and should we not even now be trading the
+life which we shall probably lead when we are dead? Here are a
+number of questions to which there are no answers and which are
+nevertheless perhaps not so idle as one might at first believe.
+
+14
+
+Amidst this antagonism, whose triumph are we to hope for? Is any
+alliance between the two opposing forces for ever impossible so
+long as we are in the flesh? What are we to do meanwhile? If a
+choice be inevitable, which way will our choice incline; and
+which victim shall we sacrifice? Shall we listen to those who
+tell us that there is nothing more to be gained or learnt in
+those inhospitable regions where all our bewildering phenomena
+have been known since man first was man? Is it true that
+occultism--as it is very improperly called, for the knowledge
+which it seeks is no more occult than any other--is it true that
+occultism is marking time, that it is becoming hopelessly
+entangled in the same doubtful facts and that it has not taken a
+single step forward since its renaissance more than fifty years
+ago? One must be entirely ignorant of the wonderful efforts of
+those fruitful years to venture upon such an assertion. This is
+not the place to discuss the question, which would require full
+and careful treatment; but we may safely say that until now there
+is no science which in so short a time has brought order out of
+such a chaos, ascertained, checked and classified such a quantity
+of facts, or more rapidly awakened, cultivated and trained in man
+certain faculties which he had never seriously been believed to
+possess; and furthermore none which has caused to be recognized
+as incontestable and thus introduced into the circle of the
+realities whereon we base our lives a number of unlikely
+phenomena which had hitherto been contemptuously passed over. We
+are still, it is true, waiting for the domestication of the new
+force, its practical application to daily use. We are waiting for
+the all-revealing, decisive manifestation which will remove our
+last doubts and throw light upon the problem down to its very
+source. But let us admit that we are likewise waiting for this
+manifestation in the great majority of sciences. In my case, we
+are already in the presence of an astonishing mass of
+well-weighed and verified materials which, until now, had been
+taken for the refuse of dreams, fragments of wild legends,
+meaningless and unimportant. For more than three centuries, the
+science of electricity remained at very much the same point at
+which our psychical sciences stand to-day. Men were recording,
+accumulating, trying to interpret a host of odd and futile
+phenomena, toying with Ramsden's machine, with Leyden jars, with
+Volta's rough battery. They thought that they had discovered an
+agreeable pastime, an ingenious plaything for the laboratory or
+study; and they had not the slightest suspicion that they were
+touching the sources of an universal, irresistible, inexhaustible
+power, invisibly present and active in all things, that would
+soon invade the surface of our globe. Nothing tells us that the
+psychic forces of which we are beginning to catch a glimpse have
+not similar surprises in store for us, with this difference, that
+we are here concerned with energies and mysteries which are
+loftier, grander and doubtless fraught with graver consequences,
+since they affect our eternal destinies, traverse alike our life
+and our death and extend beyond our planet.
+
+15
+
+It is not true therefore that the psychical sciences have said
+their last word and that we have nothing more to expect from
+them. They have but just awakened or reawakened; and, to postdate
+Guyau's prediction by a hundred years, we might say, with them in
+our minds, that the twentieth century "will end with discoveries
+as ill-formulated but perhaps as important in the moral world as
+those of Newton and Laplace in the astronomical world." But,
+though we have much to hope from them, that is no reason why we
+should look to them for everything and abandon in their favour
+that which has brought us where we are. The choice of which we
+spoke, between the brain and the subconsciousness, has been made
+long ago; and it is not our part to make it over again. We are
+carried along by a force acquired in the course of two or three
+thousand years; and our methods, like our intellectual habits,
+have of themselves become transformed into sort of minor
+subconsciousness superposed upon the major subconsciousness and
+sometimes mingling with it. Henri Bergson, in his very fine
+presidential address to the Society for Psychical Research on the
+28th of May, 1913, said that he had sometimes wondered what would
+have happened if modern science, instead of setting out from
+mathematics, instead of bringing all its forces to converge on
+the study of matter, had begun by the consideration of mind; if
+Kepler, Galileo and Newton, for instance, had been psychologists:
+
+"We should certainly," said he, "have had a psychology of which
+to-day we can form no idea, any more than before Galileo we could
+have imagined what our physics would be; a psychology that
+probably would have been to our present psychology what our
+physics is to Aristotle's. Foreign to every mechanistic idea, not
+even conceiving the possibility of an explanation, science would
+have enquired into, instead of dismissing a priori facts, such as
+those which you study; perhaps 'psychical research' would have
+stood out as its principal preoccupation. The most general laws
+of mental activity once discovered (as, in fact, the fundamental
+laws of mechanics were discovered), we should have passed from
+mind, properly so-called, to life; biology would have been
+constituted, but a vitalist biology, quite different from ours,
+which would have sought behind the sensible forms of living
+beings the inward, invisible force of which the sensible forms
+are the manifestations."
+
+It would therefore in the very first days of its activity have
+encountered all these strange problems: telepathy,
+materializations, clairvoyance, miraculous cures, knowledge of
+the future, the possibility of survival, interplanetary
+intelligence and many others, which it has neglected hitherto and
+which, thanks to its neglect, are still in their infancy. But, as
+the human mind is not able to follow two diametrically opposite
+directions at the same time, it would necessarily have rejected
+the mathematical sciences. A steamship coming from another
+hemisphere, one in which men's minds had taken, unknown to
+ourselves, the road which our own has actually taken, would have
+seemed to us as wonderful, as incredible as the phenomena of our
+subconsciousness seem to us to-day. We should have gone very
+far in what at present we call the unknown or the occult; but we
+should have known hardly anything of physics, chemistry or
+mechanics, unless, which is very probable, we had come upon them
+by another road as we travelled round the occult. It is true that
+certain nations, the Hindus particularly, the Egyptians and
+perhaps the Incas, as well as others, in all probability, who
+have not left sufficient traces, thus went to work the other way
+and obtained nothing decisive. Is this again a consequence of the
+hopeless incompatibility between the faculties of the brain and
+those of the subconsciousness? Possibly; but we must not forget
+that we are speaking of nations which never possessed our
+intellectual habits, our passion for precision, for verification,
+for experimental certainty; indeed, this passion has only been
+fully developed in ourselves within the last two or three
+centuries. It is to be presumed therefore that the European would
+have gone much farther in the other direction than the Oriental.
+Where would he have arrived? Endowed with a different brain,
+naturally clearer, more exacting, more logical, less credulous,
+more practical, closer to realities, more attentive to details,
+but with the scientific side of his intelligence uncultivated,
+would he have gone astray or would he have met the truths which
+we are still seeking and which may well be more important than
+all our material conquests. Ill-prepared, ill-equipped,
+ill-balanced, lacking the necessary ballast of experiments and
+proofs, would he have been exposed to the dangers familiar to all
+the too-mystical nations? It is very difficult to imagine so. But
+the hour has now perhaps come to try without risk what he could
+not have done without grave peril. While abandoning no whit of
+his understanding, which is small compared with the boundless
+scope of the subconsciousness, but which is sure, tried and
+docile, he can now embark upon the great adventure and try to do
+that which has not been done before. It is a matter of
+discovering the connecting link between the two forces. We are
+still ignorant of the means of aiding, encouraging, developing
+and taming the greater of the two and of bringing it closer to
+us; the quest will be the most difficult, the most mysterious
+and, in certain respects, the most dangerous that mankind has
+ever undertaken. But we can say to ourselves, without fear of
+being very far wrong, that it is the best task at the moment. In
+any case, this is the first time since man has existed that he
+will be fronting the unknown with such good weapons, even as it
+is also the first time since its awakening that his intelligence,
+which has reached a summit from which it can understand almost
+everything, will at last receive help from outside and hear a
+voice that is something more than the echo of its own.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg Etext The Unknown Guest, by Maurice Maeterlinck
+
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