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.
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:
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 muddyWupper, 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. ThenKrall'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.