Lola : $b or, The thought and speech of animalsKindermann, Henny
Science
Lola : $b or, The thought and speech of animals
Kindermann, Henny
Animal intelligence; Dogs -- Folklore
"Telepathy," so called, (a term not less unfortunate than that of
"medium" and its derivatives), or, better, the transmission of thought,
is (shortly put) the hypothesis that at a certain moment an agent
transmits, and a receiver perceives, some definite mental image or
state of mind. The transmission may be more or less willed (i.e.
conscious) on the part of the agent; on the part of the receiver,
however, the fact of the transmission always remains unconscious, but
the psychical elements perceived bring about a reaction in
consciousness and the receiver knows what he is doing, or at any rate
may do so, at the moment of the occurrence. Shortly stated, it may be
regarded as a kind of suggestion, "a distance," with sometimes
immediate and sometimes delayed effect; a kind of posthypnotic
performances of a suggestion without the intervention of hypnotism (or,
perhaps, with a partial subhypnotic state?), the receiver of the
suggestion not receiving it in the form of acoustic vibrations or in
any way by means of one of the ordinary senses.
Mediumistic phenomena on the other hand require for their explanation
the possibility of a much more direct, more profound and more immediate
relationship between the several minds taking part in them. One of
these minds--more or less disassociated--might become the instrument of
another--even of several others--although still itself in a state of
more or less complete disassociation, and always remaining altogether
unconscious of its relationship to the other. One of the minds might
therefore be an agent, another a recipient, or even several of them
simultaneously might join together to produce the phenomena, the
subliminal nature of the relationship remaining fixed. The actors would
in this way, for ever, all of them without exception, be absolutely
unaware that they were the actors. It might also be the case that the
recipient through whom the phenomena are produced (i.e. the "medium,"
or in our case the animal experimented on) would not be conscious at
all of the resulting action. With human "mediums" we should find in
such cases a more or less advanced state of trance or ecstasy. And with
regard to animals, I remember the opinions of Ochorowicz and
others--which were preceded, however, long ago by a similar opinion of
Cuvier--according to which the consciousness of animals in an awakened
state would correspond fairly closely to the consciousness of man in a
hypnotic state.
If what has been said above is at all correct, it would seem as if the
walls separating various minds one from another all of a sudden are
opened wide, and by a partial interpenetration of one mind by the other
the several minds join together to produce by mutual determination
automatic action. And it is in these special psychical states that
"supernormal" phenomena, viz., psychography, clairvoyance,
clairaudience, etc., occur.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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