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.