"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