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
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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