Related Texts Related Subjects • Spiritism • Vodooo/African Religions • Theosophy • Historical Witchcraft |
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 at space and time, passes through personalities, sees through solid bodies, brings into communication thoughts and motions worlds apart, reads souls and lives by the light of a flower, a rag of a scrap of paper; and all this for nothing, to amuse itself, to astonish us, because it adores the superfluous, the incoherent, the unexpected, the improbable, the bewildering, or rather, perhaps, because it is a huge, rough, undisciplined force still struggling in the darkness and coming to the surface only by wild fits and starts, because it is an enormous expansion of a spirit striving to collect itself, to achieve consciousness, to make itself of service and to obtain a hearing. In any case, for the time being, it appeals just what we have described, and would be unlike itself if it behaved any otherwise in the case that puzzles us.
Lastly, to close this chapter, let us remark that it is nearly certain that the solution given by calculating children and horses is not of a mathematical nature at all. They do not in any way consider the problem or the sum to be worked. They simply find the answer straight away to a riddle, the guessing of which is made easy by the actual nature of figures which keep their secrets badly. To any one in the requisite state of mind, it becomes a question of a sort of elementary charade, which hides its answer only from those who speak another language. It is evident that every problem, however complex it may appear, carries within its very enunciation its one, invariable solution, scarce veiled by the indiscreet signs that contain or cover it. It is there, under the numbers that have no other object than to give it life, coming, stirring and ceaselessly proclaiming itself a necessity. It is not surprising therefore that eyes sharper than ours and ears open to other vibrations should see and hear it without knowing what it represents, what it implies or from what prodigious mass of figures and operations it merges. The problem itself speaks; and the horse but repeats the sign which he hears whispered in the mysterious life of numbers or deep down in, the abyss where the eternal verities hold sway. He understands none of it, he has no need to understand, he is but the unconscious medium who lends his voice or his limbs to the mind that inspires him. There is here but a bare and simple answer, bearing no precise significance, seized in an alien existence. There is here but a mechanical revelation, so to speak, a sort of special reflex which we can only record and which, for the rest, is as inexplicable as any other phenomenon of consciousness or instinct. After all, when we think of it, it is just as, astonishing that we should not perceive the solution as it is that we should discover it. However, I grant that all this is but a venturesome interpretation to be taken for what it is worth, an experimental or interim theory with which we must needs content ourselves since all the others have hitherto been controverted by the facts.