Lola

by Henny Kindermann

As to the "intelligent" character of the manifestations, there is no possible doubt, even though we put on one side for the present the arithmetical phenomena, which perhaps must be treated from a particular standpoint, as I shall explain. The question before us is therefore a dilemma. Is there intelligence in the dog, or is the intelligence in others?

If, by intelligence in this case we mean the possibility of the animal under observation giving replies to questions with, in the human sense, actual understanding of the import of such replies, as well as the possibility of the animal, a dog two years old, being able after a maximum of fifteen hours' lessons to read, write and count, and know what it is learning; if that is what is meant by intelligence in this case, I must say that I do not believe in it, and that I feel compelled for scientific reasons to examine every other hypothesis before having recourse to this one.

And again, "Intelligence in others"? This may be so, but it is not necessary to suppose that the intelligence is in others alone. I mean that a few of the manifestations may within narrow limits probably be rightly attributed to the intelligence of the animal, (but, I repeat, the arithmetical facts must be considered by themselves).

If all the manifestations were to be attributed to the intelligence of others and none to the animal, we should have to accept the supposition of an absolutely mechanical automatism in the animal itself of the type suggested by Neumann (8)[²⁹ ] as the result of his experiments with Rolf, when, for instance, the dog mechanically kept on tapping an unlimited number of times on the cardboard, which Neumann held out to it without, as far as possible, moving it.

This negative result of Neumann's is capable of various possible explanations, and in no way gives any clear indication (just because it is negative) as to how a positive result is at all possible; that is, we cannot conclude from it any better than before, whether the apparently "mechanical" behaviour of the animal was intentional, and therefore whether the animal itself could or could not have behaved otherwise; whether, given the impossibility of the animal behaving differently, we should say that this impossibility was absolute or only happened to occur on this occasion; whether perchance the action of some psychical factor unknown to Neumann between the animal and himself may not have been omitted; and whether such factor was not in operation when the animal was working with its late mistress, etc., etc. In this connexion I feel it incumbent upon me to recall that I myself saw Rolf on two or three occasions behave in this same apparently mechanical way with his mistress (Mrs. Moekel) (II), whose annoyance thereat seemed so real that I felt certain that it was not feigned. From Neumann's point of view this would be incomprehensible—since he makes use of the argument from the supposed absolute automatism under the impression that it had taken place in Rolf with him, Neumann, alone, but not with the Moekels. Here, then, it is clear that the intelligence is, or at least that it is also, "in others."

But whatever value we may attach to Neumann's experiment, it appears to me sufficiently clear that the supposition of an absolutely mechanically passive process in the animal will not hold as a sufficient explanation of the whole of the facts related by Miss Kindermann, nor will it hold with regard to what science certainly seems to me to be compelled to admit in the case of the Elberfeld horses, which (as is known) "worked" magnificently without contact with anyone, tapping their replies on a board, completely isolated on the ground, and even when all alone in their stable with the one door tightly closed and all the spectators outside. The spectators heard and observed the rapped answers of the horses (for example, to written questions) through a little glass window. Neither will it hold with regard to the many experiments made, some also by myself, by means of requests, pictures, questions, presented to the horses in such a way as to be unknown to everyone, including the experimenter. Besides, the animals at times gave spontaneous communications. This Assagioli and I, and many others, have observed even without the presence of Krall and of members of the Moekel family. Miss Kindermann also gives some of Lola's replies tapped on the arm of a friend of the authoress, although the latter held out as usual her own hand to the dog.

Therefore, there must be some "intelligence" in the animal, as everything cannot come from outside it in these experiments. Probably this intelligence is not human in quality, but nevertheless not quite rudimentary, and is such as we may imagine without too much effort to exist in domestic animals which by many signs often give us proof that they understand at least in part what is taking place around and within us. That such an intelligence could very probably be educated, always within prehuman limits or in a lesser degree than in human infancy, does not on the whole seem to me so contradictory to our actual psychological knowledge: since we may very well suppose that the animal under examination may make use of its proper faculties, as far as lies in its power, to profit by the situation for the purpose of accomplishing that which is required of it, under the stimulus of allurements or threats. (It may even be rather assumed that the exercise of its proper faculties, which I regard as "intelligent," may procure for the animal a certain degree of pleasure.) All this is apart from the question of the arithmetical phenomena which, as I have already said, deserve separate consideration.

Upon the facts as now established the knowledge of numbers seems to be the basis of any educability in animals. And this is perhaps the first and most important discovery in the "new zoopsychology."

In their search for others things, Von Osten, Krall, and the Moekels have brought out clearly among various other facts, without exactly accounting for it, the fundamental fact of the existence in the animal of a psychic substratum predisposed in some manner to arithmetic. I say "in some manner," and by that I do not wish to prejudge any particular view of the argument; and above all I do not make of this predisposition or mathematical permeability, a criterion of intelligence. I do not forget either the mentally deficient or the prodigies among child calculators, etc. But likewise I cannot forget another thing: that all organisms are already throughout permeated with mathematics, and that the more we descend the scale, from man down to the most "simple" biological fact, the more nearly we approach to physics, which is nothing but mathematics.

I have not the space here to digress on the intermediate gradations. Besides, I have already done so, in part at least, elsewhere. But I wish to recall the curious coincidence that the mathematical achievements of the Elberfeld horses were much more brilliant and much more prodigious than those of the dogs which have up to now been experimented on. And horses in the phylo-genetic line are more ancient than dogs: they are lower in the zoologic scale. Much lower still, i.e. among the Arthropoda, occur many other mathematical wonders. I only mention in a cursory way the logarithmic spiral of the spider's web, the precise curves realized without instruments of any kind by the Coleoptera and Hymenoptera in cutting leaves, the stereometry of the aphides. Then, as it were, at the bottom of the scale (if one may still speak of a descent and a bottom) the marvellous plancton filters of the Appendiculata; the geometrical spots of the Amœbae; the cases of perfect forms of so many other Protozoa; and, finally, think of the constructive technic of the static organs, or of those of movement either in man or animals or plants; think of the complex mathematics of the mitosi, or of any cell proceeding to its own indirect division.