Lola

by Henny Kindermann

After his visits to Elberfeld, Claparede, as I said, had found it difficult to treat as valid the telepathic hypothesis when applied to Krall's horses. What, indeed, had been "transmitted" to them? Numbers? Words? Single letters? (or orders to stop the foot at the right time?) It must be remembered that the horses were tapping their answers by using a sort of stenography, that usually left out the vowels: that besides, although the words could be recognized in the most certain manner, the spelling was most irregular, and, as I have already pointed out, sometimes reversed. Further, as to the words themselves, most infantile phrases were used, certainly such as no adult would have suggested. Was it suggestion then from one unconscious to another? But this is to fall back upon a supposition of the "mediumistic" type, and takes no count of the cases of replies to questions which were unknown to everybody present, and brings us to the single dilemma: either there is intelligence in the human sense in the animal, or a relationship of the mediumistic type above described between the several minds concerned.

As to the interesting observations reported by Ferrari and Pulle, it seems to me opportune to quote here some extracts from the first of these distinguished authors.

"This séance was particularly interesting, because I find it recorded in my notes that a fact was verified three times consecutively, which had occurred sporadically more than once before, and had been observed and noted by us and various other witnesses.

"It consisted in this: While I was putting in the box the number of balls which I had intended the horse to read, the horse, which often could not even have seen the number of balls, because I covered them partly with my head and hands, tapped out the correct number.

"The same thing happened when I took in one hand a card, the signs on which it could only have read with difficulty, the light being rather bad. The most curious thing about it was that the taps were then made upon the whole more rapidly and less strongly than usual; and that several times later on the horse gave the same number itself with some little difficulty.

"It is also curious that it should have repeated the performance, seeing that it was only once rewarded for it, and that, because it was agreed that it had done its reading well. I must add that the person who assisted me told me that generally, even when it was giving correctly the number decided on, it hardly looked to see how I was placing the balls in the box....

"Once when I was arranging three balls, because some one standing behind the horse had made me the sign 3, the horse tapped its three beats behind my shoulders while stretching out its neck by my side in order to try to take a salad leaf, thus showing that it was taking very little interest in the sign which I held out to it and in the taps which it was making.

"Certainly, this time at least, the animal seemed to perform an automatic action, and it seemed to me that we had guessed subconsciously what the horse intended to do. This may appear a crooked hypothesis, but it is less difficult for me than to think that the horse had read in my mind the number which I had there. It certainly did nothing on most occasions to upset the fairly clear and precise impression that it was obeying some more or less complex determinism."

It seems to me difficult to avoid the impression that what has just been stated does not reveal a simple telepathic relationship but something rather more deep. The want of interest by the animal in its behaviour is for me symptomatic, and agrees perfectly well with the sensation of the observer that he also had to obey some obscure determinism. I see here another case of a combined psychical (partial) operation of a "mediumistic" kind; and this hypothesis makes very plausible the other no less impressive hypothesis of the observer that his mind was reading (in a subconscious way) the mind of the horse. I call this hypothesis of Ferrari impressive, because in this case it was due to a person who is certainly not to be suspected of dilettantism, and still less of any pseudo-scientific mysticism.

For the rest I repeat that "telepathy" also may co-exist along with "mediumistic" action. In a general way, telepathy would seem to assume in the animal a greater amount of "human" psychic affinity, whilst in mediumistic action I look upon the animal as reacting to the intervention of the other mind in a much more "automatic" way: almost like a "speaking table," but a table provided with live feet rather than inert legs, and above all provided with a nervous system forming part of it, so that very little action on the part of the medium is required, but the subliminal action of the investigator is enough by itself to work it. (Of course, this does not exclude altogether action by others or by the horse itself).