[1]
[1] Proceedings, vol. xi., p. 424.
Here again, a subconscious cautiousness was probably amused by
certain indications imperceptible to our ordinary senses. It is
even possible that there exists between things and ourselves a
sort of sympathy or subliminal communion which makes us
experience the trials and emotions of matter that has reached the
limits of its existence, unless, as is more likely, there is
merely a simple coincidence between the chance idea of a possible
explosion and its realization.
A last and rather more complicated case is that of Jean Dupre,
the sculptor, who was driving alone with his wife along a
mountain road, skirting a perpendicular cliff. Suddenly they both
heard a voice that seemed to come from the mountain crying:
"Stop!"
They turned round, saw nobody and continued their road. But the
cries were repeated again and again, without anything to reveal
the presence of a human being amid the solitude. At last the
sculptor alighted and saw that the left wheel of the carriage,
which was grazing the edge of the precipice, had lost its
linch-pin and was on the point of leaving the axle-tree, which
would almost inevitably have hurled the carriage into the abyss.
Need we, even here, relinquish the theory of subconscious
perceptions? Do we know and can the author of the anecdote, whose
good faith is not in question, tell us that certain unperceived
circumstances, such as the grating of the wheel or the swaying of
the carriage, did not give him the first alarm? After all, we
know how easily stories of this kind involuntarily take a
dramatic turn even at the actual moment and especially
afterwards.
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