We have to become our
own god, to rise above ourselves and to keep ourselves raised by
our unaided strength. It is almost certain that the horse would
never have come out of his nebulous sphere without man's
assistance; but it is not forbidden to hope that man, with no
other help than his own courage and high purpose, may yet succeed
in breaking through the sleep that cramps him and blinds him.
26
To come back then to our horses and to the main point, which is
the isolated "psychic flash," it is admitted that they know the
values of figures, that they can distinguish and identify smells,
colours, forms, objects and even graphic reproductions of those
objects. They also understand a large number of words, including
some of which they were, never taught the meaning, but which they
picked up as they went along by hearing them spoken around them.
They have learnt, with the assistance of an exceedingly
complicated alphabet, to reproduce the words, thanks to which
they manage to convey impressions, sensations, wishes,
associations of ideas, observations and even spontaneous
reflections. It has been held that all this implies real acts of
intelligence. It is, in fact, often very difficult to decide
exactly how far it is intelligence and how far memory, instinct,
imitative genius, obedience or mechanical impulse, the effects of
training, or happy coincidences.
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