We think that we are directing them and they enslave
us. We become weary and breathless following them into their
uninhabitable spaces. When we touch them, we let loose a force
which we are no longer able to control. They do with us what they
will and always end by hurling us, blinded and benumbed, into
blank infinity or upon a wall of ice against which every effort
of our mind and will is shattered.
It is possible, therefore, in the last resort, to explain the
Elberfeld mystery by the no less obscure mystery that surrounds
numbers. This really only means moving to another spot in the
gloom; but it is often just by that moving to another spot that
we end by discovering the little gleam of light which shows us a
thoroughfare. In any case, and to return to more precise ideas,
more than one instance has been cited to prove that the gift of
handling great groups of figures is almost independent of the
intelligence proper. One of the most curious is that of an
Italian shepherd boy, Vito Mangiamele, who was brought before the
Paris Academy of Science in 1837 and who, at the age of ten,
though devoid of the most rudimentary education, was able in half
a minute to extract the cubic root of a number of seven figures.
Another, more striking still, also mentioned by Dr. Clarapede in
his paper on the learned horses, is that of a man blind from
birth, an inmate of the lunatic-asylum, at Armentieres.
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