This
blind man, whose name is Fleury, a degenerate and nearly an
idiot, can calculate in one minute and fifteen seconds the number
of seconds in thirty-nine years, three months and twelve days,
not forgetting the leap-years. They explain to him what a square
root is, without telling him the conventional method of finding
it; and soon he extracts almost as rapidly as Inaudi himself,
without a blunder, the square roots of numbers of four figures,
giving the remainder. On the other hand, we know that a
mathematical genius like Henri Pomcare confessed himself
incapable of adding up a column of figures without a mistake.
29
>From the maybe enchanted atmosphere that surrounds numbers we
shall pass more easily to the even more magic mists of the final
theory, the only one remaining to us for the moment: the
mediumistic or subliminal theory. This, we must remember, is not
the telepathic theory proper which decisive experiments have made
us reject. Let us have the courage to venture upon it. When one
can no longer interpret a phenomenon by the known, we must needs
try to do so by the unknown. We, therefore, now enter a new
province of a great unexplored kingdom, in which we shall find
ourselves without a guide.
Mediumistic phenomena, manifestations of the secondary or the
subliminal consciousness, between man and man, are, as we have
more than once had occasion to assure ourselves, capricious,
undisciplined, evasive and uncertain, but more frequent than one
thought and, to one who examines, them seriously and honestly,
often undeniable.
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