It will be sufficient to
note that sometimes the dog begins to howl at the exact moment
when his master loses his life, for instance, on a battlefield,
hundreds of miles from the place where the dog is. More commonly,
the cat, the dog and the horse plainly manifest that they
perceive, often before men do, telepathic apparitions, phantasms
of the living or the dead. Horses in particular seem very
sensitive to places that pass as haunted or uncanny. On the
whole, the result of these observations is that we can hardly
dispute that these animals communicate as much as we do and
perhaps in the same fashion with the mystery that lies around us.
There are moments at which, like man, they see the invisible and
perceive events, influences and emotions that are beyond the
range of their normal senses. It is, therefore, permissible to
believe that their nervous system or some remote or secret part
of their being contains the same psychic elements connecting them
with an unknown that inspires them with as much terror as it does
ourselves. And, let us say in passing, this terror is rather
strange; for, after all, what have they to fear from a phantom or
an apparition, they who, we are convinced have no after-life and
who ought, therefore, to remain perfectly indifferent to the
manifestations, of a world in which they will never set foot?
[1] Annales des sciences psychiques, August, 1905, pp 422-469.
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