It
is not a question, we must remember, of a cerebral operation, an
intellectual performance, but of a gift of divination closely
allied to other gifts of the same nature and the same origin
which are not the peculiar attribute of man. No observation, no
experiment enables us, up to the present, to establish a
difference between the subliminal of human beings and that of
animals. On the contrary, the as yet restricted number of actual
cases reveals constant and striking analogies between the two. In
most of those arithmetical operations, be it noted, the
subliminal of the horse behaves exactly like that of the medium
in a rate of trance. The horse readily reverses the figures of
the solution; he replies, "37," for instance, instead of "73,"
which is a mediumistic phenomenon so well-known and so frequent
that it has been styled "mirror-writing." He makes mistakes
fairly often in the most elementary additions, and subtractions
and much less frequently in the extraction of the most
complicated roots, which again, in similar cases, such as
"xenoglossy" and psychometry, is one of the eccentricities of
human mediumism and is explained by the same cause, namely, the
inopportune intervention of the ever fallible intelligence,
which, by meddling in the matter, alters the certainties of a
subliminal which, when left to itself, never makes a mistake.
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