And now an accident, strangely belated, it is true, tells us that, at one precise point, the strangest and least foreseen of all, the horse and the dog draw more easily and perhaps more directly than ourselves upon its mighty reservoirs. By the most inexplicable of anomalies, though one that is fairly consistent with the fantastic character of the subliminal, they appear to have access to it only at the spot that is most remote from their habits and most unknown to their propensities, for there is nothing in the world about which animals trouble less than figures. But is this not, perhaps because we do not see what goes on elsewhere? It so happens that the infinite mystery of numbers can sometimes be expressed by a very few simple movements which are natural to most animals; but there is nothing to tell us that, if we could teach the horse and the dog to attach to these same movements the expression of other mysteries, they would not draw upon them with equal facility. It has been successfully attempted to give them a more or less clear idea of the value of a few figures and perhaps of the course and nature of certain elementary operations; and this appears to have been enough to open up to them the most secret regions of mathematics in which every question is answered beforehand. It is not wholly illusive to suppose that, if we could impart to them, for instance, a similar notion of the future, together with a manner of conveying to us what they see there, they might also have access to strange visions of another class, which are jealously kept from us by the too-watchful guardians of our intelligence. There is an opportunity here for experiments which will doubtless prove exceedingly arduous, for the future is not so easily seen and above all not so easily interpreted and expressed as a number. It is possible, moreover, that, when we know how to set about it, we shall obtain most of the human mediumistic phenomena; rapping, the moving of objects, materialization even and Heaven knows what other surprises held in store for us by that astounding subliminal to whose fancy there appears to be no bounds. In any case, if we accept the divining of numbers, as we are almost forced to do, it is almost certain that the divining of other matters must follow. An unexpected breach is made in the wall behind which lie heaped the great secrets that seem to us, as our knowledge and our civilization increase, to become stronger and more inaccessible. True, it is a narrow breach; but it is the first that has been opened in that part of the hitherto uncrannied wall which is not turned towards mankind. What will issue through it? No one can foretell what we may hope.
What astonishes us most is that this revelation has been so long delayed. How are we to explain that man has lived to this day with his domestic animals never suspecting that they harboured mediumistic or subliminal faculties as extraordinary as those which he vaguely felt himself to possess. One would have in this connection to study the mysterious practices of ancient India and of Egypt; the numerous and persistent legends of animals talking, guiding their masters and foretelling the future; and, nearer to ourselves, in history proper, all that science of augury and soothsaying which derived its omens from the flight of birds, the inspection of entrails, the appetite or attitude of the sacred or prophetic animals, among which horses were often numbered. We here find one of those innumerous instances of a lost or anticipated power which make us suspect that mankind has forestalled or forgotten all that we believe ourselves to be discovering. Remember that there is almost always some distorted, misapprehended or dimly--seen truth at the bottom of the most eccentric and wildest creeds, superstitions and legends. All this new science of metaphysics or of the investigation of our subconsciousness and of unknown powers, which has scarcely begun to unveil its first mysteries, thus finds landmarks and defaced but recognizable traces in the old religions, the most inexplicible traditions and the most ancient history. Besides, the probability of a thing does not depend upon undeniably established precedents. While it is almost certain that there is nothing new under the sun or in the eternity preceding the suns, it is quite possible that the same forces do not always act with the same energy. As I observed, nearly twenty years ago, in The Treasure of the Humble, at a time when I hardly knew at all what I know so imperfectly to-day:
"A spiritual"--I should have said, a psychic-"epoch is perhaps upon us, an epoch to which a certain number of analogies are found in history. For there are periods recorded when the soul, in obedience to unknown laws, seemed to rise to the very surface of humanity, whence it gave clearest evidence of its existence and of its power. . . . It would seem, at moments such as these, as though humanity," --and, I would add to-day, all that lives with it on this earth--"were on the point of struggling from beneath the crushing burden of matter that weighs it down."
One might in fact believe that a shudder which we have not yet experienced is passing over everything that breathes; that a new activity, a new restlessness is permeating the spiritual atmosphere which surrounds our globe; and that the very animals have felt its thrill. One might say that, by the side of the niggardly private spring which would only supply our intelligence, other streams are spreading and rising to the same level in every form of existence. A sort of word of command is being passed from rank to rank; and the same phenomena are bursting forth in every quarter of the globe in order to attract our attention, as though the obstinately dumb genius that lay hidden in the pregnant silence of the universe, from that of the stones, the flowers and the insects to the mighty silence of the stars, were at last trying to tell us some secret whereby it would be better known to us or to itself. It is possible that this is but an illusion. Perhaps we are simply more attentive and better informed than of old. We learn at the very instant what happens in every part of our earth and we have acquired the habit of more minutely observing and examining the things that happen.
But the illusion would in this case have all the force, all the value and all the meaning of the reality and would enjoin the same hopes and the same obligation.
