THINKING ANIMALS 173 



subliminal nature of the relationship remaining fixed. 

 The actors would in this way, for ever, all of them 

 without exception, be absolutely unaware that they 

 were the actors. It might also be the case that the 

 recipient through whom the phenomena are produced 

 (i.e. the " medium," or in our case the animal ex- 

 perimented on) would not be conscious at all of the 

 resulting action. With human " mediums " we should 

 find in such cases a more or less advanced state of 

 trance or ecstasy. And with regard to animals, I 

 remember the opinions of Ochorowicz and others 

 which were preceded, however, long ago by a similar 

 opinion of Cuvier according to which the conscious- 

 ness of animals in an awakened state would correspond 

 fairly closely to the consciousness of man in a hypnotic 

 state. 



If what has been said above is at all correct, it 

 would seem as if the walls separating various minds 

 one from another all of a sudden are opened wide, 

 and by a partial interpenetration of one mind by the 

 other the several minds join together to produce by 

 mutual determination automatic action. And it is 

 in these special psychical states that " supernormal " 

 phenomena, viz., psychography, clairvoyance, clair- 

 audience, etc., occur. 



Now, although all this is to move in a very uncertain 

 ambit, harassed by a multitude of diverse and vain 

 dilettantisms and mysticisms, and only too frequently 

 by fraud, it is not any longer possible nowadays to 

 deny that facts, objectively known, compel the positive 

 scientist to have recourse to some such suppositions. 

 Also without making the " subliminal," with Myers, 

 a kind of " deus ex machina " in the world, it is certain 

 that mediumistic phenomena of the kind mentioned 

 are henceforth to be considered as a subject of study 



