180 LOLA 



" knowledge " by the animal's memory of words 

 which it had heard. But since then the educators 

 have taken pleasure in raising the whole level of these 

 wonders. Rolf's " philosophy " was developed ; and 

 in the end they went so far as to make him compose 

 poetry, as I have already had occasion to mention. 

 Then came the performances of Lola. And at this 

 point I, too, must say : " Too much, too much ! " 

 At least, as far as concerns the hypothesis of intelligence 

 in the animal. 



I understand perfectly that just on account of that 

 " too much," people may be tempted to throw up the 

 whole thing. But as far as I am concerned, I repeat 

 that I do not consider myself justified in doing so. I 

 do not forget the possible intervention of active or 

 passive suggestion : I referred to this a short time ago. 

 But a great abuse is often made of this explanation. 

 In practice " suggestion " explains but little to any 

 one who wants to get to the bottom of things. Neither 

 does it explain the bulk of the facts of the " new 

 zoopsychology." Neither do I forget that in this 

 field also (as in every field of psychological experi- 

 ments) there may be an interfering although sub- 

 conscious misuse of spurious factors, such as signs 

 (not intentional or perceptible) by the experimenter 

 to the subject experimented with ; a certain amount 

 of falsification in interpretation of results on the part 

 of the experimenters, etc. . . . But the irreducible 

 residue of the facts is, in my opinion, still enormous 

 as compared with the little that could perhaps be 

 eliminated by these means from the discussion. 

 Therefore, in the absence of anything better for the 

 moment, and subject to further information, I hold 

 to the hypothesis of a psychic automatism of the 

 mediumistic type, as a concomitant phenomenon 



