How Animals Talk 



danger or sickness had befallen me. If the event 

 were to me serious or threatening, there was no 

 more doubt or uneasiness on my mother's part. 

 She would know within the hour that I was in 

 trouble of some kind, and would write or telegraph 

 to ask what was the matter. 



It is commonly assumed that any such power 

 must be a little weird or uncanny; that it con- 

 tradicts the wholesome experience of humanity or 

 makes fantastic addition to its natural faculties; 

 and I confess that the general queerness, the lack 

 of balance, the Hottentotish credulity of folk who 

 dabble in occult matters give some human, if not 

 reasonable, grounds for the assumption. Never- 

 theless, I judge that telepathy is of itself wholly 

 natural; that it is a survival, an age-old inheri- 

 tance rather than a new invention or discovery; 

 that it might be exercised not by a few astonishing 

 individuals, but by any normal man or woman 

 who should from infancy cultivate certain mental 

 powers which we now habitually neglect. I am 

 led to this conviction because I have found some- 

 thing that very much resembles telepathy in fre- 

 quent use throughout the entire animal kingdom. 

 It is, as I think and shall try to make clear, a 

 natural gift or faculty of the animal mind, which is 

 largely subconscious, and it is from the animal 

 mind that we inherit it; just as a few woodsmen 



