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The Soul : What is it ? 
[May, 
with dislike. We can contradict this assertion from personal 
experience. We are by no means fond of cats, yet these 
creatures approach us without hesitation, spring upon our 
knee, rub their heads against our face, and can scarcely be 
made to understand that such attentions are far from wel- 
come. A very remarkable faCt is the influence which some 
men possess over horses, and which seems rather a personal 
peculiarity than any secret that could be communicated to 
others. It is said that such men have been known com- 
pletely to subdue a vicious horse by blowing into his 
nostrils. 
We find, again, sympathies, and especially antipathies, 
which may be traced between entire species of animals, and 
which some of us seek to explain by the indefinite and long- 
suffering word “ instinctive.” If a dog has been stroked 
with a gloved hand, and if the glove is then held to the nose 
of a young kitten, still blind, the little creature begins to 
spit in anger. How is this faCt to be explained ? The 
kitten has never yet seen a dog, but by the mere odour it 
recognises a hostile element. Heredity ? True, but how is 
the antipathy handed down from generation to generation ? 
By what sign does the blind animal deteCt the presence of 
an enemy ? Very similar is the dread or disgust felt by mice 
in the neighbourhood of a cat. If one of these animals is 
kept in a house, no matter how lazy and sleepy she may be, 
the mice generally withdraw to safer quarters. Shall we 
suppose that they have all seen or been chased by this 
enemy, or that those who have fared thus spread the news 
to their companions ? 
There is still a further phenomenon which may be looked 
on as a heightened antipathy — fascination. We all know 
that very intense fear, instead of prompting to flight, may 
paralyse. It is said that certain rapacious creatures, espe- 
cially serpents, have the power of producing in their intended 
victim a kind of torpor, so that it helplessly and passively 
awaits certain destruction. We never had the good fortune 
to witness an incident of this kind, but Knapp, in his 
“Journal of a Naturalist,” gives a case as from his own 
observation. 
We come next to a class of phenomena on which accurate 
observation and careful experiment are still more needful. 
It is asserted by popular tradition, and is half admitted by 
Dr. O. Wendell Holmes, that certain animal secretions if 
introduced into the body of some other animal, of the same 
or of a different species, may have a strangely modifying 
aCtion upon the individual thus inoculated. This is said to 
