e "medium,"
or in our case the animal experimented 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 consciousness 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,
clairaudience, 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 for an open-minded
psychology. I may refer in support of this view, among others, to the
powerful work of Morselli. And to return to the "thinking" animals, we
find that the mediumistic hypothesis, however shifty it may seem, is a
better explanation than the telepathic hypothesis--which has already
itself become rather more systematized in modern psychology.

After his visits to Elberfeld, Claparede, as I said, had found it
difficult to treat as valid the telepathic hypothesis when applied
to Krall's horses. What, indeed, had been "transmitted" to them?
Numbers? Words? Single letters? (or orders to stop the foot at the
right time?) It must be remembered that the horses were tapping
their answers by using a sort of stenography, that usually left out
the vowels: that besides, although the words could be recognized in
the most certain manner, the spelling was most irregular, and, as I
have already pointed out, sometimes reversed. Further,