The Unknown Guest [62]
"Ig hb kein gud Sdim. I have not a good voice."
Observing that he did not open his mouth, they strove to make him understand, by the example of a dog, with pictures, and so on, that, in order to speak, it is necessary to separate the jaws. They next asked him:
"What must you do to speak?"
He replied, by striking with his foot:
"Open mouth."
"Why don't you open yours?"
"Weil kan nigd: because I can't."
A few days after, Zarif was asked how he talks to Mohammed.
"Mit Munt: with mouth."
"Why don't you tell me that with your mouth?"
"Weil ig kein Stim hbe: because I have no voice." Does not this answer, as Krall remarks, allow us to suppose that he has other means than speech of conversing with his stable-companion?
In the course of another lesson, Mohammed was shown the portrait of a young girl whom he did not know.
"What's that?" asked his master.
"Metgen: a girl?"
On the black-board:
"Why is it a girl?"
"Weil lang Hr hd: because she has long hair."
"And what has she not?"
"Moustache."
They next produced the likeness of man with no moustache.
"What's this?"
"Why is it a man?"
"Weil kurz Hr hd: because he has short hair."
I could multiply these examples indefinitely by drawing on the voluminous Elberfeld minutes, which, I may say in passing, have the convincing force of photographic records. All this, it must be agreed, is unexpected and disconcerting, had never been foreseen or suspected and may be regarded as one of the strangest prodigies, one of the most stupefying revelations that have taken place since man has dwelt in this world of riddles, Nevertheless, by reflecting, by comparing, by investigating, by regarding certain forgotten or neglected landmarks and starting-points, by taking into consideration the thousand imperceptible gradations between the greatest and the least, the highest and the lowest, it is still possible to explain, admit and understand. We can, if it comes to that, imagine that, in his secret self, in his tragic silence, our dog also makes similar remarks and reflections. Once again, the miraculous bridge which, in this instance, spans the gulf between the animal and man is much more the expression of thought than thought itself. We may go further and grant that certain elementary calculations, such as little additions, little subtractions of one or two figures, are, after all, conceivable; and I, for my part, am inclined to believe that the horse really executes them. But where we get out of our depth, where we enter into the realm of pure enchantment is when it becomes a matter of mathematical operations on a large scale, notably of the finding of roots. We know, for instance, that the extraction of the fourth root of a number of six figures calls for eighteen multiplications, ten subtractions and three divisions and that the horse does thirty-one sums in five or six seconds, that is to say, during the brief, careless glance which he gives at the black-board on which the problem is inscribed, as though the answer came to him intuitively and instantaneously.
Still, if we admit the theory of intelligence, we must also admit that the horse knows what he is doing, since it is not until after learning what a squared number or a square root means that he appears to understand or that, at any rate, he gradually works out correctly the ever more complicated calculations required of him. It is not possible to give here the details of this instruction, which was astonishingly rapid. The reader will find them on pages 117 et seq. of Krall's book, Denkende Tiere. Krall begins by explaining to Mohammed that 2 squared is equal to 2 X 2 = 4; that 2 cubed is equal to 2 X 2 X 2 = 6; that 2 is the square root of 4; and so on. In short, the explanations and demonstrations are absolutely similar to those which one would give to an extremely intelligent child, with this difference, that the horse is much more attentive than the child and that, thanks to his extraordinary memory, he never forgets what he appears to have understood. Let us add,