The Unknown Guest [63]
to complete the magical and incredible character of the phenomenon that, according to Krall's own statement, the horse was not taught beyond the point of extracting the square root of the number 144 and that he spontaneously invented the manner of extracting all the others.
27
Must we once more repeat, in connection with these startling performances, that those who speak of audible or visible signals, of telegraphy and wireless telegraphy, of expedients, trickery or deceit, are speaking of what they do not know and of what they have not seen? There is but one reply to be made to any one who honestly refuses to believe:
"Go to Elberfeld---the problem is sufficiently important, sufficiently big with consequences to make the journey worth while--and, behind closed doors, alone with the horse, in the absolute solitude and silence of the stable, set Mohammed to extract half-a dozen roots which, like that which I have mentioned, require thirty-one operations. You must yourself be ignorant of the solutions, so as to do away with any transmission of unconscious thought. If he then gives you, one after the other, five or six correct solutions, as he did to me and many others, you will not go away with the conviction that the animal is able by its intelligence to extract those roots, because that conviction would upset too thoroughly the greater part of the certainties on which your life is based; but you will, at any rate, be persuaded that you have been for a few minutes in the presence of one of the greatest and strangest riddles that can disturb the mind of man; and it is always a good and salutary thing to come into contact with emotions of this order."
28
Truth to say, the theory of intelligence in the animal would be so extraordinary as to be almost untenable. If we are determined, at whatever cost, to pin our faith to it, we are bound to call in the aid of other ideas, to appeal, for instance, to the extremely mysterious and essentially uncomprehended and incomprehensible nature of numbers. It is almost certain that the science of mathematics lies outside the intelligence. It forms a mechanical and abstract whole, more spiritual than material and more material than spiritual, visible only through its shadow and yet constituting the most immovable of the realities that govern the universe. From first to last it declares itself a very strange force and, as it were, the sovereign of another element than that which nourishes our brain. Secret, indifferent, imperious and implacable, it subjugates and oppresses us from a great height or a great depth, in any case, from very far, without telling us why. One might say that figures place those who handle them in a special condition. They draw the cabalistic circle around their victim. Henceforth, he is no longer his own master, he renounces his liberty, he is literally "possessed" by the powers which he invokes. He is dragged he knows not whither, into a formless, boundless immensity, subject to laws that have nothing human about them, in which each of those lively and tyrannical little signs which move and dance in their thousands under the pen represents nameless, but eternal, invincible and inevitable verities. We think that we are directing them and they enslave us. We become weary and breathless following them into their uninhabitable spaces. When we touch them, we let loose a force which we are no longer able to control. They do with us what they will and always end by hurling us, blinded and benumbed, into blank infinity or upon a wall of ice against which every effort of our mind and will is shattered.
It is possible, therefore, in the last resort, to explain the Elberfeld mystery by the no less obscure mystery that surrounds numbers. This really only means moving to another spot in the gloom; but it is often just by that moving to another spot that we end by discovering the little gleam of light which shows us a thoroughfare. In any case, and to return to more precise ideas, more than one instance has been cited to prove that the gift of handling great groups
27
Must we once more repeat, in connection with these startling performances, that those who speak of audible or visible signals, of telegraphy and wireless telegraphy, of expedients, trickery or deceit, are speaking of what they do not know and of what they have not seen? There is but one reply to be made to any one who honestly refuses to believe:
"Go to Elberfeld---the problem is sufficiently important, sufficiently big with consequences to make the journey worth while--and, behind closed doors, alone with the horse, in the absolute solitude and silence of the stable, set Mohammed to extract half-a dozen roots which, like that which I have mentioned, require thirty-one operations. You must yourself be ignorant of the solutions, so as to do away with any transmission of unconscious thought. If he then gives you, one after the other, five or six correct solutions, as he did to me and many others, you will not go away with the conviction that the animal is able by its intelligence to extract those roots, because that conviction would upset too thoroughly the greater part of the certainties on which your life is based; but you will, at any rate, be persuaded that you have been for a few minutes in the presence of one of the greatest and strangest riddles that can disturb the mind of man; and it is always a good and salutary thing to come into contact with emotions of this order."
28
Truth to say, the theory of intelligence in the animal would be so extraordinary as to be almost untenable. If we are determined, at whatever cost, to pin our faith to it, we are bound to call in the aid of other ideas, to appeal, for instance, to the extremely mysterious and essentially uncomprehended and incomprehensible nature of numbers. It is almost certain that the science of mathematics lies outside the intelligence. It forms a mechanical and abstract whole, more spiritual than material and more material than spiritual, visible only through its shadow and yet constituting the most immovable of the realities that govern the universe. From first to last it declares itself a very strange force and, as it were, the sovereign of another element than that which nourishes our brain. Secret, indifferent, imperious and implacable, it subjugates and oppresses us from a great height or a great depth, in any case, from very far, without telling us why. One might say that figures place those who handle them in a special condition. They draw the cabalistic circle around their victim. Henceforth, he is no longer his own master, he renounces his liberty, he is literally "possessed" by the powers which he invokes. He is dragged he knows not whither, into a formless, boundless immensity, subject to laws that have nothing human about them, in which each of those lively and tyrannical little signs which move and dance in their thousands under the pen represents nameless, but eternal, invincible and inevitable verities. We think that we are directing them and they enslave us. We become weary and breathless following them into their uninhabitable spaces. When we touch them, we let loose a force which we are no longer able to control. They do with us what they will and always end by hurling us, blinded and benumbed, into blank infinity or upon a wall of ice against which every effort of our mind and will is shattered.
It is possible, therefore, in the last resort, to explain the Elberfeld mystery by the no less obscure mystery that surrounds numbers. This really only means moving to another spot in the gloom; but it is often just by that moving to another spot that we end by discovering the little gleam of light which shows us a thoroughfare. In any case, and to return to more precise ideas, more than one instance has been cited to prove that the gift of handling great groups