sufficient, and while engaged in any near or obvious matter the five
senses work independently, each busy with its own function. But when
such observation is ended or at fault, and the man retreats, as it
were, into his inner self, then in the quiet all the senses merge and
harmonize into a single perfect instrument of perception. (Here, in
native dress, is nothing more or less than the psychologist’s
subconscious self, with its mysterious working.) At such moments the
whole animal or the whole man, not his brain and senses alone, becomes
sensitive to the most delicate impressions, to inaudible sounds or
vibrations, to unseen colors, to unsmelled odors or intangible
qualities,—to a multitude of subtle messages from the external world,
which are ordinarily unnoticed because the senses are ordinarily
separate, each occupied with its particular message. So when a sleeping
animal is suddenly aware that he must be alert, he does not learn of
approaching danger through his ears or nose, but through chumfo,
through the perfect co-ordination of all his senses working together as
one. In the same way a wandering black man always knows where his hut
or camp is; he holds his course on the darkest night, finds his way
through a vast jungle, goes back to any spot in it where he left
something, and often astonishes African travelers by getting wind of
their doings while they are yet far distant.
Such is the native philosophy; and the striking feature of it is, that
it is not superstitious but keenly observant, not ignorant but rational
and scientific, since it seems to anticipate our latest biological
discoveries, or rather, as we shall see, a philosophy which rests upon
biological science as a foundation.
Perhaps the first suggestion that the native may have reason in his
theory comes from the extraordinary sensitiveness of certain blind
people, who walk confidently about a cluttered room, or who sort the
family linen after it returns from the laundry. These blind people say,
and think, that they avoid objects by feeling the increasing air
pressure as they approach, or that they sort the family linen by smell;
but it appears more likely that a greater unity and refinement of all
their senses results from their living in darkness.
That our human senses have unused possibilities, or that we may
possibly possess extra senses of which we are not conscious, may appear
if you study the phenomenon of hearing, especially if you study it when
you hear a strange sound in the woods or in the house at night. It is
assumed that we always locate a sound by the ear, and that we determine
its volume or distance by our judgment from previous experiences; but
that, I think, is a secondary and not a primary process. When we act
most naturally we seem to locate a sound not by search or experiment,
but instantly, instinctively, absolutely; and then by our ear or our
judgment we strive to verify our first chumfo impression.
As a specific instance, you are lying half asleep at night when a
faint, strange sound breaks in upon your consciousness. If you act
naturally now, you will nine times out of ten locate the sound on the
instant, without bringing your “good ear” to bear upon it; but if you
neglect or lose your first impression, you may hunt for an hour and go
back to bed without finding the source of the disturbance. Or you are
traveling along a lonely lane at night, more alive than you commonly
are, when a sudden cry breaks out of the darkness. It lasts but a
fraction of a second and is gone; yet in that fleeting instant you have
learned three things: you know the direction of the cry; you know,
though you never heard it before, whether it is a loud cry from a
distance or a faint cry from near at hand; and you are so sure of its
exact location that you go to a certain spot, whether near or far, and
say, “That cry sounded here.”
So much if you act naturally; but if you depend on your ears or
judgment, as men are apt to do, then you are in for a long chase before
you locate the cry of a bird or a beast or a lost child in the night.
It is easy to make mistakes here, for we are so cumbered by artificial
habits that it is difficult to follow any purely natural process; but
our trail becomes clearer when we study the matter of hearing among the
brutes. Thus, your dog is lying asleep by the fire when a faint noise
or footstep sounds outside. Sometimes, indeed, there is no audible
sound at all when he springs to his feet; but no sooner is the door
opened for him than he is around the house and away, heading as
straight for the disturbance as if he knew, as he probably does,
exactly where to find it. Yet your dog is, I repeat, a very dull
creature in comparison with his wild kindred. Their ability to locate a
sound is almost unbelievable, not because they have more delicate ears
(for the human ear is much finer, being sensitive to a thousand
inflections, tones, harmonies, which are meaningless to the brute), but
because of what the Blacks call their better chumfo or what we
thoughtlessly call their stronger instincts.
This has been strongly impressed upon me at times when I have tried to
call a moose in the wilderness. If you seek these animals far back
where they are never hunted—a difficult matter nowadays—the bulls
answer readily enough, or sometimes too readily, as when one big brute
chased me to my canoe and gave me a hatless run for it; but in a
much-hunted region they are very shy and come warily to a call. The
best way to see them in such a place is to call a few times at night,
or until you get an answer, and then go quickly away before the bull
comes near enough to begin circling suspiciously. At daybreak you are
very apt to find him waiting; and the astonishing thing is that he is
waiting at the very spot where you used your trumpet.
The place you select for calling may be a tiny bog in a vast forest, or
a little, nameless beaver-meadow by a lake or river. It is like many
other such places, near or far, and the bull may come from a distance,
crossing lakes, rivers, bogs and dense forest on his way; but he never
seems to make a mistake or to be at a loss in locating the call. On a
still night I have heard a bull answer me from a mountain five or six
miles away; yet in the morning there he was, waiting expectantly for
his mate near the bit of open shore where I had called him; and to
reach that spot he must either have crossed the lake by swimming, a
distance of two miles, or else have circled it on a wide détour. That
he should come such a distance through woods and waters, and pick the
right spot from a hundred others on either side, seems to me not a
matter of ears or experience but of chumfo, or absolute knowledge.
Another and more interesting verification of the chumfo philosophy is
open to any man who will go quietly through the big woods by moonlight,
putting himself back amid primal or animal conditions, and observing
himself closely as he does so. The man who has not traveled the
wilderness alone at night has a vivid and illuminating experience
awaiting him. He is amazed, so soon as he overcomes the first unnatural
feeling of fear, to find how alive he is, and how much better he can
hear and smell than ever he dreamed. At such a time one’s whole body
seems to become a delicately poised instrument for receiving sense
impressions, and one’s skin especially begins to tingle and creep as it
wakes from its long sleep. Nor is this “creeping” of the skin strange
or queer, as we assume, but perfectly natural. The sensations which we
now ignorantly associate with fear of the dark (a late and purely human
development; the animal knows it not) are in reality the sensations of
awakening life.
Possibly we may explain this supersensitiveness of the skin, when life
awakens in it once more and it becomes for us another and finer
instrument of perception, by the simple biological fact that every cell
of the multitudes which make up the human body has a more or less
complete organization within itself. Moreover, as late experiments have
shown, a cell or a tissue of cells will live and prosper in a suitable
environment when completely separated from the body of which it was
once a part. These human cells inherit certain characteristics common
to all animal cells since life began; and it is not improbable that
they inherit also something of the primal cell’s sensibility, or
capacity to receive impressions from the external world. This universal
cell-function was largely given over when the animal (a collection of
cells) began to develop special organs of touch, sight, and hearing;
but there is no indication that the original power of sensibility has
ever been wholly destroyed in any cell. It is, therefore, still within
the range of biological possibility that a man should hear with his
fingers or smell with his toes, since every cell of both finger and toe
once did a work corresponding to the present functions of the five
animal senses.
Before you dismiss this as an idle or impossible theory, try a simple
experiment, which may open your eyes to the reality of living things.
Go to a greenhouse and select a spot of bare earth under a growing
rose-bush. Examine the surface carefully, then brush and examine it
again, to be sure that not a root of any kind is present. Now place a
handful of good plant-food on the selected spot, and go away to your
own affairs. Return in a week or so, brush aside your “bait,” and there
before your eyes is a mass of white feeding-roots where no root was
before. In some way, deep under the soil, the hungry cells have heard
or smelled or felt a rumor of food, and have headed for it as surely as
a dog follows his nose to his dinner.
Do plants, then, know what they do when they turn to the light, and is
there something like consciousness in a tree or a blade of grass? That
is too much to assert, though one may think or believe so. No man can
answer the question which occurs so constantly to one who lives among
growing things; but you can hardly leave your simple experiment without
formulating a theory that even the hidden rootlets of a rose-bush have
something fundamentally akin to our highly developed sensibility. At
present some biologists are beginning to assert, and confidently,
though it is but an opinion, that there is no dead matter in the world;
that the ultimate particles of which matter is composed are all
intensely alive. And if alive, they must be sentient; that is, each
must have an infinitesimal degree of feeling or sense perception.
To return from our speculation, and to illustrate the chumfo faculty
from human and animal experience: I was once sitting idly on a
Nantucket wharf, alternately watching some hermit-crabs scurrying about
in their erratic fashion under the tide, and an old dog that lay
soaking himself in the warm sunshine. Just behind us, the only
inharmonious creatures in the peaceful scene, some laborers were
unloading rocks from a barge by the aid of a derrick. For more than an
hour, or ever since I came to the wharf, the dog lay in the same spot,
and in all that time I did not see him move a muscle. He was apparently
sound asleep. Suddenly he heaved up on his rheumatic legs, sniffed the
air alertly, and turned his head this way, that way, as if wary of
something.
The human labor had proceeded lazily, for the day was warm; there was
no change in the environment, so far as I could discern; the only
sounds in the air were the sleepy lap of wavelets and the creaking of
pulleys; yet my instant thought was, “That dog is frightened; but at
what?” After a few moments of watching he moved off a dozen yards and
threw himself flat on his side to sleep again. His body was hardly
relaxed when a guy-rope parted, and the iron-bound mast of the derrick
crashed down on the wharf.
It was certainly “touch and go” for me; I felt the wind of the thing as
it fell, and was almost knocked off the wharf; but I was not thinking
then of my own close call. With my interest at high pitch I examined
the mast, and found it lying squarely athwart the impression left by
the dog in the dust of the road.
“Merely a coincidence,” you say; which indicates that we are apt to
think alike and in set formulas. That is precisely what I said at the
time—a mere coincidence, but a startling one, which made me think of
luck (a most foolish notion) and wonder why luck should elect to light
on a worthless old dog and take no heed of what seemed to me then a
precious young man. But I have since changed my mind; and here is one
of the many observations which made me change it.
Years afterward my Indian guide, Simmo, was camped with a white man
beside a salmon river. It was a rough night, and a storm was roaring
over the big woods. For shelter they had built a bark commoosie, and
for comfort a fire of birch logs. At about nine o’clock they turned in,
each wrapped in his blanket, and slept soundly but lightly, as woodsmen
do, after a long day on the trail. Some time later—hours, probably, for
the fire was low, the storm hushed, the world intensely still—the white
man was awakened by a touch, and opened his eyes to find his companion
in a tense, listening attitude.
“Bes’ get out of here quick, ’fore somet’ing come,” said the Indian,
and threw off his blanket.
“But why—what—how do you know?” queried the white man, startled but
doubting, for he had listened and heard nothing.
The Indian, angered as an Indian of the woods always is when you
question or challenge his craft, made an impatient gesture. “Don’ know
how; don’ know why; just know. Come!” he called sharply, and the white
man followed him away from the camp toward the river, where it was
lighter. For several minutes they stood there, like two alert animals,
searching the dark woods with all their senses; but nothing moved. The
white man was beginning another fool question when there came a sudden
dull crack, a booming of air, as a huge yellow-birch stub toppled over
the fire and flattened the commoosie like a bubble.
“Dere! Das de feller mus’ be comin’,” said Simmo. “By cosh, now, nex’
time Injun tell you one t’ing, p’r’aps you believe-um!” And, as if it
were the most natural thing in the world, he stepped over
death-and-destruction, kicked aside some rubbish, and lay down to sleep
where he was before.
“How do I explain it?” I don’t. I simply recognize a fact which I
cannot explain, and which I will not blink by calling it another
coincidence. For the fact is, as I judge, that a few men and many
animals exercise some extra faculty which I do not or cannot exercise,
or have access to some source of information which is closed to me.
When I question the gifted men or women who possess this faculty, or
what’s-its-name, I find that they are as much in the dark about it as I
am. They know certain things without knowing how they learn; and the
only word of explanation they offer is that they “feel” thus and
so—perhaps as a horse feels when he is holding the right direction
through a blinding snowstorm, as he does hold it, steadily, surely, if
you are wise enough not to bother him with the reins or your opinions.
Simmo is one of these rare men. At one moment he is a mere child, so
guileless, so natural, so innocent of worldly wisdom, that he is
forever surprising you. Once when his pipe was lost I saw him fill an
imaginary bowl, scratch an imaginary match, and puff away with a look
of heavenly content on his weathered face. So you treat him as an
unspoiled creature, humoring him, till there is difficulty or danger
ahead, or a man’s work to be done, when he steps quietly to the front
as if he belonged there. Or you may be talking with him by the
camp-fire, elaborating some wise theory, when he brushes aside your
book knowledge as of no consequence and suddenly becomes a philosopher,
proclaiming a new or startling doctrine of life in the sublimely
unhampered way of Emerson, who finished off objectors by saying, “I do
not argue; I know.” But where Emerson gives you a mystical word or a
bare assertion which he cannot possibly prove, Simmo has a
disconcerting way of establishing a challenged doctrine by a concrete
and undeniable fact.
One misty day when we were astray in the wilderness, he and I, we
attempted to travel by getting our compass bearings from the topmost
twigs of the evergreens, which slant mostly in one direction. After
blundering around for a time without getting any nearer camp or
familiar landmarks, Simmo remarked: “Dese twigs lie like devil. I guess
I bes’ find-um way myself.” And he did find it, and hold it even after
darkness fell, by instinctive feeling. At least, I judge it to have
been a matter of feeling rather than of sense or observation, for his
only explanation was, “Oh, w’en I goin’ right I feel good; but w’en I
goin’ wrong I oneasy.”
This natural feeling or impression of things beyond the range of sight,
this extra sense, or chumfo unity of all the senses, is probably akin
to another feeling by which the animal or man becomes aware of distant
persons, or of distant moods or emotions. The sleeping dog’s alarm
beneath the weakened derrick, or the sleeping Indian’s uneasiness near
the doomed birch-stub, might be explained on purely physical grounds:
some tremor of parting fibers, some warning vibration too faint for
eardrums but heavy enough to shake a more delicately poised nerve
center, reached the inner beast or the inner man and roused him to
impending danger. (There is a deal of babble in this explanation, I
admit, and still a mystery at the end of it.) But when a man or a brute
receives knowledge not of matter, but of minds or spirits like his own;
when a mother knows, for example, the mental state of a son who is far
away, and when no material vibrations of any known medium can pass
between them,—then all sixth-sense theories, which must rest on the
impinging of waves upon nerve centers, no longer satisfy or explain. We
are in the more shadowy region of thought transference or impulse
transference, and it is in this silent, unexplored region that, as I
now believe, a large part of animal communication goes on continually.
That belief will grow more clear, and perhaps more reasonable, if you
follow this unblazed trail a little farther.
IV
NATURAL TELEPATHY
The way of animal communication now grows dimmer and dimmer, or some
readers may even think it “curiouser and curiouser,” as Alice of
Wonderland said when she found herself lengthening out like a
telescope. But there is certainly a trail of some kind ahead, and since
we are apt to lose it or to wander apart, let us agree, if we can, upon
some familiar fact or experience which may serve as a guiding landmark.
Our general course will be as follows: first, to define our subject, or
rather, to make its meaning clear by illustration; second, to examine
the reasonableness of telepathy from a natural or biological viewpoint;
and finally, to go afield with eyes and minds open to see what the
birds or the beasts may teach us of this interesting matter.
It seems to be fairly well established that a few men and women of
uncommonly fine nervous organization (which means an uncommonly natural
or healthy organization) have the power of influencing the mind of
another person at a distance; and this rare power goes by the name of
thought transference, or telepathy. The so-called crossing of letters,
when two widely separated persons sit down at the same hour to write
each other on the same subject, is the most familiar but not the most
convincing example of the thing. Yes, I know the power and the example
are both challenged, since there are scientists who deny telepathy root
and branch, as well as scientists who believe in it implicitly; but I
also know something more convincing than any second-hand denial or
belief, having at different times met three persons who used the “gift”
so freely, and for the most part so surely, that to ignore it would be
to abandon confidence in my own sense and judgment. I am not trying,
therefore, to investigate an opinion, but to understand a fact.
To illustrate the matter by a personal experience: For many years after
I first left home my mother would become “uneasy in her mind,” as she
expressed it, whenever a slight accident or 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 contradicts 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. Nevertheless, I judge that
telepathy is of itself wholly natural; that it is a survival, an
age-old inheritance 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 something that very much resembles telepathy in
frequent 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 inherit the animal sense of
direction, and cultivate and trust it till they are sure of their way
in any wilderness, while the large majority of men, dulled by
artificial habit, go promptly astray whenever they venture beyond
beaten trails.
That the animals inherit this power of silent communication over great
distances is occasionally manifest even among our half-natural domestic
creatures. For example, that same old setter of mine, Don, who
introduced us to our fascinating subject, was left behind most
unwillingly during my terms at school; but he always seemed to know
when I was on my way home. For months at a stretch he would stay about
the house, obeying my mother perfectly, though she never liked a dog;
but on the day I was expected he would leave the premises, paying no
heed to orders, and go to a commanding ledge beside the lane, where he
could overlook the highroad. Whatever the hour of my coming, whether
noon or midnight, there I would find him waiting.
Once when I was homeward bound unexpectedly, having sent no word of my
coming, my mother missed Don and called him in vain. Some hours later,
when he did not return at his dinner-time or answer her repeated call,
she searched for him and found him camped expectantly in the lane.
“Oho! wise dog,” said she. “I understand now. Your master is coming
home.” And without a doubt that it would soon be needed, she went and
made my room ready.
If the dog had been accustomed to spend his loafing-time in the lane,
one might thoughtlessly account for his action by the accident or
hit-or-miss theory; but he was never seen to wait there for any length
of time except on the days when I was expected. And once (unhappily the
last time Don ever came to meet his master) he was observed to take up
his watch within a few minutes of the hour when my train left the
distant town. Apparently he knew when I headed homeward, but there was
nothing in his instinct or experience to tell him how long the journey
might be. So he would wait patiently, loyally, knowing I was coming,
and my mother would take his dinner out to him.
In many other ways Don gave the impression, if not the evidence, that
he was a “mind-reader.” He always knew when Saturday came, or a
holiday, and possibly he may have associated the holiday notion with my
old clothes; but how he knew what luck the day had in store for him, as
he often seemed to know the instant I unsnapped his chain in the early
morning, was a matter that at first greatly puzzled me. If I appeared
in my old clothes and set him free with the resolution that my day must
be spent in study or tinkering or farm work, he would bid me good
morning and go off soberly to explore the premises, as dogs are wont to
do. But when I met him silently with the notion that the day was my day
off, to be wasted in shooting or fishing or roving the countryside,
then in some way Don caught the notion instantly; he would be tugging
at his leash before I reached him, and no sooner was he free than he
was all over the yard in mad capers or making lunatic attempts to drag
me off on our common holiday before breakfast.