him, was to be expected; or that in the field he should watch for a
motion of my hand and follow it instantly, whether to charge or hold or
come in or cast left or right, was a simple matter of training; but
that this particular dog should, unknown to me, enter into my very
feeling, was certainly not the result of education, and probably not of
sight or sense, as we ordinarily understand the terms. When we were
together of an evening before the fire, so long as I was working or
pleasantly reading he would lie curled up on his own mat, without ever
disturbing me till it was time for him to be put to bed, when he would
remind me of the fact by nudging my elbow. But if an hour came when I
was in perplexity, or had heard bad news and was brooding over it,
hardly would I be away in thought, forgetful of Don’s existence on a
trail I must follow alone, when his silky head would slide under my
hand, and I would find his brown eyes searching my face with something
inexpressibly fine and loyal and wistful in their questioning deeps.
Thus repeatedly, unexpectedly, Don seemed to enter into my moods by
some subtle, mysterious perception for which I have no name, and no
explanation save the obvious one—that a man’s will or emotion may fill
a room with waves or vibration as real as those streaming from a fire
or a lighted candle, and that normal animals have some unused bodily
faculty for receiving precisely such messages or vibrations. But we are
not yet quite ready for that part of our trail; it will come later,
when we can follow it with more understanding.
Should this record seem to you too personal (I am dealing only with
first-hand impressions of animal life), here is the story of another
dog—not a blue-blooded or highly trained setter, but just an ordinary,
doggy, neglected kind of dog—submitted by a scientific friend of mine,
who very cautiously offers no explanation, but is content to observe
and verify the facts:
This second dog, Watch by name and nature, was accustomed to meet his
master much as Don met me in the lane; but he did it much more
frequently, and timed the meeting more accurately. He was nearer the
natural animal, never having been trained in any way, and perhaps for
that reason he retained more of the natural gift or faculty of
receiving a message from a distance. His owner, a busy carpenter and
builder, had an office in town, and was accustomed to return from his
office or work at all hours, sometimes early in the afternoon, and
again long after dark. At whatever hour the man turned homeward, Watch
seemed to follow his movement as if by sight; he would grow uneasy,
would bark to be let out if he happened to be in the house, and would
trot off to meet his master about half-way. Though he was occasionally
at fault, and sometimes returned to brood over the matter when his
master, having started for home, was turned aside by some errand, his
mistakes were decidedly exceptional rather than typical. His strange
“gift” was a matter of common knowledge in the neighborhood, and
occasionally a doubtful man would stage an experiment: the master would
agree to mark the hour when he turned homeward, and one or more
interested persons would keep tabs on the dog. So my scientific friend
repeatedly tested Watch, and observed him to take the road within a few
moments of the time when his master left his office or building
operations in the town, some three or four miles away.
Thus far the record is clear and straight, but there is one important
matter which my friend overlooked, as scientific men commonly do when
they deal with nature, their mistake being to regard animals as
featureless members of a class or species rather than as individuals.
The dog’s master always came or went in a wagon drawn by a quiet old
horse, and upon inquiry I found that between Watch and the horse was a
bond of comradeship, such as often exists between two domestic animals
of different species. Thus, the dog often preferred to sleep in the
stall near his big chum, or would accompany him to the pasture when he
was turned loose, and would always stand by, as if overlooking the
operation, when the horse was being harnessed. It may well be,
therefore, that it was from the horse rather than from the man that
Watch received notice when heads were turned homeward; but of the fact
that some kind of telepathic communication passed between two members
of the trio there is no reasonable doubt.
Some of my readers may make objection at this point that, though
something like telepathic communication appears now and then among the
brutes, it should be regarded as merely freakish or sensational, like a
two-headed calf; while others will surely ask, “Why, if our dogs
possess such a convenient faculty, do they not use it more frequently,
more obviously, and so spare themselves manifold discomforts or
misunderstandings?”
Such an objection is natural enough, since we judge as we live, mostly
by habit; but it has no validity, I think, and for two reasons. First,
because such animals as we have thus far seen exercising the faculty
(and they are but a few out of many) are apparently normal and sensible
beasts, precisely like their less-gifted fellows; and second, because
the telepathic power itself, when one examines it without prejudice,
appears to be wholly natural, and sane or simple as the power of
thought, even of such rudimentary thought as may be exercised in an
animal’s head. As for emotions, more intense and penetrating than any
thought, it is hardly to be questioned that a man’s fear or panic may
flow through his knees into the horse he is riding, or that emotional
excitement may spread through a crowd of men without visible or audible
expression. That a dog should receive a wordless message or impulse
from his master at a distance of three or four miles is, fundamentally,
no more unnatural than that one man should feel another’s mood at a
distance of three or four feet. Whether we can explain the phenomenon
on strictly biological or scientific grounds is another matter.
I am not a biologist, unfortunately, and must go cat-footedly when I
enter that strange garret. I look with wonder on these patient,
unemotional men who care nothing for a bear or an eagle, but who creep
lower and ever lower in the scale of living things, searching with
penetrating looks among infinitesimal microbes for the secret that
shall solve the riddle of the universe by telling us what life is. And
because man is everywhere the same, watching these exploring biologists
I remember the curious theology of certain South-Pacific savages, who
say that God made all things, the stars and the world and the living
man; but we cannot see Him because He is so very small, because a
dancing mote or a grain of sand is for Him a roomy palace. Yet even
with a modest little knowledge of biology we may find a viewpoint, I
think, from which telepathy or thought-transference would appear as
natural, as inevitable, as the forthgoing of light from a burning lamp.
Thus, historically there was a time when the living cell, or the
cell-of-life, as one biologist calls it with rare distinction, was
sensitive only to pressure; when in its darkness it knew of an external
world only by its own tremblings, in response to vibrations which
poured over it from every side. Something made it tremble, and that
“something” had motion or life like its own. Such, imaginatively, was
the sentient cell’s first knowledge, the result of a sense of touch
distributed throughout its protecting surface.
Long afterward came a time when the living cell, multiplied now a
millionfold, began to develop special sense-organs, each a modification
of its rudimentary sense of touch; one to receive vibrations of air,
for hearing; another to catch some of the thronging ether waves, for
seeing; a third to register the floating particles of matter on a
sensitive membrane, for taste or smelling. By that time the cell had
learned beyond a peradventure that the universe outside itself had
light and color and fragrance and harmony. Finally came a day when the
cell, still multiplying and growing ever more complex, became conscious
of a new power within itself, most marvelous of all the powers of
earth, the power to think, to feel, and to be aware of a self that
registered its own impressions of the external world. And then the cell
knew, as surely as it knew sound or light, that the universe held
consciousness also, and some infinite source of thought and feeling.
Such, apparently, was the age-long process from the sentient cell to
the living man.
Since we are following a different trail, this is hardly the time or
place to face the question how this development from mere living to
conscious life took place, even if one were wise or rash enough to
grapple with the final problem of evolution. Yet it may not be amiss
while we “rest a pipe,” as the voyageurs say, to point out that, of the
two possible answers to our question (aside from the convenient and
restful answer that God made things so), only one, curiously enough,
has thus far been considered by our physical scientists. The thousand
books and theories of evolution which one reads are all reducible to
this elementary proposition: that the simple things of life became
complex by inner necessity. In other words, an eye became an eye, or an
oak an oak, or a man a man, simply because each must develop according
to the inner law of its being.
That may be true, though the all-compelling “inner law” is still only a
vague assumption, and the mystery of its origin is untouched; but why
not by outer compulsion as reasonably as by inner necessity? A
cell-of-life that was constantly bombarded by moving particles of
matter might be compelled to develop a sense of touch, in order to save
its precious life by differentiating such particles into good and bad,
or helpful and harmful. A cell over which vibrations of air and ether
were continually passing might be forced for its own good to develop an
ear and an eye to receive such vibrations as sound and light; and a
cell over which mysterious waves of thought and emotion were
ceaselessly flowing might be driven to comprehend that particular
mystery by developing a thought and emotion of its own.
I do not say that this is the right answer; I mention it merely as a
speculative possibility, in order to get our alleged scientific mind
out of its deep rut of habit by showing that every road has two sides,
though a man habitually use only one; and that Reason or Law or God, or
whatever you choose to call the ultimate mainspring of life, is quite
as apt to be found on one side of the road as on the other. Inner
necessity is not a whit more logical or more explanatory than external
force or compulsion when we face the simple fact that an animal now
sees and feels in the light instead of merely existing in darkness, or
that primitive cells which were dimly sentient have now become as
thinking gods, knowing good and evil.
What this thought of ours is we do not know. Beyond the fact that we
have it and use it, thought still remains a profound mystery. That it
is a living force of some kind; that it projects itself or its waves
outward, as the sun cannot but send forth his light; that it affects
men as surely as gravitation or heat or the blow of a hammer affects
them,—all this is reasonably clear and certain. But how thought
travels; what refined mental ether conveys it outward with a speed that
makes light as slow as a glacier by comparison, and with a force that
sends it through walls of stone and into every darkness that the light
cannot penetrate,—this and the origin of thought are questions so deep
that our science has barely formulated them, much less dreamed of an
answer. Yet if we once grant the simple proposition that thought is a
force, that it moves inevitably from its source to its object, the
conclusion is inevitable that any thinking mind should be able to send
its silent message to any other mind in the universe. There is nothing
in the nature of either mind or matter to preclude such a possibility;
only our present habit of speech, of too much speech, prevents us from
viewing it frankly.
As a purely speculative consummation, therefore, the time may come when
telepathy shall appear as the natural or perfect communication among
enlightened minds, and language as a temporary or evolutionary
makeshift. But that beckons us away to an imaginative flight among the
clouds, and on the earth at our feet is the trail we must follow.
The question why our dogs, if they have the faculty of receiving a
master’s message at a distance, do not use it more obviously, is one
that I cannot answer. Perhaps the reason is obvious enough to some of
the dogs, which have a sidelong way of coming home from their roving,
as if aware they had long been wanted. Or, possibly, the difficulty
lies not in the dog, but in his master. Every communication has two
ends, one sending, the other receiving; and of a thousand owners there
are hardly two who know how properly to handle a dog either by speech
or by silence. Still again, one assumption implied in the question is
that dogs or any other animals of the same kind are all alike; and that
common assumption is very wide of the fact. Animals differ as widely in
their instinctive faculties as men in their judgments; which partly
explains why one setter readily follows his master’s word or hand, or
enters into his mood, while another remains hopelessly dumb or
unresponsive. The telepathic faculty appears more frequently, as we
shall see, among birds or animals that habitually live in flocks or
herds, and I have always witnessed its most striking or impressive
manifestation between a mother animal and her young, as if some
prenatal influence or control were still at work.
For example, I have occasionally had the good luck to observe a
she-wolf leading her pack across the white expanse of a frozen lake in
winter; and at such times the cubs have a doggish impulse to run after
any moving object that attracts their attention. If a youngster breaks
away to rush an animal that he sees moving in the woods (once that
moving animal was myself), the mother heads him instantly if he is
close to her; but if he is off before she can check him by a motion of
her ears or a low growl, she never wastes time or strength in chasing
him. She simply holds quiet, lifts her head high, and looks steadily at
the running cub. Suddenly he wavers, halts, and then, as if the look
recalled him, whirls and speeds back to the pack. If the moving object
be proper game afoot, the mother now goes ahead to stalk or drive it,
while the pack follows stealthily behind her on either side; but if the
distant object be a moose or a man, or anything else that a wolf must
not meddle with, then the mother wolf trots quietly on her way without
a sound, and the errant cub falls into place as if he had understood
her silent command.
You may observe the same phenomenon of silent order and ready obedience
nearer home, if you have patience to watch day after day at a burrow of
young foxes. I have spent hours by different dens, and have repeatedly
witnessed what seemed to be excellent discipline; but I have never yet
heard a vixen utter a growl or cry or warning of any kind. That audible
communication comes later, when the cubs begin to hunt for themselves;
and then you will often hear the mother’s querulous squall or the cubs’
impatient crying when they are separated in the dark woods. While the
den is their home (they seldom enter it after they once roam abroad)
silence is the rule, and that silence is most eloquent. For hours at a
stretch the cubs romp lustily in the afternoon sunshine, some stalking
imaginary mice or grasshoppers, others challenging their mates to mock
fights or mock hunting; and the most striking feature of the exercise,
after you have become familiar with the fascinating little creatures,
is that the old vixen, who lies apart where she can overlook the play
and the neighborhood, seems to have the family under perfect control at
every instant, though never a word is uttered.
That some kind of communication passes among these intelligent little
brutes is constantly evident; but it is without voice or language. Now
and then, when a cub’s capers lead him too far from the den, the vixen
lifts her head to look at him intently; and somehow that look has the
same effect as the she-wolf’s silent call; it stops the cub as if she
had sent a cry or a messenger after him. If that happened once, you
might overlook it as a matter of mere chance; but it happens again and
again, and always in the same challenging way. The eager cub suddenly
checks himself, turns as if he had heard a command, catches the vixen’s
look, and back he comes like a trained dog to the whistle.
As the shadows lengthen on the hillside, and the evening comes when the
mother must go mousing in the distant meadow, she rises quietly to her
feet. Instantly the play stops; the cubs gather close, their heads all
upturned to the greater head that bends to them, and there they stand
in mute intentness, as if the mother were speaking and the cubs
listening. For a brief interval that tense scene endures, exquisitely
impressive, while you strain your senses to catch its meaning. There is
no sound, no warning of any kind that ears can hear. Then the cubs
scamper quickly into the burrow; the mother, without once looking back,
slips away into the shadowy twilight. At the den’s mouth a foxy little
face appears, its nostrils twitching, its eyes following a moving
shadow in the distance. When the shadow is swallowed up in the dusk the
face draws back, and the wild hillside is wholly silent and deserted.
You can go home now. The vixen may be hours on her hunting, but not a
cub will again show his nose until she returns and calls him. If a
human mother could exercise such silent, perfect discipline, or leave
the house with the certainty that four or five lively youngsters would
keep out of danger or mischief as completely as young fox cubs keep out
of it, raising children might more resemble “one grand sweet song” than
it does at present.
So far as I have observed grown birds or beasts, the faculty of silent
communication occurs most commonly among those that are gregarious or
strongly social in their habits. The timber-wolves of the North are the
first examples that occur to me, and also the most puzzling. They are
wary brutes, so much so that those who have spent a lifetime near them
will tell you that it is useless to hunt a wolf by any ordinary method;
that your meeting with him is a matter of chance or rare accident; that
not only has he marvelously keen ears, eyes that see in the dark, and a
nose that cannot be deceived, but he can also “feel” a danger which is
hidden from sight or smell or hearing. Such is the Indian verdict; and
I have followed wolves often and vainly enough to have some sympathy
with it.
The cunning of these animals would be uncanny if it were merely
cunning; but it is naturally explained, I think, on the assumption that
wolves, more than most other brutes, receive silent warnings from one
another, or even from a concealed hunter, who may by his excitement
send forth some kind of emotional alarm. When you are sitting quietly
in the woods, and a pack of wolves pass near without noticing their one
enemy, though he is in plain sight, you think that they are no more
cunning than a bear or a buck; and that is true, so far as their
cunning depends on what they may see or hear. Once when I was crossing
a frozen lake in a snow-storm a whole pack of wolves rushed out of the
nearest cover and came at me on the jump, mistaking me for a deer or
some other game animal; which does not speak very highly for either
their eyes or their judgment. They were the most surprised brutes in
all Canada when they discovered their mistake. But when you hide with
ready rifle near some venison which the same wolves have killed; when
you see them break out of the woods upon the ice, running free and
confident to the food which they know is awaiting them; when you see
them stop suddenly, as if struck, though they cannot possibly see or
smell you, and then scatter and run by separate trails to a
meeting-point on another lake—well, then you may conclude, as I do,
that part of a wolf’s cunning lies deeper than his five senses.
Another lupine trait which first surprised and then challenged my
woodcraft is this: in the winter-time, when timber-wolves commonly run
in small packs, a solitary or separated wolf always seems to know where
his mates are hunting or idly roving or resting in their day-bed. The
pack is made up of his family relatives, younger or older, all mothered
by the same she-wolf; and by some bond or attraction or silent
communication he can go straight to them at any hour of the day or
night, though he may not have seen them for a week, and they have
wandered over countless miles of wilderness in the interim.
We may explain this fact, if such it be (I shall make it clear
presently), on the simple ground that the wolves, though incurable
rovers, have bounds beyond which they seldom pass; that they return on
their course with more or less regularity; and that in traveling, as
distinct from hunting, they always follow definite runways, like the
foxes. Because of these fixed habits, a solitary wolf might remember
that the pack was due in a certain region on a certain day, and by
going to that region and putting his nose to the runways he could
quickly pick up the fresh trail of his fellows. There is nothing occult
in such a process; it is a plain matter of brain and nose.
Such an explanation sounds reasonable enough; too reasonable, in fact,
since a brute probably acts more intuitively and less rationally; but
it does not account for the amazing certainty of a wounded wolf when
separated from his pack. He always does separate, by the way; not
because the others would eat him, for that is not wolf nature, but
because every stricken bird or beast seeks instinctively to be alone
and quiet while his hurt is healing. I have followed with keen interest
the doings of one wounded wolf that hid for at least two days and
nights in a sheltered den, after which he rose from his bed and went
straight as a bee’s flight to where his pack had killed a buck and left
plenty of venison behind them.
In this case it is possible to limit the time of the wounded wolf’s
seclusion, because the limping track that led from the den was but a
few hours old when I found it, and the only track leading into the den
was half obliterated by snow which had fallen two nights previously.
How many devious miles the pack had traveled in the interim would be
hard to estimate. I crossed their hunting or roaming trails at widely
separate points, and once I surprised them in their day-bed; but I
never found the limit of their great range. A few days later that same
limping wolf left another den of his, under a windfall, and headed not
for the buck, which was now frozen stiff, but for another deer which
the same pack had killed in a different region, some eight or ten
straight miles away, and perhaps twice that distance as wolves commonly
travel.
If you contend that this wounded wolf must have known where the meat
was by the howling of the pack when they killed, I grant that may be
true in one case, but certainly not in the other. For by great good
luck I was near the pack, following a fresh trail in the gray,
breathless dawn, when the wolves killed the second deer; and there was
not a sound for mortal ears to hear, not a howl or a trail cry or even
a growl of any kind. They followed, killed and ate in silence, as
wolves commonly do, their howling being a thing apart from their
hunting. The wounded wolf was then far away, with miles of densely
wooded hills and valleys between him and his pack.