Chapter III: The Hypothesis of Intelligence in Animals

Assuming, as I have done, and as I think I must do, that we have not here to do with a trick or fraud, we seem to be dreaming, or to be reading the account of a dream. Those poor horses of Elberfeld, so greatly extolled and so much discussed in their day, are not in the same field with Lola. And yet I am convinced that it is not a dream. It is another kind of psychological reality, but it is a reality probably too complex to be reduced to a single formula. Let us then try to face the facts.

As to the "intelligent" character of the manifestations, there is no possible doubt, even though we put on one side for the present the arithmetical phenomena, which perhaps must be treated from a particular standpoint, as I shall explain. The question before us is therefore a dilemma. Is there intelligence in the dog, or is the intelligence in others?

If, by intelligence in this case we mean the possibility of the animal under observation giving replies to questions with, in the human sense, actual understanding of the import of such replies, as well as the possibility of the animal, a dog two years old, being able after a maximum of fifteen hours' lessons to read, write and count, _and know what it is learning_; if that is what is meant by intelligence in this case, I must say that I do not believe in it, and that I feel compelled for scientific reasons to examine every other hypothesis before having recourse to this one.

And again, "Intelligence in others"? This may be so, but it is not necessary to suppose that the intelligence is in others alone. I mean that a few of the manifestations may within narrow limits probably be rightly attributed to the intelligence of the animal, (but, I repeat, the arithmetical facts must be considered by themselves).

If all the manifestations were to be attributed to the intelligence of others and none to the animal, we should have to accept the supposition of an absolutely _mechanical_ automatism in the animal itself of the type suggested by Neumann (8)[29] as the result of his experiments with Rolf, when, for instance, the dog mechanically kept on tapping an unlimited number of times on the cardboard, which Neumann held out to it without, as far as possible, moving it.

[29] NOTE.--The numbers in the text refer to the Bibliography at
the end.

This negative result of Neumann's is capable of various possible
explanations, and in no way gives any clear indication (just
because it is negative) as to how a positive result is at all
possible; that is, we cannot conclude from it any better than
before, whether the apparently "mechanical" behaviour of the animal
was intentional, and therefore whether the animal itself could or
could not have behaved otherwise; whether, given the impossibility
of the animal behaving differently, we should say that this
impossibility was absolute or only happened to occur on this
occasion; whether perchance the action of some psychical factor
unknown to Neumann between the animal and himself may not have been
omitted; and whether such factor was not in operation when the
animal was working with its late mistress, etc., etc. In this
connexion I feel it incumbent upon me to recall that I myself saw
Rolf on two or three occasions behave in this same apparently
mechanical way with his mistress (Mrs. Moekel) (II), whose
annoyance thereat seemed so real that I felt certain that it was
not feigned. From Neumann's point of view this would be
incomprehensible--since he makes use of the argument from the
supposed absolute automatism under the impression that it had taken
place in Rolf with _him_, Neumann, alone, _but not_ with the
Moekels. Here, then, it is clear that the intelligence is, or at
least that it is also, "in others."

But whatever value we may attach to Neumann's experiment, it appears to me sufficiently clear that the supposition of an absolutely mechanically passive process in the animal will not hold as a sufficient explanation of the _whole_ of the facts related by Miss Kindermann, nor will it hold with regard to what science certainly seems to me to be compelled to admit in the case of the Elberfeld horses, which (as is known) "worked" magnificently without contact with anyone, tapping their replies on a board, completely isolated on the ground, and even when all alone in their stable with the one door tightly closed and all the spectators outside. The spectators heard and observed the rapped answers of the horses (for example, to written questions) through a little glass window. Neither will it hold with regard to the many experiments made, some also by myself, by means of requests, pictures, questions, presented to the horses in such a way as to be unknown to _everyone_, including the experimenter. Besides, the animals at times gave spontaneous communications. This Assagioli and I, and many others, have observed even without the presence of Krall and of members of the Moekel family. Miss Kindermann also gives some of Lola's replies tapped on the arm of a friend of the authoress, although the latter held out as usual her own hand to the dog.

Therefore, there must be some "intelligence" in the animal, as everything cannot come from outside it in these experiments. Probably this intelligence is not human in quality, but nevertheless not quite rudimentary, and is such as we may imagine without too much effort to exist in domestic animals which by many signs often give us proof that they understand at least in part what is taking place around and within us. That such an intelligence could very probably be educated, always within prehuman limits or in a lesser degree than in human infancy, does not on the whole seem to me so contradictory to our actual psychological knowledge: since we may very well suppose that the animal under examination may make use of its proper faculties, as far as lies in its power, to profit by the situation for the purpose of accomplishing that which is required of it, under the stimulus of allurements or threats. (It may even be rather assumed that the exercise of its proper faculties, which I regard as "intelligent," may procure for the animal a certain degree of pleasure.) All this is apart from the question of the arithmetical phenomena which, as I have already said, deserve separate consideration.

Upon the facts as now established the knowledge of numbers seems to be the basis of any educability in animals. And this is perhaps the first and most important discovery in the "new zoopsychology."

In their search for others things, Von Osten, Krall, and the
Moekels have brought out clearly among various other facts, without
exactly accounting for it, the fundamental fact of the existence in
the animal of a psychic substratum predisposed in some manner to
arithmetic. I say "in some manner," and by that I do not wish to
prejudge any particular view of the argument; and above all I do
not make of this predisposition or mathematical permeability, a
criterion of intelligence. I do not forget either the mentally
deficient or the prodigies among child calculators, etc. But
likewise I cannot forget another thing: that all organisms are
already throughout permeated with mathematics, and that the more we
descend the scale, from man down to the most "simple" biological
fact, the more nearly we approach to physics, which is nothing but
mathematics.

I have not the space here to digress on the intermediate gradations.
Besides, I have already done so, in part at least, elsewhere. But I
wish to recall the curious coincidence that the mathematical
achievements of the Elberfeld horses were much more brilliant and
much more prodigious than those of the dogs which have up to now
been experimented on. And horses in the phylo-genetic line are more
ancient than dogs: they are lower in the zoologic scale. Much lower
still, i.e. among the Arthropoda, occur many other mathematical
wonders. I only mention in a cursory way the logarithmic spiral of
the spider's web, the precise curves realized without instruments
of any kind by the Coleoptera and Hymenoptera in cutting leaves,
the stereometry of the aphides. Then, as it were, at the bottom of
the scale (if one may still speak of a descent and a bottom) the
marvellous plancton filters of the Appendiculata; the geometrical
spots of the Amoebae; the cases of perfect forms of so many other
Protozoa; and, finally, think of the constructive technic of the
static organs, or of those of movement either in man or animals or
plants; think of the complex mathematics of the mitosi, or of any
cell proceeding to its own indirect division.

It seems to me clear that the mathematical faculty--assuming
always, let it be understood, that it may give rise to more or less
conscious phenomena in the biological subject--may be amongst the
most natural of imaginable causes, and that even the smallest
amount of consciousness may help this existing capacity in the
animal to express itself. That we are concerned with an expression
by raps or not, does not seem to me as important as a proper
estimation of the importance of the central fact constituted by
this mathematical capacity.

From this central fact, proved over and over again without any possible doubt to be true of the "thinking" animals, there have been developed two distinct groups of consequences: (1) the prodigious mathematical performances occurring as by magic among the Elberfeld horses at a certain point of their "education": (2) the apparent manifestations of thought through the typtology or rapping out of words, culminating in the "philosophic" achievements of Rolf and Lola.

For the reasons just mentioned the first group of consequences seems to me to admit largely of biological (i.e. biopsychical) explanation; however, anything which eventually does not fit into the biological explanation may be made to enter without any effort into the second method of explanation which, in view of the facts, it seems to me that we must adopt for the second of the two groups of consequences above referred to.

That mathematics can be "lived" rather than "known"--or, if any one prefers the term, "realized"--by an organism which is without any psychical accompaniment whatever of the human type, is a fact which I find credible. But when Rolf speaks to me of the origin of the soul, or makes up poetry; when Lola complains to me of honour lost, etc., the thing is not credible to me in any way except by paying attention to nothing except the feeling, which is so difficult to avoid, that what is here speaking to me, versifying and complaining, is a psychical "quid," absolutely human and only human; a "quid" which therefore is (after all) not the animal's, although manifested in some way through it. The difficulty naturally consists in deciding precisely how this happens. But it does not seem to me altogether impossible to arrive at a proper hypothesis.

I have already said that we must discard, because of its inability to explain a great part of the facts, the most easy and simple hypothesis--that of some mechanical signal (e.g. by means of a supposed pressure of the hand under the cardboard, or by the hand itself which is held out to the animal, in the case of the dogs which have so far been experimented with). Here we also have to remember the proposition laid down by Miss Kindermann herself that "She did not wish to let herself be carried away by sentiment," and that she would seek all possible proofs which were good logically. Having excluded the hypothesis of deceit, it is a further proof of the sheer impotency of the theory of signals, when regard is had to the available amount of the material observed and recorded in the authoress, if we ask how is it possible to imagine that she (knowing very well, as she says, the suspicion resting on the method) in a year or more of work with Lola should not herself have perceived that she herself had been producing by mechanical means the rapped answers of her pupil?

In my opinion the answer is that the authoress was not only not aware of, but _could not_ in the least have been aware of, the action that may have passed from herself to the dog so as to bring about the rapping of the answers; and that on the other hand it is not a question at all of thinking of a simple mechanical operation of the kind mentioned above, because in the presumed action of the authoress on the dog there is no need to have recourse to such a crude hypothesis (as surely there was no similar action of Krall's on his horses, especially when they were separated from him). I maintain, in fact, that in principle, even without any contact by hand, we may still presume that all the "wonders" obtained by Miss Kindermann are obtainable, taking, of course, into account the peculiar endowments of the animal we are dealing with. For if there be any automatism (and there is surely a good dose of it), it is certainly not a question of a mechanical automatism (of the type of Neumann's), but quite certainly of a true and proper _psychic automatism_; a very different thing, and without doubt much more complex.

In all probability the first condition for the occurrence of genuine phenomena similar to those attributed to "thinking" animals must be a very particular psychic relationship between the animal and his master. And such a relation, although with reluctance, I am compelled to call of the mediumistic type.

My reluctance is due in part to the very unhappy etymology of the term, derived from the famous word "medium," so unscientific both in its origin and in the meaning which some even now wish to associate with it. But even after having freed it from any "spiritistic" meaning, the term still leaves me reluctant; for I cannot hide from myself the weakness of a hypothesis which, in order to explain (only in part) one enigmatical fact (in this case, that of "thinking animals"), must have recourse to another unsolved enigma (in this case that of the "mediumistic phenomena").

However, it will already be something if the two problems are eventually merged together and so become a single problem; but it is not my object to explain any psychical facts themselves, whatever they may be, under which the phenomena of Lola and others of a similar nature may be eventually classified. It will be sufficient for me at present to group the performances of the animals, if possible, with something better known. And "mediumistic" facts, extrinsically at least, are certainly better known. I refer therefore to them as I find them described in the psychology called supernormal; because, from force of circumstances I am compelled to recognize that it is within this psychology that I must now continue the discussion.