I do not by any means doubt, that many of these precautionary measures in view of future states of the weather are conditioned by a sensitive appreciation of certain present atmospheric states, which escape our notice; these perceptions, however, invariably have reference only to present states of the weather, and what can the conscious common sensations produced by the present state of the weather have to do with the idea of the future weather? Surely no one will credit the animals with the power of calculating the weather months in advance from meteorological indications, and with the faculty of foreseeing floods. A mere feeling of this kind of present atmospheric influences is nothing more than the sensuous perception which serves as motive, for a motive must, indeed, always be present if an instinct is to become active.1 Nevertheless, it is certain that the prevision of the state of the weather is a case of unconscious clairvoyance; the stork departing for the south four weeks earlier than is customary. knowing as little as the stag, which, when a cold winter is at hand, allows a thicker skin than usual to grow. Animals have in their consciousness a feeling of the present state of the weather; on this their action follows precisely as if they had the idea of the future state of the weather. They do not, however, possess the latter idea in their consciousness. Accordingly, there only remains as natural connecting link the unconscious idea, which, however, is always a clairvoyant intuition, because it contains something which is neither directly given to the animal by sense-perception, nor can be inferred from the perception through its powers of understanding.
Most wonderful of all are the instincts relating to the propagation of the race. Every male discovers the female of its species with a view to sexual union, but certainly not guided merely by outward resemblance to itself; for in many kinds of animals,—e.g., hermit-crabs,—the sexes are so radically different in form, that the male would in that case be led to copulate with the females of thousands of other species rather than with those of its own. In some butterflies there exists a polymorphism, according to which not only male and female are distinct, but even in the female sex itself there occur two quite distinct forms of the same species, of which one commonly belongs to the natural mimicry of a remote and well-protected species. And yet the males have intercourse only with the females of their own species, never with strangers which perhaps bear a closer resemblance to themselves. In the insect-order Strepsiptera the female is an ill-shaped worm, which dwells all its life long in the posterior segment of the body of a wasp, and only protrudes with its lenticular horny head between two abdominal rings of the latter. The male, which lives only a few hours, resembling a moth in appearance, recognises its female by this stunted protuberance, and fecundates the eggs through a canal opening immediately below the animal’s mouth.
Before any experience of the significance of childbearing, the pregnant animal is impelled to seek seclusion, in order to prepare a couch for its young in a cave or other sheltered spot; the bird builds its nest as soon as the eggs mature in the ovary. Land-snails, crabs, tree-frogs, toads, enter the water, marine tortoises go upon land, many sea-fish ascend rivers, to lay their eggs where the fit conditions of their development are alone to be found. Insects lay their eggs in very various places—in the sand, on leaves, under the skin and nails of other animals, often in places where the future food of the larva is not yet in existence, e.g., in the autumn on trees which do not sprout till the spring, or in the spring on blossoms which only bear fruìt in autumn, or on caterpillars, which only in the pupa-state serve as food and protection to the parasitic larvæ. Other insects lay their eggs in places, whence they are conveyed to the proper place of their development by many circuitous courses, e.g., certain gadflies on the lips of horses, others on those parts which horses are wont to lick, whereby the eggs pass into the entrails as their place of development, and when matured are voided with the ordure. The bovine gadflies select the most powerful and soundest animals with such accuracy, that cattle-dealers and farmers entirely rely upon them, and take by preference the animals whose skins show most traces of being the pasture of the gadfly’s grubs. This selection of the best oxen by the gadflies can scarcely be the result of conscious trial and reflection, when experienced traders take them for their masters. The wall-wasp makes a hole in the sand several inches deep, deposits its egg in the same, and packs in a layer of footless green maggots approaching the pupa-state, therefore well nourished and able to live a long time without food, but so close together that they cannot stir nor enter the pupa condition themselves, and just as many, and no more, as the larva will require before its transformation into a chrysalis. A species of wasp, Cerceris bupresticida, which itself only lives on pollen, places by the side of each of its eggs, preserved in subterranean cells, three specimens of the genus Buprestis, which it becomes possessed of by lying in wait for them when they emerge from the chrysalis condition, and then slaying them in their weak condition, at the same time seeming to apply a juice which keeps them fresh and suitable for food. Several species of wasps open the cells of their larvæ as soon as these have consumed their food, in order to replenish them, and then close them again. In a similar way ants constantly choose the right moment when their larvæ are ripe for hatching in order to open for them the cocoon, from which they could not free themselves. What, now, does an insect, whose life in the case of but few species endures longer than for one deposition of eggs, know of the contents and the favourable place for the development of its eggs? what does it know of the kind of nutriment which the hatched larvæ will need, and which is quite different from its own? what does it know of the quantity of food which is needed? what can it know, i.e., have in its consciousness, of all this? And yet its action, its efforts, and the high importance which it attributes to these things, prove that the animal has a knowledge of the future. It can then only be unconscious clairvoyance; and no less certainly must it be clairvoyance which arouses in animals just at the right moment the will to open the cells or the cocoon, when the larvæ have finished their stock of food, or are ripe for hatching.
The cuckoo, whose eggs, as is the case with other birds, do not need one or two, but seven to eleven days to mature in the ovary, which therefore cannot itself hatch its eggs, because the first would be rotten before the last was laid, deposits them in the nests of other birds, of course only one egg in each nest. But in order that the birds may not perceive and reject the strange egg, it is not only much smaller than one would expect from the size of the cuckoo, because the latter only finds its opportunity with small birds, but also, as has been mentioned, it is strikingly like the other eggs of the nest in colour and marking. Now, as the cuckoo prefers to seek out a nest in which to deposit some days beforehand, it might be thought, with regard to the choice of nests, that the egg which is maturing assumes the colour of the eggs of the nest, because the pregnant cuckoo is thinking of the same; but this explanation does not meet the case of nests which are hidden in hollow trees (e.g., Sylvia phœnicurus), or which have the shape of a baking-oven with a narrow entrance (e.g., Sylvia rufa). In these cases the cuckoo can neither slip in nor look in; it must even deposit its egg from the outside and put it in with its beak; it can thus not at all perceive by its senses how the other eggs of the nest look. If now, notwithstanding, its own egg precisely resemble the others, this can only be due to unconscious clairvoyance, which regulates the colour and marking in the ovary. Should, however, the supposition be correct, that one and the same female cuckoo always deposits in the nests of one and the same species of bird, and accordingly always eggs of the same colour and marking, the problem would only assume the converse form, and the question would arise, How does the cuckoo learn what nest-eggs its own eggs look like, if she cannot peep into the particular nests?
An essential support and confirmation of the existence of clairvoyance in the instincts of animals lies in the facts, which also prove a clairvoyant intuition in the case of human beings under certain circumstances. The curative instincts of children and the pregnant have been already men
tioned. For the most part, however, conformably to the higher stage of the human consciousness, there occurs here, along with the unconscious clairvoyance, a strong reverberation in consciousness which exhibits itself as more or less clear presentiment. It is, moreover, in harmony with the greater independence of the human intellect that this presentiment does not exclusively occur with reference to the direct execution of an action, but sometimes also manifests itself as pure idea, without conscious will, quite apart from any deed about to be done, if only the condition is satisfied, that the object of this divination powerfully stimulates the will of the diviner. After suppression of an intermittent fever or other illness, it not seldom happens that the sick person precisely foretells the time at which an attack of convulsions will ensue and end. The same happens almost without exception in spontaneous, and often in artificially produced somnambulism: the Pythia, as is well known, always announced the time of her next ecstasy. Likewise in somnambulistic states the remedial instincts are often expressed in divination of the appropriate medicaments, which have as often led to brilliant results, as they seem to contradict the present standpoint of science. The prescription of remedies is certainly also the only use which respectable magnetisers make of the half-sleep of their somnambules. “It sometimes also occurs that quite healthy persons, before giving birth to a child, or in the very beginning of an illness, have a near presentiment of their approaching death, the fulfilment of which can hardly be explained as a mere coincidence, for otherwise it should far more rarely occur than the non-fulfilment, whereas the fact is just the contrary; moreover, many of these persons exhibit neither longing for death nor fear of it, and it cannot therefore be explained as the effect of imagination.” (From the work of the celebrated physiologist Burdach, “Blicke in’s Leben,” chapter “Presentiment,” whence a great part of our more striking instances is borrowed.) This presentiment of death, exceptional in the case of man, is quite common among animals, even those which neither know nor comprehend death. They creep away, when they feel their end approaching, into places as remote, lonely, and concealed as possible; this is, e.g., the reason why, even in towns, the corpse or skeleton of a cat is so seldom found. We must only assume that the unconscious clairvoyance, although essentially alike in man and animal, evokes presentiments of different distinctness; thus, e.g., the cat is urged purely instinctively to creep away without knowing why; but in man there awakens the clear consciousness of the near end. But there are presentiments not merely of one’s own death, but also of that of dearly-loved persons with whom we are closely linked, as is proved by the many stories where a dying man in his death-hour has appeared to his friend or spouse in a dream or vision, narratives which are found among all peoples and in all times, and in part undoubtedly contain genuine matter of fact. Closely allied is the faculty of second-sight, formerly common in Scotland and now in the Danish isles, whereby certain persons not in an ecstatic state, but in the full possession of their senses, foresee future or distant events which have an interest for them, as deaths, battles, great conflagrations (as Swedenborg the burning of Stockholm), arrival or fate of distant friends, &c. (cf. Ennemoser, “History of Magic,” 2d ed., § 86). In many persons this clairvoyance is limited to the decease of acquaintances or neighbours; the instances of such corpse-seeresses are numerous, and are remarkably well, even judicially, attested. Transiently this faculty of second-sight is found in ecstatic states, in the spontaneous or artificially produced somnambulism of higher degrees of waking dreams, as well as in clear moments before death. Frequently the presentiments in which the clairvoyance of the Unconscious is revealed to consciousness are dark, incomprehensible, and symbolical, because they are obliged to take a sensible form in the brain, whilst the unconscious idea cannot partake of the form of sensibility (see C. Chap. i.); wherefore it is so easy to regard what, in mental moods, dreams, or the images of sick persons, is accidental as significant. The great liability to error and to self-deception resulting herefrom, and the facility for intentionally deceiving other people, as well as the preponderating disadvantage which, as a general rule, the knowledge of the future brings to man, enhance beyond all doubt the practical mischief of all endeavours to obtain a knowledge of the future. This cannot, however, derogate from the theoretic importance of this department of phenomena, and cannot in any case hinder the recognition of the true facts of clairvoyance, even if buried beneath a confused mass of nonsense and deceit. It is true the prevailing rationalistic and materialistic tendency of our time finds it convenient to deny or to ignore all facts of this class, because they cannot be comprehended from a materialistic point of view, and cannot be brought to the test of experience according to the inductive method of difference; as if the latter were not just as inapplicable in ethics, social science, and politics! But for impartial judges the absolute denial of all such phenomena is consistent only with ignorance of the accounts, which, again, arises from the not wishing to become acquainted with them. I am convinced that many impugners of all human divination would judge differently, or at least more cautiously, if they thought it worth their while to make themselves acquainted with the reports of the more striking facts; and I am of opinion that at the present day nobody need be ashamed of adopting a view which all great minds of antiquity (Epicurus excepted) have acknowledged, whose possibility hardly any great modern philosopher has ventured to dispute, and which the champions of the German “enlightenment” were so little inclined to relegate to the province of old wives’ fables, that Goethe has even related an example of second-sight in his own life, which was confirmed even to the smallest detail.
Ill-adapted as I should think this class of phenomena for forming the sole foundation of a scientific belief, I nevertheless think them highly worthy of mention as a complementary extension of the series of phenomena presented to our view in the clairvoyance of animal and human instincts. And precisely because they form a continuation of this series (the reverberation in consciousness merely being stronger) do they lend support to the testimony of instinctive action to its own character, as their probability is itself strengthened by analogy with the clairvoyance of instinct. This, and the wish not to have missed an opportunity of lifting my voice against a fashionable prejudice, is the reason why I have allowed myself, in a scientific work, to make mention, if only incidentally, of matters so little credited at the present day.
We have to mention, in conclusion, one more species of instinct, which is likewise in the highest degree instructive with regard ta its essential nature, and at the same time again shows how impossible it is to avoid the hypothesis of clairvoyance. In the previous examples every being acted for its own interest, except in the case of the instinct of propagation, when such action is always for the benefit of other individuals, namely, the offspring: we have still to consider the cases, where among several individuals there exists such a solidarity of instinct, that, on the one hand, the performance of every individual stands all in good stead, and, on the other hand, valuable work can only be done by the consentaneous co-operation of many. In higher animals this instinctive reciprocal action also takes place, but it is here more difficult to distinguish from union as result of conscious volition, as language makes possible a more perfect communication of mutual plans and intentions. Nevertheless we shall again distinctly see this effect of an instinct of the masses in the origin of language and the great political and social movements in the history of the world. Here we are dealing with examples as simple and clear as possible, and therefore turn our attention to lower animals, where the means of communication, in the absence of voice, mimetics, and physiognomy, are so imperfect, that the harmony and blending of the performances of individuals in the main work cannot possibly be ascribed to conscious agreement through the medium of language.
According to Huber’s observations (Nouvelles Observations sur les abeilles), on the building of new combs a part of the larger working bees, which had taken their fill of honey, took no part in the ordinary occupations of the res
t, but kept perfectly quiet. After four-and-twenty hours, laminæ of wax had formed under their abdominal segments. This the bee drew out with its hinder foot, chewed, and formed into a band. The waxen laminæ thus prepared were then glued to the roof of the hive. When one bee had in this way used up its laminæ of wax another followed, which continued the same work. Thus was formed a small, rough, perpendicular wall, half a line in thickness, attached to the hive. Now came one of the smaller working bees, whioh had an empty abdomen, examined the wall, and made in the middle of one of its sides a shallow semi-oval excavation, piling up the extruded wax round its edge. After a short time it was relieved by another bee of alike kind, and in this way more than twenty bees succeeded one another. During this time, on the opposite side of the wall another bee had begun to make a similar excavation, but in correspondence with the edge of the excavation on the hither side. This bee, too, was relieved by fresh workers. Meanwhile other bees approached, drew waxen laminæ from under their abdominal segments, and therewith raised the edge of the little waxen wall. A succession of fresh workers continued to excavate the ground for new cells, whilst others persisted in the endeavour to bring those which had been already commenced into regular form, and likewise to prolong the prismatic walls of the same. All this time the bees on the opposite side of the waxen wall continued to work according to the same uniform plan, in most exact agreement with the working bees on the hither side, until at last the cells of both sides were finished in all their admirable regularity, and with a complete interlinking, not only of those cells in juxtaposition, but also of those opposed to one another by their pyramidal bases. Now imagine beings limited to sensuous means of communication, desirous of agreeing upon a common purpose and plan, how they would misinterpret each other’s intentions, would dispute and quarrel; how often something preposterous would be done, how work would have to be pulled to pieces and done over again; how for this business too many would press in, for that too few would be found; what a running to and fro there would be before each one had found his proper place; how now too many would offer to relieve their comrades, and now there would be a deficiency of hands, as we find in the combined efforts of human beings, standing so much higher in the scale of existence. We see nothing of all this among bees; on the contrary, it rather looks as if an invisible supreme architect had laid before the assembly the plan of the whole, and had impressed it upon each individual; as if every kind of labourer had learnt his destined work, place, and order of affording relief, and was informed by some signal of the moment when his turn came. But yet all this is mere result of instinct; and as by instinct the plan of the whole hive indwells in each single bee in unconscious clairvoyance, so a common instinct urges each individual to the work to which it is called, at the right moment; only by such means is the wonderful quiet and order possible. What conception one should form of this mutual instinct can only be cleared up much later on, but its possibility is now evident, since each individual must have an unconscious clear vision of the plan of the whole, and all the means available at the moment, of which, however, only that part which falls to his lot enters his own consciousness. Thus, e.g., the larva of a bee spins its silken cocoon, but other bees must set the enclosing waxen roof thereon; the plan of the whole cocoon is thus present to all concerned unconsciously, but each one only performs its own part in the affair with conscious volition. That the larva, after its metamorphosis, must be liberated from its cocoon by other bees has been already mentioned, likewise that the female bees kill the drones in autumn, so as not to have to maintain their useless messmates during the winter, and that they only allow them to live, if it be necessary to impregnate a new queen. While the eggs are maturing the workers are busy constructing cells for their reception, and usually for just the number of eggs the queen will lay, and, moreover, in the order in which the eggs will be laid, namely, first for the workers, then for the drones, then for the queens. Here again it is obvious that the instinctive actions of the workers are dependent upon concealed organic processes, which can manifestly only have an influence upon them through an unconscious clairvoyance. In the commonwealth of the bee, the productive and the sexual energy, elsewhere united, are personified in three kinds of individuals; and as in an individual the members, so here the individuals themselves stand in inner, unconscious, spiritually organic union.
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