The Sense Of Orientation

( Originally Published 1919 )

Animals and Their Senses—Do Animals and Insects Possess a Sixth Sense ?—Experiments of Professor Fabre —The Wasps and Cylinders—The Striped Seal—Journey of a Cat—The Muskrat—Wisdom of Rodents—Opinion of Von Hartmann—In tuition—Goethe's Statement—Opinion of Professor Wallace—Unsolved Problems—Declarations of Dr. Johnson—And of Ferdinand Verre—Clairvoyance of the Shaman—Possible Solution.

Man, in the order of creation, represents the completion and perfection of the animal kingdom. At an early period in his existence his five senses were possibly more highly developed than those of animals. In addition to the possession of these senses he was endowed with other faculties which today belong to members of the lower animal kingdom. As certain wild animals can foresee and make provision for changes in weather, coming storms, and severe winters, and moreover have a sense of orientation, may not man also, in early ages, have been dowered with similar faculties which have become atrophied through disuse? If animals, even today, possess a sense of direction or orientation, may it not be assumed that primitive man also was gifted with this sense?

In order to satisfy himself that insects and animals possess a sixth sense or a sense of orientation, which directs them to find their way home after being transported to great distances, Professor Fabre, the French naturalist, captured a dozen wasps and painted their abdomens white. He then put each of them in a separate cylinder and placed all the cylinders in a sealed box which he carried to a forest two and a half miles away from the nest. Here he liberated them and walked back to the nest. In five hours, he informs us, they all returned.

They could not possibly find their way home by sight or any known physical sense so Fabre contends that wasps possess a sixth sense, which naturalists term sense of direction or orientation. To verify his conclusion, Fabre continued his experiments. He captured six other wasps, painted and carried them in sealed cylinders four miles into the heart of a populous city, and liberated them. They flew upwards, above the highest buildings, paused for a time and disappeared. Next day, Fabre visited the nest and found five of the six marked wasps he had carried away.

Take as another example the case of the striped seal recorded by Amundsen. This seal dives under a great floe and swims for miles until she is satisfied she is near a place sheltered from sea and wind. She now breaks the ice, and under the snow builds a vaulted chamber, where her young are born and remain till they are old enough to take to the water. The striped seal swims away every morning to fish in the open sea. She has absolutely no mark to guide her on the return voyage. It is pitch-dark in the water and under the ice, yet every night she returns home as if her way through the dark waters were illumined by a thousand lights. She swims straight and true for the exact spot where the hole was made, rises and feeds her young.

Take as another illustration this example, recorded by the "London Standard," May 16, 1917. Towards the end of April, a cat, owned by Squire Love, of Wycombe, was missing.

The Squire thought that his cat had been stolen or killed. Two weeks after the cat's disappearance Mr. Love received a letter informing him that the cat had returned to its first home in St. Neats, Huntingdonshire, where it had been raised and lived for two years. The distance travelled by the cat was ninety-nine miles, and as it had been brought in a bag to Wycombe in a closed car, how did it, through woods and plains and across streams, know the direction by which to travel ? No one will concede to animals a power of foreseeing changes in the weather, months before these changes occur, by means of inferences formed from a series of observations. By what faculty then is the beaver governed when he builds his house at a much higher level in anticipation of a flood that would sweep away his old dwelling, or whence comes the foreknowledge of the field mouse that, days before an inundation, leaves his home for higher and safer quarters?

During September and October, the squirrel, the musk-rat, and other rodents lay up for themselves enough food for a long or a short winter. How can the squirrel know, as he enters his first autumn, when the winter will set in, and in the absence of experience, how does he sense the duration, the mildness or severity of the winter and measure the quantity of food he must bring to his nest?

The power of forecasting the weather seems to be part of a sixth sense or an unconscious clairvoyance, of which the wild goose, when it wings for the South much earlier than usual, knows no more than the moose when, before an exceptionally cold winter, he grows a heavier pelt and thicker fur than is his wont.

What is the intermediate link between the unconscious cerebration of these animals and their acts? Is this prescience an unconscious memory or an attribute of their being, which is neither given directly to them through sense perception nor deduced inferentially through their understanding? Have animals, then, a sixth sense, and are they controlled by intuition, or by some faculty which may not inaptly be called a sixth sense?

Dr. Edward von Hartmann, in his profound work, " The Philosophy of The Unconscious," says that "all animals and some men possess unconscious knowledge which is not acquired through the senses, but which will be found to be in their possession, though obtained without the instrumentality of the senses, by experience or by exercise."

This "unconscious knowledge" von Hartmann calls clairvoyance I would term it a psychic or sixth sense. It is not an "illative sense," which Cardinal Newman defines to be "a reasoning faculty exercised by gifted and highly educated minds," nor the phronesis of Aristotle, which, in his Nichomachean Ethics, he calls "human forethought." It is not external prevision, nor instinct, which is a natural impulse impelling animals to do certain acts leading to their own welfare. Its nearest faculty is intuition, which is that which presents itself spontaneously to the mind without the assistance of reasoning or reflection. We know so little of this sixth sense, and the subject is so obscure and so mysterious, that it is extremely difficult to formulate any theory, lay down any principle, or advance any explanation.

Its highest development is what is known in Scotland and in Scandinavia as "second sight."

This "sixth sense" is much more in evidence in certain countries than is generally supposed.

An important argument in its favor is to be found in the testimony of eye-witnesses and statements of travelers bearing evidential value.

In close affinity with this sense of orientation is the power of "second sight," which enables certain individuals to see what is occurring in distant places. Von Hartmann and Sir Bernard Burke (in his "Vicissitudes of Great Families") give many examples of "second sight," and Goethe records an instance of clairvoyance which fell within his own experience and which he confirmed down to the minutest detail. He calls second sight "a condition of the unconscious mind, an automatic action of the human organism."

Facts connected with this class of phenomena are often ignored because they cannot be explained from a materialistic side, are not in harmony with human experience, and cannot be proved by the inductive or experimental method, as though the last contention is not equally impossible when applied to morals, social science, and politics.

No one has been able to explain why all male cats with blue eyes and white color are deaf, or why female cats with tortoise shell markings are unable to hear. Equally remarkable and impossible of explanation is that the young of white, pale-blue, yellow-tinted, or dun pigeons of all breeds are born naked, while the young of all other colors are covered with clown. This is a case, as Professor Wallace remarks, where color seems of more physiological importance than all the structural differences between the varieties and breeds of pigeons.

Nor can anyone give a reason why the element in yellow phosphorus is an active poison, while the same element in red is harmless.

Again, Professor Tidy declares that peperine is the poison of all poisons to keep us awake, while morphine induces sleep, though to the chemist and analyst these two poisons are of identical composition.

Dr. Johnson tells us in his book, "The Diseases of Tropical Climates," that in Virginia there is a plant locally known as the "paint-root," which, when eaten by any other than black pigs, colors their bones pink and rots the hoofs, and that black pigs alone can thrive where the root grows. In the Tarentina, a region in Spain, white sheep die if they eat the Hypericum Crispum—a species of St. John's wort,—while black sheep are immune to its effects. That we cannot understand nor explain some phenomena of animal, or human life, is not an adequate reason for rejecting them as impossibilities.

We have seen that animals are endowed with a highly developed sense of direction. It is now in order to inquire if man at any time in his history possessed this sense. That savages have some power of orientation in common with animals is admitted by Stanley, Burton, Bruce, Speake, and Grant. In civilized man this faculty is only just traceable. The power declined as his self-conscious mind assumed control, and is no longer essential.

The African savage and the Australian bushman, in common with animals, are still possessed of an intuition or a sixth sense which in civilized man has, through disuse, been atrophied. Ferdinand Verne, in his "African Wanderings," says that among the Bashutos he met several men who were gifted with second sight and a sense of orientation. Apollonius Dyscolus, the Alexandrian rhetorician, states that, to his own knowledge, when a company of Roman soldiers, in the reign of Adrian (170 A. D.), were lost and perishing of thirst in the Libyan desert, a party of camel riders came to their rescue. The riders declared they were sent from their camp, thirty-five miles to the north, by the Cadi who in a trance saw and described the region and the perishing soldiers.

Certain it is that today, as in past times, there are individuals who by sympathy, affinity, or other unknown quality, are able instantaneously to commune with intimate friends in other places, and this is practised by persons said to be en rapport, the one with the other. The limit to this we do not know, but it is not unlikely that telepathy, clairvoyance, orientation, and second sight are affinities.

In his " Travels in North America," Carver, a practical and experienced Englishman, says that, when he was with the Kilistinons—a Cree tribe—in 1767, famine threatened them unless some traders, whom they expected, came to their relief. A shaman or medicine chief, leaving his tent, called the people together and announced that at a specified hour, the next day, a canoe would arrive and report the coming of the traders. Carver and the band were on the beach the following morning, and at the hour foretold by the shaman, a canoe appeared in the distance, and, after beaching, its paddlers announced to the people the coming of the flotilla.

Sagard and the Jesuit historian and traveller, Charlevoix, record in their works equally singular instances.

The Atlantic Monthly, July, 1866, published an article written by General J. M. Brown, who vouches for the accuracy of every detail of the narrative. In 1855, General, then Captain Brown, was commissioned to find a band of Indians supposed to be hunting in the regions between the Mackenzie and Copper-mine rivers.

He was accompanied by a detail of voyageurs, many of whom through hunger, sickness, and fatigue abandoned the expedition. The Captain was seriously thinking of giving up the search when, unexpectedly, he met three hunters of the very band he was seeking. The warriors told him that they were sent out the day before to meet him by their medicine chief, who told them what route they should follow, the number of men in the party—and described their arms, dress, and personal appearance. When the Captain and his men were conducted to the village of the Indians, lie asked to see the shaman who had despatched the messengers. The shaman—an intelligent middle-aged man—appeared, and when asked how he knew of the coming of the white men, answered: "I shut my eyes, my spirit told me to look; I saw a place and four white men standing." He could or would offer no other explanation.

However much these examples of a sixth sense may tax our credulity, there are, in all literature, very many instances of a similar kind.

Now, what is the explanation of these phenomenal Are they caused by the subliminal or subconscious mind of the operator ? Psychologists tell us that there are certain undefined functions of the mind which act independently of our senses and are outside our ordinary consciousness. Father Maher, in his "Psychology," says : "It ought not to be forgotten that besides the mental operations which reveal themselves in consciousness, there is much evidence to establish the existence of vital activities of which we are not at times aware.

There is considerable dispute as to their exact nature and how their relation to the mind should be conceived. It is sufficient to call attention to their reality and to admit that, although unsusceptible of introspective observation, some of these activities are intimately connected with our conscious life."

There is apparently beneath our conscious mind a secondary and mysterious process of mind action, distinct from and independent of our primary self, as if there were two minds, a conscious and subconscious mind, each performing its own distinctive function. In ordinary terms the difference between the two may be stated as follows : The one or objective mind takes cognizance of the visible or objective world. It acts through the five senses, and its highest function is that of reasoning. The subjective or subliminal mind perceives things or persons, as do clairvoyants, independently of the senses. It experiences as if by intuition.

It sees without the eyes, the natural organs of vision, and, on occasions, apparently at least, leaves the body, travels to distant places, and, returning, records whom and what it has seen.

This brings us to the phenomenon of bilocation, with which we will presently deal.

There are so many well authenticated attestations to the existence of this psychic power or sense that they cannot be disregarded by impartial minds.

The man possessed of a sixth sense sees not only the direction in which he should travel, but the objective itself, his village, his house and its surroundings. The many examples recorded in Enemoser 's "History of Magic," and in Smedley's "Occult Sciences," of the reality of this sense, are persuasive if not convincing evidence of its existence.

It is much easier to deny the possibility of the acts than to account for them, but examples such as those mentioned are too numerous and too strongly attested by honest and impartial witnesses to be consistently denied. It is more rational to accept the facts than to conclude in spite of overwhelming testimony that those who have seen and testify to the occurrences are enthusiasts who were deceived, or are deceiving others.

There is such an intimate connection between clairvoyance, second sight, and orientation that it becomes difficult to draw lines of separation.

Possibly, however, savage man and wild animals have the five senses so highly developed and perfected that in the very long time demanded for that development the psychic faculties or sense perceptions may have also acquired a development resulting in clairvoyance, conscious or subconscious. In attacking this hypothesis as simply a connected chain of opinions, those who undertake to destroy a link of the chain should supply its place by a stronger link. Now that comparative psychology is reaching the dignity of a science, there ought not to be insuperable obstacles in the path leading to a solution of the problem.

It is time that a consistent theory should be propounded regarding the subject, if only on the foundation of the old adage that even a faulty hypothesis is better than none at all and that all progress must have a point from which it moves forward. When confronted with the problems of clairvoyance and orientation we are tempted to exclaim with Renan, "On est prisde vertige—one's head is seized with dizziness."