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8 The Sense of Locality, Hypnotic and Normal

The sequence ‘memory’ of the hypnotic mentality is another outstanding feature which distinguishes it from all normal human psychic processes, and which has done much to invest the state with that glamour of mysticism which darkened the pathway of the early explorers.

It will be remembered that in the last chapter an experiment was described in which a hypnotised girl recalled the sequence of twenty practically identical shells, and that the order of the sequence was instantaneously conveyed to her through the sense of touch alone. This does not represent an ultimate feat of the hypnotic ‘memory’. Far longer sequences can be remembered with the same spontaneity and quickness, and there is always the same ease of ‘recall’. Nor does it generally make any difference through which sense organ the stimulus is conveyed. A lengthy and arbitrary series can be registered just as effectively through hearing, sight, taste or smell as through the tactile sense.

The use of the word ‘memory’ must not be taken as an implication of the hypothesis that these two faculties are in any sense identical. It will be seen that, whatever else the ‘sequence memory’ may be, it certainly is not ‘memory’ as the term is understood in the human sense. Under hypnosis it is, like all other hypnotic faculties, to a certain extent influenced and coloured by the slumbering consciousness, and under these conditions there is a suggestive resemblance to normal memory. It achieves results compassed by normal memory, as wine resembles water. And there the parallelism ends. The means adopted by the hypnotic memory to attain these results - the methods of its reaction - differ as widely from those of ordinary memory as any two other psychic processes can differ.

The comparative investigation of ‘sequence memory’ behaviour makes it clear that this particular hypnotic psychological process is identical with the sense of locality, and this sense of locality, in its purest manifestation in lower animals, is neither identical with the causal memory nor even related to it. In fact, the two faculties invariably appear in the same species in an inverse ratio: the higher the causal memory, the more deficient is the sense of locality. Its highest manifestation occurs in the so-called ‘homing instinct’ common to most living beings, and no one who has devoted any attention to the behaviour of butterflies, for instance, will have failed to notice the perfection of the sense of locality in a mentality devoid of any trace of individual causal memory.

The nature of the sense of locality and its occurrence in higher forms will be rendered more intelligible by a systematic record of behaviour. For this purpose I shall describe the behaviour of an animal with very deficient causal memory (taking the chacma as a comparative standard) and compare its sense

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of locality with that of normal man, possessing the most perfect causal memory; and lastly I shall give an experimental record showing the operation of the sense of locality in man under hypnosis.

Deficient Causal Memory

A mare of average intelligence which we had an opportunity of observing gave birth to a foal. Two days after birth the foal was accidentally drowned. The mother was present, witnessed the drowning, the recovery of the dead body and the burying. Throughout these proceedings she showed great distress, and when the body was recovered she nuzzled it repeatedly, softly whinnying. After she had stood by and witnessed the burying, she commenced at once running about wildly, whinnying for the foal. She returned twice to the scene of the drowning but never to the grave. Her excited and distressed search continued for eight days. It was quite clear that only the maternal sense directed her behaviour. There was not apparent the least memory that she had seen her foal put underground.

Compare this with the behaviour of a chacma under very similar circumstances. A tame female in captivity gave birth and when the baby was a few weeks old it was severely injured in an accident. As its life was in danger it was forcibly removed from the mother, with the object of relieving its suffering and, if possible, saving its life. She showed even deeper distress at the parting than the mare had done. For three days she hardly ate at all, and kept ‘calling’ night and day. Whenever she caught sight of the person who had taken the baby from her, she showed intense excitement. On the third day the baby died, despite treatment. The dead body was placed on the ground before the mother. Her restless excitement at once subsided. She approached the body, making the chacma sounds of endearment, and touched it twice with her hands. She then put her face close to the back of the dead infant, touching its skin with her mouth, at the same time moving her lips in the usual chacma manner. Immediately afterwards she got up, uttered a succession of cries, walked to a corner and sat down quietly in the sun, apparently taking no more interest in the body. Half an hour later it was removed. She still showed not interest. She allowed the body to be taken up and when it was held under her very nose she showed no response. From the moment the dead body was shown to her, all her restless movements ended. She ceased ‘calling’, took an interest in her surroundings and again began behaving in the normal chacma manner.

It will be seen that in the behaviour of the chacma mother there was immediate reaction to a very complex casual memory. It seems to imply a comprehension of the significance of death and its consequence. In the mare there

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was no apparent casual recollection of so simple a fact as the final disappearance of the foal underground.

We will now see what the sense of locality is like in a mentality so deficient in forming the simplest casual memory:

The same mare was taken through a pathless tract of bushveld on a five days' journey. With her were a number of old hunters all possessing a high sense of locality, as this is reckoned among men. They steered their course by the sun chiefly. At their destination - the banks of the Limpopo - they travelled up and down the river for long distances and remained there almost two weeks. In the meantime heavy rain had fallen, destroying every vestige of spoor. They started back from a spot about twenty miles lower down the river than where they had first reached it on their northward journey. It was their intention to travel by as straight a course as possible to their original starting-point. It is a ‘bad’ tract of country, and to get lost in it is a matter of very little difficulty. Numbers of experienced hunters have had to bear witness to its dangers. Several have left their bones to bleach on its waterless sands. It is quite pathless, quite flat and thickly covered with bush and trees - an endless repetition of the same vistas. There are no outstanding landmarks anywhere, and one can never see farther ahead than a few yards.

The mare, carrying a pack and unattended, led the party. On the afternoon of the first day of their return journey she turned slightly out of her course and suddenly stopped. On coming up with her the men found, to their surprise, that the spot was their last camping-place on the northward journey. They had been under the impression that they were a long distance east of their route. The mare continued unerringly and stopped at each camping-place. To the experienced hunters who followed her, as they would have followed an infallible guide, it seemed nothing short of miraculous. If there had been any vestige of the spoor the thing was explainable, but after the heavy rains and the long time that had elapsed it is highly improbable that there was any scent, and there certainly were no tracks to guide her. But even if there had been a spoor and scent on their original route, how could one account for her reaching the last camping-place? She had steered her course to it, as with a compass, through country she had never seen before and in a direction she had certainly never travelled. And this was the same mare which could not remember that she had seen her foal put underground!

The sense of locality is therefore clearly not an attribute nor even an accompaniment of the causal memory. It is quite evidently a function of the instinctive soul, and the lower one descends in the scale of evolution, the more perfect it becomes. A bird bred and hatched in a certain locality, without any experience, travels across the world and in a year's time finds its way back infallibly to the very tree in the forest whence it started.

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Perfect Causal Memory

It can be experimentally proved that this sense of locality is more deficient in man than in any primate, and more deficient in cultured than in primitive man. It is far less active in the lower primates than in the higher mammalia, and apparently more perfect in the birds than in the mammalia. It is, therefore, as far as man is concerned, an anciently submerged psychic attribute, and so atrophied through disuse in cultured man, so completely inhibited by conscious memory, that its very existence is hard to detect. But it is still there and can be efficiently functional under hypnosis, as the following experimental investigation will show.

A nest of a small species of Namaqua partridge (Pterocles) was found on the Springbok Flats and its position indicated by three inconspicuous marks, all at long distances from the nest. Anyone knowing the marks, and with the assistance of a signaller, could find the nest. Without these aids it seemed humanly impossible ever to discover the nest again after one had gone any distance away from it. The country is so absolutely level that it can hardly be said to possess a watershed. It is in addition quite trackless, without a single conspicuous natural feature, and is covered with shrubs and grass all monotonously unvarying. Three eggs had been hatched just after the nest was found. The female bird was on different occasions disturbed at the nest. She invariably flew straight away at great speed until she vanished in the distance. The direction in which she flew was determined by the side on which the nest was approached. It seemed impossible that she could ever find the nest again by any of the ordinary psychic processes that a human being employs. Generally within half an hour she returned, flying swiftly and in an apparently straight line to the nest. After the duration of her absences had been ascertained, she was trapped and temporarily blinded. She was then taken a distance of three hundred paces from the nest, liberated and watched for about two hours. During this time she kept ‘calling’ at intervals and made three short flights, but not once in the direction of the nest. She was then caught and taken a distance of seven miles to a settlement where she could not have been before. Here her sight was restored and she was liberated. She flew straight back to the nest.

A number of different men and boys all long resident on the Flats and experienced hunters were then tested in the following manner:

Each one was taken to the nest and allowed to study the surroundings for as long and carefully as he liked. He was then taken in a straight line away from the nest a distance of two hundred yards and again at right angles to this line for another hundred yards. He was then told to find the nest. Out of five individuals thus tested, not one even came near the place. One, after wandering for some time - he admitted becoming gradually more confused - struck his own

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original spoor and so found his starting-point. But it was quite evident that no one could have found the nest by his sense of locality alone.

A boy of fourteen, born on the Flats and known to possess a high sense of locality, was then tested in the same manner. In three trials he never succeeded in getting near the correct locality. He was then hypnotised at the nest and led a long distance away while every device was adopted to obliterate his sense of direction. About a mile from the nest he was stopped and told to go back. He unhesitatingly did so in a perfectly straight line. It was ascertained that his ability to find the nest was not in any way affected by the distance he was taken away, nor by the nature of the route. Even where a series of circles were described, and numberless zigzags and angled courses, he was never in the least doubt as to the exact direction in which the nest lay. When he was led away blindfolded and the same methods of mystification were adopted, the moment his eyes were opened he invariably turned and walked in the right direction. If, however, he was led away blindfolded even a short distance and told to find the nest still blindfolded, he not only could not do it but as often as not walked directly away from it. And the same result followed if he was led away open-eyed for a short distance and then told to go back blindfolded.

It is evident, therefore, that in the hypnotised boy qualitatively the same incomprehensible faculty of location became functional under hypnosis as existed in the mother bird.

Another interesting fact that became apparent was the evident influence which sight exercises on the operation of the faculty. Trained pigeons if temporarily blinded cannot ‘home’. They can find their way back on fairly dark nights, but if the night is very dark they become confused and lose their sense of direction.

But the sense of locality is certainly not just a mere ‘matter of seeing’. It will be remembered that in the cases mentioned the subject ‘homed’ in a direction which led through localities never before seen. The ‘homing’ pigeon does this habitually. It is usually placed in a basket and carried inside a closed vehicle for great distances and returns by a direct route. Under such conditions there can be no ‘sight memory’ to guide it.

An explanation that suggests itself is this: Every movement through space, every turning of the body on its axis, is registered in the ‘subconscious’ mentality. So that the animal at the end of the journey, even when it has been shut up in a box, bears within itself a complete psychic chart of the route traversed. But, while initially this seems the only psychological theory, there are difficulties in the way. It cannot account for homing by a route different to the one traversed. In the case of the boy mentioned in Chapter 3, for instance, it is difficult to imagine how a complete psychic chart of a single line could confer all the benefits of a mathematically accurate geographic map.

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Further research will, no doubt, make clear a great deal that at present seems inexplicable in the sense of locality. In the present state of knowledge - if one is searching for marvels - it must always seem that this faculty of the instinctive soul is just as wonderful as any of the alleged exploits of telepathy and clairvoyance. Any animal possessing it must indeed be both clairvoyant and telepathic. Compared with normal human mental powers, it seems to border on the miraculous. It is equivalent to the attainment of knowledge through no known sense-organ. Its manifestations seem to justify the conclusion that there must exist a method of communication between mind and the external world other than through the only channels recognised by normal men.

To recapitulate briefly: The sense of locality in its most perfect form is invariably associated with the mentality in which the individual causal memory is least developed. The mare could not remember the simplest cause and effect and yet could steer her course unerringly through quite unknown country, and man, an animal possessing the highest causal memory, was not only unable to imitate this achievement but failed to understand the psychic process involved. And an investigation of the phenomena of hypnotism justifies the conclusion that the hypnotic memory is no other than the phyletic sense of locality particularly and temporarily liberated from the inhibitary control of the functions associated with the cerebral cortex. This inhibition of instinctive faculties, which we have already considered in the chacma, is therefore apparently a process inevitably associated with the development of the new mentality, and an examination of its occurrence in man renders more intelligible the nature of its beginnings in the lower primates.