The Savannah morning news., 1904-01-19
A SIXTH SENSE.

Those of us who have foregathered
-, terms of intimacy with men of a
'srv debased standard of civilization
non who, in fact, are as near to the
ak Of the Neolithic period as any
.ow remaining on this over-cultivated
a,er-traveled earth-have often been
i ,orred to recognize that they possess
come faculty which we, who have i'm
,roved upon our beginnings, are able
ppaither to exercise nor to understand.
~ feel them!" says the Semang, the
1ttle Negrit of the gle-smOthered
hiohIands of the Malay peninsula, and
Inns explains in no illuminatiVe fash
IAN his power of detecting the pres
once of strangers when they are still
car beyond the reach of sight or hear
ING or smell. Here is a creature so
nrin7itive that he has never got be-
rond the stage of the nomadic hunter;
~ lacking in the instinct for social
organization that he has never welded
he family into the clan, but has been
.ontent to head his own tiny group
when the time came for manhood and
,rating; so restricted in his ideas that
bIle. green and white are all known by
The same term-and this in land alive
Win varied color-and that his arith-
metical notions do not extend beyond
he mineral three. Yet he feels
things that we cannot feel and
"feels' them with a precision and GER
,aintv which with us belong only to
sight or to touch! 1t must be remem-
bered that from time immemorial, UNI
iii the white men came to bring peace
and order and monotony to a troubled,
distraught, but picturesque land, the
Semang had been hunted by those who
sought to sell his children into slavery.
He disliked this excessively, but ques-
lion whether he ever dreamed of quar-
reling with the DEGREES of fate. He
himself subsisted by hunting game. 1t
was probably to him quite natural that
others should live by chasing him. None
the less, the instinct of self-preserva-
tiou, and the constant Watchfulness
and fear in which his days were pass
Cd served doubtless to develop in him
the faculties best suited to his ends.
From this grim necessity there sprang
in the course of ages the faculty to
feel" without the aid of any of the
five senses, and the man who pos
sessed this ability in its most acute
form escaped cpture, and so lived to
propagate his kind, till in the fullness
of time most Semangs of the far inte-
riOr received as their Inheritance this
uncanny power
Quite recently, and not for the first
time, attention has been called to the
correspondence columns of the Specta
tor to the standing miracle which men
name the native telegraph" Most
people who have lived much among
brown, black or yellow folk have
known instances of the extraordinar-
lily rapid dissemination of news, usu-
ally of a calamitous character, in a
country where no means of speedy
communication were available. The
suggestion made by some writer from
South Africa that this is to Be ac-
counted for by a secret system of sig
nails transmitted from man to man
across the open veldt, will not bear
examination, for it is notorious that
in lands which are one vast tangle of
forest, with rivers for the only high
ways. news spreads no whit less
quickly and comes with equal ease
against and with the current. My own
experience, however, tends to the con-
clusion that such rumors usually lack
anything approaching to accuracy of
detail The NATIVES population knows
and says that such and such a thing
has befallen long before the word has
come in by mail or telegraph, but all
it appears to feel sure about is that
something disastrous has happened.
Known facts may aid a shrewd guess.
Danger may threaten from a certain
quarter, and that may serve as a hint
as to the direction whence the trouble
is to be expected, but above and be-
yond this there is, it would appear, a
fore-knowledge of the fact that some
thing momentous has occurred. Does
some native feel the shock of the
event just as the Semang feels" the
presence of the alien in his deep jun
gle strongholds? To me it seems that
this must be so; that one or more
natives, in whose acute perceptions
others have learned to repose conf
dence, experience in an intensified
form what we less sensitive Europeans
call presentiment, and putting two
ana two together, hazard a prophecy
which nine times out of ten proves to
De curiously near the truth.
rms sounds simple explanation, be-
cause a 'presentiment" is something
which comes within the experience of
most white men; but the native proph-
ecy of evil differs from that of the Eu-
ropean in that it is more often right
IMAM wrong. What it comes to- then
Is this: The primitive Semang says
frankly that he feels" that which, ac-
Cording to all known laws, it is quite
impossible that he should feel the
u
eastern bazaars feels" distant hap
Jennings also, and by means of a sim
liar faculty, but his somewhat higher
civilization tends TO blunt the ACUTE
ness of his perceptions, and gives him
but scant grasp of detail; the white
man, more insensitive still, feels" only
very vaguely. and often, it should be
noted. without sufficient cause. Have
we not in this. at any rate, the hint
Of faculty dulled by disuse or sharp
eped by constant and prolonged en-
ployment, but which must, none the
less, be recognized as actually extant
and capable, it may be of immense de-
velo0ment?
Personally, I seem to see yet another
trace of this faculty in a phenomenon
now generally, if vaguely, appreciated,
which has been forced upon the recog-
Lition of white men by many Europeans
become subject after living in more or
less isolated positions surrounded by
savage or barbarous folk. For in
stance, the innumerable whites who
have gone Fantee" in Western Afri-
ca, probably the most savage part of
the most savage of all the continents;
the two French officers who. in 1899.
made such trouble in the Hinterland
OF Lake Chad; well authenticated cases
OF white men who have INDUCED in
cannibal practices. and have even al
lowed human sacrifices to be offered to
them; many terrible excuses which oc-
cured at the time of the Indian mutt
ny; and the, to Americans, inexplicable
conduct of too many citizens of the
United States during the war in the
Philippines. There are also instances
Which I might quote from personal eX-
perience of the demoniacal cruelty OF