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The Server
This page intentionally left blank
The Server
A Media History
from the Present
to the Baroque

Markus Krajewski

Translated and with an Introduction by

Ilinca Iurascu

/ new haven & london

Published with assistance from the foundation established in memory of Calvin
Chapin of the Class of 1788, Yale College.

The translation of this work was funded by Geisteswissenschaften International—

Translation Funding for Humanities and Social Sciences from Germany, a joint
initiative of the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, the German Federal Foreign Office, the
collecting society VG WORT and the German Publishers & Booksellers Association.

English translation copyright © 2018 by Yale University. Originally published as Der

Diener: Mediengeschichte einer Figur zwischen König und Klient. © 2011 S. Fischer
Verlag GmbH, Frankfurt am Main.

All rights reserved.

This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any
form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright
Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from
the publishers.

Yale University Press books may be purchased in quantity for educational, business, or
promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected] (U.S. office) or
[email protected] (U.K. office).

Set in type by Newgen North America, Austin, Texas.

Printed in the United States of America.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017952552

isbn 978-0-300-18081-7 (hardcover : alk. paper)

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This paper meets the requirements of ansi/niso Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
“Server” should be neither feminine nor masculine.
Like “steer.”
—Eduard Hahn, 1896
This page intentionally left blank
Contents

Introduction to the English Edition: Jeeves Transatlantic

Ilinca Iurascu, ix

Introduction: Listen, James, 1

Part One Objects: Assistants, Analog

1 Masters / Servants: Everyone Is a Subaltern, 17

2 The Servant as Information Center, 86

3 In Waiting, 124

Part Two The Interregnum of the Subject

4 Holding the Reins: On Demons and Other Ministering Spirits

of Science, 169

5 Channel Service, 214

6 At the Stove, 250

viii Contents

Part Three Diener, Digital

7 Agents: The Lord of (the) Things, 297

Epilogue: Idle Time, 339

Notes, 357

Bibliography, 389
Index, 427
 Introduction to the English Edition:
Jeeves Transatlantic

The present translation of Markus Krajewski’s Der Diener does not come
unannounced: since the book’s original release, several transatlantic envoys have
set the scene for this publication, allowing its protagonists, human and digital
figures of service, to increasingly gain media-theoretical attention. Obviously,
the author repeatedly reminds us, they have always already been there, precisely as
media. To invoke Friedrich Kittler: “You never see them, and yet they’re constantly
doing something for you.” In other words, here we have the counterpart to the
classic image of the Weimar-era salaried masses described by Siegfried Kracauer:
not ‘hidden in plain sight’ but ‘ever-present despite their apparent absence.’
The focus on the (invisible) ‘operands of operations’ will be quite familiar to
those who have been following the growing number of German new media the-
ory studies translated in the wake of the English Kittler editions—monographs
by Bernhard Siegert, Wolfgang Ernst, Sybille Krämer, Cornelia Vismann, and
Markus Krajewski that have reshaped the disciplinary understanding of cer-
tain epistemic configurations and their media-technological networks of pro-
duction. The Server fits directly into this tradition, particularly in its cultural
techniques (Kulturtechniken) approach, which, to quote Siegert, implies a three-
fold undertaking: “Media are scrutinized with a view toward their technicity,

ix
x Introduction to the English Edition

technology is scrutinized with a view toward its instrumental and anthropologi-

cal determination, and culture is scrutinized with a view toward its boundaries.”
To put it in terms more closely related to Krajewski’s project, the book offers an
examination of service as a cultural technique and the server as its central media-
technical figure, in several intersecting configurations: the domestic transitioning
from the eighteenth-century court to the nineteenth-century bourgeois house-
hold; the “little helper[ ] of scientific work”; and finally (or rather, to begin
with), the electronic server as a prime mover of present-day information chan-
nels. Beyond these, Krajewski reintroduces the reader to a plethora of forgotten
or misremembered figures of subalternity, anchoring them firmly in the same
operational framework: Lessing’s Waitwell and Goethe’s Stadelmann, Maxwell’s
demon and Gauss’s Michelmann, dumbwaiters and Lazy Susan(s), library ser-
vants and internet bots. They all inhabit fictional, social, and architectural levels
of knowledge acquisition, storage, processing, and distribution—from the en-
filades of the baroque courts via the upstairs–downstairs layout of turn-of-the-
century mansions through the distributed application structures and digitally
connected smart houses of today. The world beneath and above our visual hori-
zon is teeming with the (invisible) hands and handles of service. In Krajewski’s
interpretation, they are the ones producing, steering, guiding, channeling, creat-
ing the conditions of possibility of knowledge in the first place.
It is certainly tempting to get lost in the dazzling richness of material the
book has to offer and enjoy its playful use of arcane sources, antihermeneutical
expositions of literary texts, blending of styles, discourses, theoretical models,
pop cultural and historical references—Jonathan Swift and Ludwig Boltzmann,
Jacques Tati and Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas and the Xerox PARC papers, Bis-
marck and The Smiths (the list could continue ad infinitum). But to stop here
would mean to miss the entire premise or to assume that the book proposes a
cultural history of subalternity, which traces the historical conditions underly-
ing the transformation of the human subject of servitude into the digital media
of service. If cultural and social histories of servants are indeed part of the ana-
lytical arsenal of this volume, they rather serve a different end. Similarly, if the
(often) anonymous, silenced, effaced subjects of power are retrieved from their
dark disciplinary corners, it is not so as to offer “an inverted image of authorita-
tive knowledge.” The questions asked by Brecht’s “worker who reads”—quoted
by Krajewski himself—remain as urgent as ever, and the subjects of service are
reestablished in the positions they rightfully inhabit as central agents and ac-
tors of history (of science, of literature, of culture, etc.). But the answers The
Server offers are no longer part of the same historical configuration. In fact,
they demand a radical rethinking of the concept of history. By proposing the
 Introduction to the English Edition xi

materiality of service and its operators as the basis of knowledge production,

The Server shifts the entire question of temporality into the media-technical
notion of recursion. To quote from the book:
How does the server essentially function, and what does it do to the users under
its command? In order to trace its operations one has to recur to the history of
service, so as to reconstitute, via its specific iterations, the various functions and
characteristics of subaltern spirits. With every iteration and each analytic descrip-
tion of a particular case study, the historiographic method comes a bit closer to
the heart of the matter. . . . With each new iteration, the analyzed scenarios are
further connected to the initial act of service—performed by the subalterns of the
electronic domain. In other words, the figure of recursion invokes itself. (157)
In other words, rather than simply jumping back and forth between analog
and digital formats or human and technical operators, the book proposes a
systematic historiographic effort that exposes both sides of the media-theoretical
coin at once, with an increasing degree of interpretive acuity. Methodologically
speaking, the analysis can thus draw on both Bruno Latour’s Actor-Network
Theory and Hans Blumenberg’s absolute metaphors to gradually reveal that the
designation “server” is not just a case of linguistic contingency. Rather, what
the process enables is “apprehending the current electronic communication
processes in cultural and media-theoretical terms by means of a conceptual-
historical analysis of the servant as metaphor and of the far-reaching, cultural-
historical tradition of servitude.” Each anecdote, each section and chapter, then,
represents iterations that add new epistemic components, until the termination
condition has been met at a certain level . . . and the process can start again.
The end goal is obtaining sufficient information “about the initial state—in this
case, about the question concerning the nature of electronic service and its his-
torical genesis” (158). Not accidentally, the original subtitle of Der Diener (Me-
diengeschichte einer Figur zwischen König und Klient) insists on the intermediacy
of the epistemic project: thus, the book does not promise to trace a trajectory of
service from “king to client” but rather the transfer between them.
But what of it? Or rather, what of us, the kings of yore and clients of to-
day, waited upon by armies of “little helpers” as we enter countless commands
on our computer screens? If indeed, as Kittler reminds us, “through the use
of keywords like user-interface, user-friendliness or even data protection”
humanity is “damned . . . to remain human,” the only hope of understanding
our own condition lies in examining those keywords precisely via the iterations
of the media history of service.
Ilinca Iurascu
This page intentionally left blank
 Introduction: Listen, James

Ich dien [I serve].

—motto on the heraldic shield of the Prince of Wales since 1346

“YOU’VE GOT MAI L”: A PROLOGU E AT TH E

POST OFFICE

“You’ve got mail.” The manager program sends a message and an audio alert.
It’s a familiar sound, the signal of a routine operation a computer performs a
few dozen times a day. Someone has sent an email, which is instantly trans-
ferred to its recipient, ready to be opened and read. The postman only rings
once; meanwhile, behind the scenes, hidden underneath the software, a com-
plex protocol has just concluded, and its only visible trace is that new mail alert.
What are the steps that ensure the message has been promptly delivered? Which
services and agents have allowed the virtual postman to ring the bell? With
a click of a button, the sender first confirms the dispatch in the email client
program, technically known as the mail user agent. In turn, the agent connects
with the mail transfer agent, commonly known as the mail server. Its task is to
ensure—after briefly communicating with yet another server, the domain mail

1
2 Introduction

server—that the message finally reaches its destination, with a little help from
the mail delivery agent and the mail retrieval agent. Various agents quietly toil
in the background; they come to the surface only in case of a communication
error, like the infamous mailer-daemon notification of transmission failure.
On the one hand, they acquire anthropomorphic qualities. An email client, for
instance, enters into an actual conversation with the mail server. After establish-
ing contact, the mandatory greetings are succeeded by a more casual, friendly
follow-up, like, Hello [uni-weimar.de], pleased to meet you. Beyond any pro-
tocol requirements, such programs continue to adhere to netiquette standards
long after all human actors have left the scene. On the other hand, names are
meaningful. We are therefore speaking of agents and demons. And even if they
are not invisible, such creatures go largely unnoticed.
The mail server as well as the DNS, the FTP, and the web server remain
inconspicuous. The internet seems to be populated by a dizzying multitude of
servers, which, not unlike demons, perform their tasks fairly discreetly behind
the scenes. Like Kafka’s ghosts who drink up the lovers’ written kisses, stealing
them before they arrive at their destination, the demons that lurk in the chan-
nels of communication grow in information labs and secure the circulation and
transmission of data by parasitically feeding off them. Unbeknownst to mes-
sage recipients and senders, they regulate data streams, letting them through
and simultaneously feasting on them; they act as guides, identify obstacles, and
search for detours. In short, they share the attributes of a reliable and, under
usual circumstances, inconspicuous communication server.
The function of such a server is immediately obvious: it consists of providing
assistance or delivering various services, such as downloading documents, trans-
ferring messages, or transmitting data. The virtual agent supplies information to
its clients but also provides them with things. Just think of amazon.com. Once
an order has been placed, the postman actually rings twice: first, to confirm the
online purchase and, second, when the package is delivered. The traffic with
information on the net is firmly based in this client–server principle. Clearly,
then, the server acts as a communication servant. What follows is an account of
this very subject, of its functions and history as well as its complicated, enter-
taining, and occasionally unexpected aspects.
At this point, one may certainly ask, what is the meaning of the term “server”
anyway? Is it an arbitrary notion, a vague formulation describing the current
state of communication? Or are we dealing with a stock metaphor like “virtual
desktop”? What does it actually mean when we refer to the basic mode of mod-
ern communication via the distinction between client and server and implicitly,
 Introduction 3

the relation between master and servant? The present study, which examines the
figure of the servant from several perspectives, ranging from architectural to lit-
erary and scientific contexts, will argue that the server metaphor involves much
more than just a cursory formula or a decorative analogy. The term has a rich
historical background. As a ministering spirit of communication, the server de-
fies definitions, since the figure it invokes—the servant—fulfills a multitude of
historical and media-specific functions. To speak with Hans Blumenberg, one
might call it an “absolute metaphor.” And it is precisely the long, multifaceted
history of that figure that may provide assistance in unpacking the metaphor.
Thus, the aim of the present book is to trace the intricate pathways of service in
a broad arc that extends from the present day to the baroque.

Classic servant types, such as the butler or the governess, the footman or the
cook-maid, are largely extinct nowadays, at least in human form. Historians
treat domestics and factotums as more or less minor figures. In political science,
valets or bodyguards are seen as the underrated custodians of power acting on
the side stages of administration. In literature, the servant typically appears in
comedies in the shape of a petty buffoon. And in the sciences, helpers and lab
servants are almost entirely overlooked, and their productive contribution to re-
search is deemed negligible. All disciplines, without exception, treat the servant
as a figure of the past that has by now almost entirely lost its relevance. To sum
up: until now, the servant has been relegated, by definition, to a subordinate,
insignificant position. Its agency and functions have so far been researched only
sporadically and tangentially. They have never been systematically examined
across historical periods and disciplinary borders. Beyond the usual empirical
data, we still lack an approach linking central aspects of cultural history to the
key media practices of subalternity—an approach that may shed light on the
foundational role servants play in processes of cultural development.
The present book seeks to fill this gap in a twofold manner. On the one hand,
it traces the rich yet secret contribution of servants to processes of knowledge
production, their complicity with power, and their epistemic status. The study
aims to uncover their unique conceptual and media presence in order to provide
a broad cultural-historical survey that incorporates epistemological and media-
theoretical aspects. On the other hand, the goal is to determine the current im-
pact of the server as media concept, especially in the digital domain. The classi-
cal functions of the subaltern have long been delegated to an inscrutable mass of
machines, electronic networks, and standardized protocols which determine our
mode of communication—for instance, via the global interaction of (electronic)
4 Introduction

mailboxes. A closer look at the metaphors used to describe communicative pro-

cesses will uncover a vast spectrum of agents: demons continue to lurk in the
channels of electronic communication; invisible ‘ministering spirits’ keep at-
tending to the smooth operation and success of communication. After all, Sec-
ond Life is no longer the only domain where avatars can act as proxies or assume
an agency that goes far beyond the authority of their real-life masters. And, not
accidentally, the name of the so-called client–server model, the central mediator
of internet-based information traffic, points to the long tradition of the servant
in the act of communication.
In conclusion, this study will examine the role played by seemingly minor
helpers, servants, and assistants in the history of knowledge; it will identify their
central functions and achievements as media of knowledge production. “Media”
can mean things like instruments but also human beings, such as the lab servant
who actively contributes to scientific discoveries. Even if some readers may ex-
pect a different, more specific and precise definition, the media concept applied
here is intentionally broadly conceived. Consequently, the server / servant will
not be treated as an exclusively human subject. Neither will the sole focus be
on the development of objects and their increasing trend toward automatiza-
tion. The present book aims to bring the two discourses together in order to
broadly describe and analyze a gradual transformation from human to non-
human service-media. First, in part 1, the focus will be on human beings, then
on transitions in part 2, and, finally, on objects in part 3.
This study offers an account of the server from the present era to the ba-
roque. It postulates that the servant does not function merely as a medium but
increasingly also as a figure of exceptional importance in today’s digital contexts,
especially in the form of web servers. Organized into seven case studies that
follow the gradual transition of agency from human to nonhuman actors, this
study will provide a panoramic view of the birth of the digital server from the
spirit of the classic servant represented by domestics and valets. Here, the focus
will be on examining the roles assigned to the two media actors. Both, in fact,
function as agents of communication, enabling not merely the execution of
various operations but also the production of new knowledge: be it in the form
of a metaphor or, more concretely, as the result of their human or technological
activities. Despite occupying a seemingly peripheral position, the servant proves
to be a figure of critical importance. Its relevance will be duly acknowledged at
the end of this book, in the context of an epistemology of the marginal, in a
brief theoretical account on the productive force of secondary figures.
This study draws on specific examples from historical or philosophical sources.
But its aim is also propaedeutic: each of the seven chapters takes up a media
 Introduction 5

concept in order to illustrate various methodological instruments at work: the

use of recursion, of metaphor, the transfer of agency, or the productive instances
of interference. Thereby, the chapters also reflect on the different strands within
media historiography and, implicitly, on the contingent nature of historical writ-
ing. The analyses may thus ultimately provide the tools for a critical theory of
the media. Only such a broad range of theoretical approaches can convincingly
demonstrate how service carriers participate in the act of thinking. Therein lies
the didactic aim of this book. Furthermore, a comparative discussion of media
and cultural studies methodologies can also explicitly show that the figure of the
servant is a complex phenomenon, requiring a broad analytical framework and
multiple theoretical approaches in order to be adequately described.
The historical arc of this study stretches from the sovereign king of the ba-
roque era, with his lowly subalterns and high-ranking subjects, to the contem-
porary clients, the internet users who are still bound to their servers via a service
contract. What are the stages of this lengthy process of transformation? The
history of service can be broken down—at first roughly—into four main pe-
riods, marked by three major moments of upheaval. The first and longest of
them stretches from the abolition of serfdom to the French Revolution, when
the official end of the estate-based society also marks the start of a new stage: the
reduction of differences between rulers and servers in favor of the development
of a modern subject. The second period is dominated by intense debates around
the servant question, a subject taken up by the literature of the time as well—
from Johann Nestroy to Theodor Fontane. That period broadly overlaps with
the so-called long nineteenth century, when the formerly passive servants turn
into serving subjects and slowly begin to gain their freedom. The third period,
after the major rift caused by World War I, is marked by the oft-invoked disap-
pearance of the servant class. But only the human carriers of service functions
seem to vanish. Indeed, during the twentieth century, services begin to migrate
into the world of things: servants are exchanged for telephones and the laundry
day is replaced by the washing machine. The place of the subject comes to be
occupied by a third other, an entity that could be defined as a quasi-object. As
for the fourth period, that stage is currently unfolding under our very eyes: now,
the services performed by ‘inanimate’ things reacquire subject-like features, ei-
ther via a server or with the aid of electronic avatars, in the attempt to create
an alternate world in the virtual domain. Along with a selection of examples
from the Enlightenment and the age of Weimar classicism, the initial focus in
part 1, entitled “Objects: Assistants, Analog,” will be on the transition from the
royal absolutist court to the bourgeois culture around 1800, when the servant
function takes on a specific professional meaning. That transition also marks
6 Introduction

the ontic transformation of the object—the status held by the servant until the
French Revolution—into a bourgeois subject who officially acquires the right to
‘freely’ submit to his duties. In the shift from feudal order to bourgeois culture,
as late as the age of Enlightenment, the position of the servant leaves no room
for interpretation: “a servant was an object.” Part 1 will therefore first provide
a detailed analysis of the genesis of the modern servant during the eighteenth
century, showing how that figure differs from other types of subalterns.
Chapter 1 begins with a discussion of the terminology employed. The brief
history of service traced here will be accompanied by a systematic effort to find
what distinguishes the servant from related figures like the slave, the bondsman,
the apprentice, or the assistant, in order to then define, against this background,
what a servant actually is. Based on various external markers of distinction like
the livery, subalterns can be classified into (courtly) hierarchies whose logic and
spatial organization will be discussed using the examples of baroque palaces and
English manors. Last but not least, the chapter will analyze the figure of the
valet de chambre as well as the relation of subalternity as a general structure that
runs through all social ranks. A closer look at the royal court model will then
circumscribe the spatial logic of the subaltern. More particularly, it will show
how architectural standards correspond to the courtly ceremonial, and how the
servants’ paths across the secret corridors or their passage through the remote
sections of palaces and manors give rise to a full-fledged service architecture.
Thus the aim of the analysis is to literally locate its object of inquiry. In other
words, it seeks to outline a topography of subalternity, both visibly and invisibly
dominated by servants, and examine its representative spaces but also its hidden
nooks and crannies. The chapter will conclude with a few comments on why
service can be regarded as an exemplary cultural technique.
Besides offering brief insights into the common features of subalterns, such
as their famed invisibility or their secret economic strategies, chapter 2 examines
the figure of the servant as an information center, both in connection with and
as opposed to modern search engines. The chapter proposes an analogy between
the literary character Reginald Jeeves, the butler in P. G. Wodehouse’s stories,
and the search engine AskJeeves.com, which chose that literary figure as the pro-
totype of its corporate identity. The idea is that the techniques of information
retrieval, organization, and distribution which the classic butler or domestic
employs already act as a search engine avant la lettre. The claim will be further
illustrated with the example of the library servant and his transformation from
a subservient carrier and sorter of books to the powerful electronic library cata-
logue OPAC of today. Here, the library servant appears as a medium of transla-
 Introduction 7

tion, linking the (signatures of ) books, on the basis of identical topologies and
logistics of address, with the (specific locations of ) local users. Central to this
discussion is the principle of mediation which the servant embodies—both in
the electronic and the historical context.
Chapter 3 discusses the figure of the servant in literature. The focus here is on
the eighteenth century, via a close reading of Miss Sara Sampson. Lessing’s so-
called domestic tragedy will be interpreted as less a bourgeois drama than a real
tragedy concerning servants. The servant in literature will then be discussed in
the context of Goethe’s age and work relations during that time. The dramatic
and fictional characters will also be linked to real-world subjects. Paying close
attention to Goethe’s long list of servants (and especially to his valet Carl Sta-
delmann), the chapter will examine the articulation of power relations between
master and subject and, further, the topos of the world upside down, which
threatens to turn those power structures on their head. That topos will be con-
sidered in more detail against the background of Ludwig Tieck’s The Land of Up-
side Down (1799). The chapter will conclude with a discussion of mimetic desire.
Using examples from Goethe and Proust, the analysis will show not merely how
servants mimic the behavior of their masters but also how the actions subalterns
imitate come to affect, in turn, the models set by their superiors. Thus, the cen-
tral focus of this chapter is on recursion, a notion discussed both in the literary
examples offered here and in the historiographic context of the study itself.
Part 2, entitled “The Interregnum of the Subject,” consists of three chapters.
It examines the development and demise of the human servant as a bourgeois
subject during the long nineteenth century, that is, during the time between
the French Revolution and World War I. First it will offer a brief retrospective
of the foundation of the English Royal Society at the end of the seventeenth
century and the role of servants in the history of science. Central to this chapter
is the figure of the lab servant and his contribution to knowledge acquisition.
The subsequent chapters focus on the rise and fall of the servant during the
bourgeois era. In the wake of the political upheavals around 1800, the largely
disenfranchised subaltern is suddenly declared a bourgeois subject. But not for
long. A new process of transformation soon sets in, radically changing the sub-
ject status servants had just acquired, discharging them from their role as hu-
man actors. Central to this inquiry will be the gradual transition of the servant
into a technological form. Over the course of the twentieth century, that form
is increasingly defined by a profound media-technological shift from human to
machine, be it in public, in the case of telecommunications companies, or in
private, in the space of the electrified home.
8 Introduction

Chapter 4 focuses on the history of sciences, more specifically, on the lab,

as the operational headquarters of the marginalized helpers in the production
of knowledge. Following a brief history of demons and their central role in
thought experiments, the chapter draws parallels between the theoretical activ-
ity of the ministering spirits of science and the concrete, yet equally elusive
work of lab servants. These figures evince negentropic qualities. Without their
hidden yet constant (prep) work, any theoretical or experimental insight into
the laws of nature would prove impossible. Starting from the precarious rela-
tion between the public scientist and his invisible aides, the chapter will further
discuss the benefits of and issues with fictionality in the scientific domain. The
analysis will address the role of metaphors in the process of cognition, and the
productive difference between manual and mental work, which plays an es-
sential role in the case of lab servants. The chapter will also consider the extent
to which notions of fictionality and metaphoricity play an essential role in the
exact sciences.
Chapter 5 turns to the servants of (tele)communication networks, particularly
to their relation to the channel of information transmission. The central focus
here is the transformation of the conditions of communication and the replace-
ment of the classic server with technical media, in the introduction of electricity,
the telegraph, and the telephone in the nineteenth century. With the aid of yet
another scientific subaltern, namely Carl Friedrich Gauss’s institute assistant, the
chapter evokes a key moment in the development of modern telecommunica-
tions, an event that takes place in Göttingen in 1833. A threefold historiographi-
cal analysis will be undertaken here. The question framing the discussion is how
the same event can lend itself to different views according to the various media-
theoretical approaches employed. The aim is to reveal the contingent nature of
historical discourse and weigh the different outcomes against one another. As
the analysis shows, the servant figure is a full-fledged medium of historiogra-
phy. These observations also point to yet another process of transformation and
replacement of the subaltern. Looking at a marginal phenomenon, namely, the
case of epistolary curialia [Kurialien], the chapter examines how long-established
norms of conduct are altered under the impact of electrification. Taking as its
point of departure the relation of both the classic and the electronic server to
the channel of communication, the chapter closes with a commentary on the
phenomenon of interference, a notion that plays a significant role in the modus
operandi as well as in the historiography of the servant.
Chapter 6 shifts attention from the domain of telecommunications to the
space of the home, particularly the areas of the kitchen and the dining room.
Focusing mainly on the disappearance of the servant from the household, the
 Introduction 9

chapter retraces the gradual replacement of human domestics with technical

appliances in the process of automation, mechanization, and electrification.
The shift of subaltern functions from humans to things uncovers a vast process
of substitution, illustrated here with the history of the so-called dumbwaiters.
Using the examples of Thomas Jefferson’s revolving serving door and Gaston
Menier’s ‘first cafeteria,’ the chapter will discuss various kitchen and tableware
utensils that contribute to the pervasive disappearance of human servants from
the household. Michel Serres’s concept of the quasi-object will help explain the
central notion of delegation employed here.
Entitled “Diener, Digital,” part 3 concludes the study with the turn of in-
animate things into new types of agents that take their media functions into
the virtual domain. Starting from the premise that the electronic context col-
lapses the difference between human and nonhuman actors, as well as the clas-
sic dichotomy between subject and object, electronic subalterns may signal the
return of the classic servant, precisely because in the digital domain things now
become increasingly individualized. Indeed, there is a certain tendency to lend
subjective values to electronic things and objects. In the case of internet servers
or virtual worlds like Second Life, electronic avatars become both the witnesses
and actors of this development. To put it more concretely: the different media
functions traced and discussed in this history converge in the operations quietly
performed by digital servants, both on and behind the screen. Thus, the main
argument of this study is that, as human servants disappear, their prominent
functions are transferred or assigned to things. Similarly, the services once per-
formed by personal assistants, laboratory servants, or underlings are delegated
to technical devices and electronic forms. Clearly, then, these new actors have
long begun to quietly yet effectively run our daily lives as well as our modes of
communication.
Chapter 7 examines the forms subalterns assume under the conditions of
advanced technology. As servers, demons, or other virtual creatures, they work
without being seen or ever taking a break. By means of a comparative analysis
of early computing systems, the mainframes, and the first machines from the age
of personal computers, the discussion will focus on the conceptual and historical
transfer from servant to server. The analysis is based on fieldwork conducted in
California in the 1970s, when researchers at the legendary Xerox PARC center
take a closer look at the conditions of formation of electronic services. What de-
fines the communicative structure of the internet is a specific informational ar-
chitecture, the so-called client–server principle, developed in Silicon Valley after
1973. In the analysis of contemporary service structures, the chapter also raises
the question of metaphors, which enable innovative communicative structures
10 Introduction

in the first place. In this context, Hans Blumenberg’s theory of metaphorology

will ultimately help determine the productive epistemological value of the
ubiquitous servant metaphor in the digital domain. At the end of the media-
historical journey proposed here we find not merely the client, but, yet again,
the fundamental question about agency that traverses each and every service
operation from the baroque era to today: who controls whom, especially when
the operations of control appear to have long been superseded by machines?
Once more, it is the concept of metaphor that will provide the answers. Its ana-
lytical labor will make it possible to locate, regulate, and define the discourses
of digital service.
Finally, the epilogue will ask, what do machines actually do in their free time?
What happens when computers are idle or in standby mode? Are they bored? Or
are they working on an urgent problem not related to system maintenance? Can
a machine ever not do anything? And what can we say about computers, when,
not unlike their deserving human predecessors, they go idle or engage in acts
of disinterested pleasure? The discussion will recapitulate the various elements
identified as productive factors in the development of service from the baroque
to the present. Last but not least, those elements will help outline a brief episte-
mological theory of the periphery.
The temporal trajectory this book proposes, and its various theoretical and
conceptual perspectives, may seem excessive. Its gaps appear to greatly outnum-
ber its case studies. And yet, as one of the theorists quoted here puts it: “Let us
rejoice in this long chain of transformations, this potentially endless sequence
of mediators, instead of begging for the poor pleasures of adequatio and for the
rather dangerous salto mortale that James so nicely ridiculed.”

Methodologically, this study will draw on discussions of baroque- and

bourgeois-era service regulations as well as contemporary manuals of conduct
dedicated to both masters and servants. Apart from these, the analysis will cen-
trally focus on literary treatments of the servant, especially in fictional and dra-
matic works as well as in epistolary correspondences from the early modern
period onward. Working through close readings of literary texts, the study will
explore the typologies corresponding to each of the epochs discussed and thereby
find answers to an important question: what is a servant after all? The material
presented over the course of the seven chapters is certainly diverse, ranging
from archival documents, such as papers from Goethe’s estate and the closely
guarded Xerox PARC company archive, to diaries, literary sources, and man-
uals and instructions for kitchen appliances and computers, to (socio-)historical
and canonical theoretical texts. Implicitly then, the theoretical approaches will
 Introduction 11

also be diverse, yet not eclectic. Only by bringing together a range of different
analytical models, by pairing discourse analysis and metaphorology with media
studies and historiography does it become possible to engage with the histori-
cal, narrative, and theoretical complexity of such a vast topic as that of the ser-
vant. This book draws on a number of analytical approaches (by Michel Serres,
Hans Blumenberg, Michel Foucault, and others), but also on the methods of
the Actor-Network Theory (ANT) developed by Bruno Latour, Michel Cal-
lon, John Law, and Madeleine Akrich. ANT methodologies can shed light on
questions concerning the ‘life of things,’ whether in the context of seventeenth-
century labs, the electrified homes around 1900, or the operations performed by
electronic servers. The interaction of operators within their respective networks
can thus be represented in a way that allows for the study of service societies
and the complexities of their emergence. And, last but not least, the account
developed here follows an important ANT postulate according to which cogni-
tive progress results from the detailed description of a particular process. “The
explanation emerges as soon as the description is saturated.”
Over the past few decades a broad range of works have examined the role of
women in the profession, not least since, historically speaking, female servants
have almost always numerically exceeded their male counterparts. In this re-
gard, we may even speak of the theoretical underexposure of the functions and
activities associated with male subalterns. Thus, one might be tempted to em-
phasize the figure of the manservant instead and discuss not merely the figure
of the butler but also the rather marginalized case of the male domestic worker
in general. We may also recall that what we traditionally know of the servant
as a participant in processes of knowledge production has so far been predomi-
nantly associated with masculine subjects. But that is not the direction taken
here. The present study actually opts for a third approach: namely, it moves en-
tirely away from questions concerning gender difference and any historical lines
of inquiry that follow from that fundamental distinction. Instead, the figure
of the servant is treated at a more abstract level, where that particular kind of
difference is canceled out and other distinctions are foregrounded. Following a
trajectory that leads from electronic servers and virtual clients to royal servants
and back, the analyses are less concerned with questions of gender than with
the distinction between subject and object, between human and nonhuman
servants. The study of epistemological aspects associated with the figure of the
servant requires a certain shift of perspective. “ ‘Server’ should be neither femi-
nine nor masculine,” proclaimed the agrarian economist Eduard Hahn in 1896.
The media practices and functions of service examined here call for excluding
rather than privileging gender-related aspects.
12 Introduction

The history of service is vast and complex. Since it is anchored in a fun-

damental social relation, the cultural technique of service traverses the entire
course of history. For this very reason, the scope of the present study must
necessarily remain very limited. But even within such a narrow framework,
restricted as it is to the Western cultural-historical context, numerous aspects
have to be left out, or must be reduced to the selective use of a vast catalogue
of sources. This book draws primarily on sources and records from the Central
European and North American cultural contexts. Sociohistorical phenomena
from other regions such as Russia, China, and India may play into the general
theme of the work, but will not constitute its specific object of study.
The current phenomena of global migration of service employees and the
illegal exploitation of work relations do not fall within the terms of this study.
A primarily media-historical line of analysis will also not investigate the broad
range of specialized services available in the contemporary metropolis: a con-
cierge position in Manhattan, a pay-by-the-hour jogging partner or pro-
fessional dog walker, a bodyguard, or even an old-school English butler.
Clearly, yesterday’s services have not disappeared, even if the historical contexts
have changed. The gesture of hiring a maid nowadays is not divorced from a
rather questionable (hidden) agenda. Each of these aspects promises to offer a
fascinating analysis. But these lines of inquiry will not be followed here (if only
for reasons of space).
Neither the discourse of robotics nor the cinematic treatment of subalterns
can be extensively discussed here, even if film obviously offers a rich media-
theoretical platform and ample material for study. Some aspects will be tan-
gentially discussed, but there is certainly room for a study specifically dedicated
to servants as cinematic and televisual subjects. A list of titles could potentially
include Joseph Losey’s The Servant (1963); Robert Altman’s Gosford Park (2001);
James Ivory’s adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day (1993); or
Rodrigo Moreno’s less familiar but no less exquisite El Custodio (2006), about
an Argentinian politician who spares no effort to humiliate his bodyguard. Ca-
nonical motifs and aspects of service could also be examined in light of series
like Upstairs, Downstairs (1971–75), the less successful German Unter den Lin-
den (2006), or productions such as Adventure 1900—Life at the Mansion (2004)
[Abenteuer 1900—Leben im Gutshaus]. And last but not least one could mention
Alain Resnais’s L’année dernière à Marienbad (1961), where subjects endlessly
traverse the corridors of bourgeois interiors and where the servants’ perspective
overlaps with that of the camera. . . . But enough with the lists, with the ‘ifs’
and the ‘buts.’
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
explanation was, “Oh, w’en I goin’ right I feel good; but w’en I goin’ wrong I
oneasy.”

This natural feeling or impression of things beyond the range of sight, this
extra sense, or chumfo unity of all the senses, is probably akin to another
feeling by which the animal or man becomes aware of distant persons, or of
distant moods or emotions. The sleeping dog’s alarm beneath the weakened
derrick, or the sleeping Indian’s uneasiness near the doomed birch-stub, might
be explained on purely physical grounds: some tremor of parting fibers, some
warning vibration too faint for eardrums but heavy enough to shake a more
delicately poised nerve center, reached the inner beast or the inner man and
roused him to impending danger. (There is a deal of babble in this explanation,
I admit, and still a mystery at the end of it.) But when a man or a brute receives
[73]knowledge not of matter, but of minds or spirits like his own; when a mother
knows, for example, the mental state of a son who is far away, and when no
material vibrations of any known medium can pass between them,—then all
sixth-sense theories, which must rest on the impinging of waves upon nerve
centers, no longer satisfy or explain. We are in the more shadowy region of
thought transference or impulse transference, and it is in this silent, unexplored
region that, as I now believe, a large part of animal communication goes on
continually.

That belief will grow more clear, and perhaps more reasonable, if you follow
this unblazed trail a little farther.
[74]

1 For further example and analysis of the matter, see pp. 196–199. ↑
2 Crawford, Thinking Black (1904). ↑

[Contents]
IV
 Natural Telepathy

The way of animal communication now grows dimmer and dimmer, or some
readers may even think it “curiouser and curiouser,” as Alice of Wonderland
said when she found herself lengthening out like a telescope. But there is
certainly a trail of some kind ahead, and since we are apt to lose it or to
wander apart, let us agree, if we can, upon some familiar fact or experience
which may serve as a guiding landmark. Our general course will be as follows:
first, to define our subject, or rather, to make its meaning clear by illustration;
second, to examine the reasonableness of telepathy from a natural or
biological viewpoint; and finally, to go afield with eyes and minds open to see
what [75]the birds or the beasts may teach us of this interesting matter.

It seems to be fairly well established that a few men and women of

uncommonly fine nervous organization (which means an uncommonly natural
or healthy organization) have the power of influencing the mind of another
person at a distance; and this rare power goes by the name of thought
transference, or telepathy. The so-called crossing of letters, when two widely
separated persons sit down at the same hour to write each other on the same
subject, is the most familiar but not the most convincing example of the thing.
Yes, I know the power and the example are both challenged, since there are
scientists who deny telepathy root and branch, as well as scientists who
believe in it implicitly; but I also know something more convincing than any
second-hand denial or belief, having at different times met three persons who
used the “gift” so freely, and for the most part so surely, that to ignore it would
be to abandon confidence in my own sense and judgment. I am not trying,
therefore, to investigate an opinion, but to understand a fact.

To illustrate the matter by a personal experience: For many years after I first
left home my mother would become “uneasy in her mind,” as she expressed it,
whenever a slight accident or [76]danger or sickness had befallen me. If the
event were to me serious or threatening, there was no more doubt or
uneasiness on my mother’s part. She would know within the hour that I was in
trouble of some kind, and would write or telegraph to ask what was the matter.
It is commonly assumed that any such power must be a little weird or uncanny;
that it contradicts the wholesome experience of humanity or makes fantastic
addition to its natural faculties; and I confess that the general queerness, the
lack of balance, the Hottentotish credulity of folk who dabble in occult matters
give some human, if not reasonable, grounds for the assumption.
Nevertheless, I judge that telepathy is of itself wholly natural; that it is a
survival, an age-old inheritance rather than a new invention or discovery; that it
might be exercised not by a few astonishing individuals, but by any normal
man or woman who should from infancy cultivate certain mental powers which
we now habitually neglect. I am led to this conviction because I have found
something that very much resembles telepathy in frequent use throughout the
entire animal kingdom. It is, as I think and shall try to make clear, a natural gift
or faculty of the animal mind, which is largely subconscious, and it is from the
animal mind that we inherit it; just as a few woodsmen [77]inherit the animal
sense of direction, and cultivate and trust it till they are sure of their way in any
wilderness, while the large majority of men, dulled by artificial habit, go
promptly astray whenever they venture beyond beaten trails.

That the animals inherit this power of silent communication over great
distances is occasionally manifest even among our half-natural domestic
creatures. For example, that same old setter of mine, Don, who introduced us
to our fascinating subject, was left behind most unwillingly during my terms at
school; but he always seemed to know when I was on my way home. For
months at a stretch he would stay about the house, obeying my mother
perfectly, though she never liked a dog; but on the day I was expected he
would leave the premises, paying no heed to orders, and go to a commanding
ledge beside the lane, where he could overlook the highroad. Whatever the
hour of my coming, whether noon or midnight, there I would find him waiting.

Once when I was homeward bound unexpectedly, having sent no word of my

coming, my mother missed Don and called him in vain. Some hours later,
when he did not return at his dinner-time or answer her repeated call, she
searched for him and found him camped expectantly in the lane. “Oho! wise
dog,” said she. “I understand now. [78]Your master is coming home.” And
without a doubt that it would soon be needed, she went and made my room
ready.
If the dog had been accustomed to spend his loafing-time in the lane, one
might thoughtlessly account for his action by the accident or hit-or-miss theory;
but he was never seen to wait there for any length of time except on the days
when I was expected. And once (unhappily the last time Don ever came to
meet his master) he was observed to take up his watch within a few minutes of
the hour when my train left the distant town. Apparently he knew when I
headed homeward, but there was nothing in his instinct or experience to tell
him how long the journey might be. So he would wait patiently, loyally, knowing
I was coming, and my mother would take his dinner out to him.

In many other ways Don gave the impression, if not the evidence, that he was
a “mind-reader.” He always knew when Saturday came, or a holiday, and
possibly he may have associated the holiday notion with my old clothes; but
how he knew what luck the day had in store for him, as he often seemed to
know the instant I unsnapped his chain in the early morning, was a matter that
at first greatly puzzled me. If I appeared in my old clothes and set him free with
the resolution that [79]my day must be spent in study or tinkering or farm work,
he would bid me good morning and go off soberly to explore the premises, as
dogs are wont to do. But when I met him silently with the notion that the day
was my day off, to be wasted in shooting or fishing or roving the countryside,
then in some way Don caught the notion instantly; he would be tugging at his
leash before I reached him, and no sooner was he free than he was all over
the yard in mad capers or making lunatic attempts to drag me off on our
common holiday before breakfast.

That any dog of mine should obey my word, doing gladly whatever I told him,
was to be expected; or that in the field he should watch for a motion of my
hand and follow it instantly, whether to charge or hold or come in or cast left or
right, was a simple matter of training; but that this particular dog should,
unknown to me, enter into my very feeling, was certainly not the result of
education, and probably not of sight or sense, as we ordinarily understand the
terms. When we were together of an evening before the fire, so long as I was
working or pleasantly reading he would lie curled up on his own mat, without
ever disturbing me till it was time for him to be put to bed, when he would
remind me of the fact by nudging my elbow. But if an hour came when [80]I was
in perplexity, or had heard bad news and was brooding over it, hardly would I
be away in thought, forgetful of Don’s existence on a trail I must follow alone,
when his silky head would slide under my hand, and I would find his brown
eyes searching my face with something inexpressibly fine and loyal and wistful
in their questioning deeps.

Thus repeatedly, unexpectedly, Don seemed to enter into my moods by some

subtle, mysterious perception for which I have no name, and no explanation
save the obvious one—that a man’s will or emotion may fill a room with waves
or vibration as real as those streaming from a fire or a lighted candle, and that
normal animals have some unused bodily faculty for receiving precisely such
messages or vibrations. But we are not yet quite ready for that part of our trail;
it will come later, when we can follow it with more understanding.

Should this record seem to you too personal (I am dealing only with first-hand
impressions of animal life), here is the story of another dog—not a blue-
blooded or highly trained setter, but just an ordinary, doggy, neglected kind of
dog—submitted by a scientific friend of mine, who very cautiously offers no
explanation, but is content to observe and verify the facts: [81]

This second dog, Watch by name and nature, was accustomed to meet his
master much as Don met me in the lane; but he did it much more frequently,
and timed the meeting more accurately. He was nearer the natural animal,
never having been trained in any way, and perhaps for that reason he retained
more of the natural gift or faculty of receiving a message from a distance. His
owner, a busy carpenter and builder, had an office in town, and was
accustomed to return from his office or work at all hours, sometimes early in
the afternoon, and again long after dark. At whatever hour the man turned
homeward, Watch seemed to follow his movement as if by sight; he would
grow uneasy, would bark to be let out if he happened to be in the house, and
would trot off to meet his master about half-way. Though he was occasionally
at fault, and sometimes returned to brood over the matter when his master,
having started for home, was turned aside by some errand, his mistakes were
decidedly exceptional rather than typical. His strange “gift” was a matter of
common knowledge in the neighborhood, and occasionally a doubtful man
would stage an experiment: the master would agree to mark the hour when he
turned homeward, and one or more interested persons would keep tabs on the
dog. So my scientific friend repeatedly [82]tested Watch, and observed him to
take the road within a few moments of the time when his master left his office
or building operations in the town, some three or four miles away.
Thus far the record is clear and straight, but there is one important matter
which my friend overlooked, as scientific men commonly do when they deal
with nature, their mistake being to regard animals as featureless members of a
class or species rather than as individuals. The dog’s master always came or
went in a wagon drawn by a quiet old horse, and upon inquiry I found that
between Watch and the horse was a bond of comradeship, such as often
exists between two domestic animals of different species. Thus, the dog often
preferred to sleep in the stall near his big chum, or would accompany him to
the pasture when he was turned loose, and would always stand by, as if
overlooking the operation, when the horse was being harnessed. It may well
be, therefore, that it was from the horse rather than from the man that Watch
received notice when heads were turned homeward; but of the fact that some
kind of telepathic communication passed between two members of the trio
there is no reasonable doubt.

Some of my readers may make objection at this point that, though something
like telepathic [83]communication appears now and then among the brutes, it
should be regarded as merely freakish or sensational, like a two-headed calf;
while others will surely ask, “Why, if our dogs possess such a convenient
faculty, do they not use it more frequently, more obviously, and so spare
themselves manifold discomforts or misunderstandings?”

Such an objection is natural enough, since we judge as we live, mostly by

habit; but it has no validity, I think, and for two reasons. First, because such
animals as we have thus far seen exercising the faculty (and they are but a
few out of many) are apparently normal and sensible beasts, precisely like
their less-gifted fellows; and second, because the telepathic power itself, when
one examines it without prejudice, appears to be wholly natural, and sane or
simple as the power of thought, even of such rudimentary thought as may be
exercised in an animal’s head. As for emotions, more intense and penetrating
than any thought, it is hardly to be questioned that a man’s fear or panic may
flow through his knees into the horse he is riding, or that emotional excitement
may spread through a crowd of men without visible or audible expression. That
a dog should receive a wordless message or impulse from his master at a
distance of three or four miles is, fundamentally, no more unnatural than that
one [84]man should feel another’s mood at a distance of three or four feet.
Whether we can explain the phenomenon on strictly biological or scientific
grounds is another matter.
I am not a biologist, unfortunately, and must go cat-footedly when I enter that
strange garret. I look with wonder on these patient, unemotional men who care
nothing for a bear or an eagle, but who creep lower and ever lower in the scale
of living things, searching with penetrating looks among infinitesimal microbes
for the secret that shall solve the riddle of the universe by telling us what life is.
And because man is everywhere the same, watching these exploring biologists
I remember the curious theology of certain South-Pacific savages, who say
that God made all things, the stars and the world and the living man; but we
cannot see Him because He is so very small, because a dancing mote or a
grain of sand is for Him a roomy palace. Yet even with a modest little
knowledge of biology we may find a viewpoint, I think, from which telepathy or
thought-transference would appear as natural, as inevitable, as the forthgoing
of light from a burning lamp.

Thus, historically there was a time when the living cell, or the cell-of-life, as
one biologist calls it with rare distinction, was sensitive only to pressure;
[85]when in its darkness it knew of an external world only by its own tremblings,
in response to vibrations which poured over it from every side. Something
made it tremble, and that “something” had motion or life like its own. Such,
imaginatively, was the sentient cell’s first knowledge, the result of a sense of
touch distributed throughout its protecting surface.

Long afterward came a time when the living cell, multiplied now a millionfold,
began to develop special sense-organs, each a modification of its rudimentary
sense of touch; one to receive vibrations of air, for hearing; another to catch
some of the thronging ether waves, for seeing; a third to register the floating
particles of matter on a sensitive membrane, for taste or smelling. By that time
the cell had learned beyond a peradventure that the universe outside itself had
light and color and fragrance and harmony. Finally came a day when the cell,
still multiplying and growing ever more complex, became conscious of a new
power within itself, most marvelous of all the powers of earth, the power to
think, to feel, and to be aware of a self that registered its own impressions of
the external world. And then the cell knew, as surely as it knew sound or light,
that the universe held consciousness also, and some infinite source of thought
and feeling. Such, apparently, [86]was the age-long process from the sentient
cell to the living man.
Since we are following a different trail, this is hardly the time or place to face
the question how this development from mere living to conscious life took
place, even if one were wise or rash enough to grapple with the final problem
of evolution. Yet it may not be amiss while we “rest a pipe,” as the voyageurs
say, to point out that, of the two possible answers to our question (aside from
the convenient and restful answer that God made things so), only one,
curiously enough, has thus far been considered by our physical scientists. The
thousand books and theories of evolution which one reads are all reducible to
this elementary proposition: that the simple things of life became complex by
inner necessity. In other words, an eye became an eye, or an oak an oak, or a
man a man, simply because each must develop according to the inner law of
its being.

That may be true, though the all-compelling “inner law” is still only a vague
assumption, and the mystery of its origin is untouched; but why not by outer
compulsion as reasonably as by inner necessity? A cell-of-life that was
constantly bombarded by moving particles of matter might be compelled to
develop a sense of touch, in order to save its precious life by differentiating
such particles [87]into good and bad, or helpful and harmful. A cell over which
vibrations of air and ether were continually passing might be forced for its own
good to develop an ear and an eye to receive such vibrations as sound and
light; and a cell over which mysterious waves of thought and emotion were
ceaselessly flowing might be driven to comprehend that particular mystery by
developing a thought and emotion of its own.

I do not say that this is the right answer; I mention it merely as a speculative
possibility, in order to get our alleged scientific mind out of its deep rut of habit
by showing that every road has two sides, though a man habitually use only
one; and that Reason or Law or God, or whatever you choose to call the
ultimate mainspring of life, is quite as apt to be found on one side of the road
as on the other. Inner necessity is not a whit more logical or more explanatory
than external force or compulsion when we face the simple fact that an animal
now sees and feels in the light instead of merely existing in darkness, or that
primitive cells which were dimly sentient have now become as thinking gods,
knowing good and evil.

What this thought of ours is we do not know. Beyond the fact that we have it
and use it, thought still remains a profound mystery. That it is a living force of
some kind; that it projects itself [88]or its waves outward, as the sun cannot but
send forth his light; that it affects men as surely as gravitation or heat or the
blow of a hammer affects them,—all this is reasonably clear and certain. But
how thought travels; what refined mental ether conveys it outward with a
speed that makes light as slow as a glacier by comparison, and with a force
that sends it through walls of stone and into every darkness that the light
cannot penetrate,—this and the origin of thought are questions so deep that
our science has barely formulated them, much less dreamed of an answer. Yet
if we once grant the simple proposition that thought is a force, that it moves
inevitably from its source to its object, the conclusion is inevitable that any
thinking mind should be able to send its silent message to any other mind in
the universe. There is nothing in the nature of either mind or matter to preclude
such a possibility; only our present habit of speech, of too much speech,
prevents us from viewing it frankly.

As a purely speculative consummation, therefore, the time may come when

telepathy shall appear as the natural or perfect communication among
enlightened minds, and language as a temporary or evolutionary makeshift.
But that beckons us away to an imaginative flight among the clouds, and on
the earth at our feet is the trail we must follow. [89]

The question why our dogs, if they have the faculty of receiving a master’s
message at a distance, do not use it more obviously, is one that I cannot
answer. Perhaps the reason is obvious enough to some of the dogs, which
have a sidelong way of coming home from their roving, as if aware they had
long been wanted. Or, possibly, the difficulty lies not in the dog, but in his
master. Every communication has two ends, one sending, the other receiving;
and of a thousand owners there are hardly two who know how properly to
handle a dog either by speech or by silence. Still again, one assumption
implied in the question is that dogs or any other animals of the same kind are
all alike; and that common assumption is very wide of the fact. Animals differ
as widely in their instinctive faculties as men in their judgments; which partly
explains why one setter readily follows his master’s word or hand, or enters
into his mood, while another remains hopelessly dumb or unresponsive. The
telepathic faculty appears more frequently, as we shall see, among birds or
animals that habitually live in flocks or herds, and I have always witnessed its
most striking or impressive manifestation between a mother animal and her
young, as if some prenatal influence or control were still at work.
For example, I have occasionally had the good [90]luck to observe a she-wolf
leading her pack across the white expanse of a frozen lake in winter; and at
such times the cubs have a doggish impulse to run after any moving object
that attracts their attention. If a youngster breaks away to rush an animal that
he sees moving in the woods (once that moving animal was myself), the
mother heads him instantly if he is close to her; but if he is off before she can
check him by a motion of her ears or a low growl, she never wastes time or
strength in chasing him. She simply holds quiet, lifts her head high, and looks
steadily at the running cub. Suddenly he wavers, halts, and then, as if the look
recalled him, whirls and speeds back to the pack. If the moving object be
proper game afoot, the mother now goes ahead to stalk or drive it, while the
pack follows stealthily behind her on either side; but if the distant object be a
moose or a man, or anything else that a wolf must not meddle with, then the
mother wolf trots quietly on her way without a sound, and the errant cub falls
into place as if he had understood her silent command.

You may observe the same phenomenon of silent order and ready obedience
nearer home, if you have patience to watch day after day at a burrow of young
foxes. I have spent hours by different dens, and have repeatedly witnessed
what seemed to be excellent discipline; but I have never yet [91]heard a vixen
utter a growl or cry or warning of any kind. That audible communication comes
later, when the cubs begin to hunt for themselves; and then you will often hear
the mother’s querulous squall or the cubs’ impatient crying when they are
separated in the dark woods. While the den is their home (they seldom enter it
after they once roam abroad) silence is the rule, and that silence is most
eloquent. For hours at a stretch the cubs romp lustily in the afternoon
sunshine, some stalking imaginary mice or grasshoppers, others challenging
their mates to mock fights or mock hunting; and the most striking feature of the
exercise, after you have become familiar with the fascinating little creatures, is
that the old vixen, who lies apart where she can overlook the play and the
neighborhood, seems to have the family under perfect control at every instant,
though never a word is uttered.

That some kind of communication passes among these intelligent little brutes
is constantly evident; but it is without voice or language. Now and then, when a
cub’s capers lead him too far from the den, the vixen lifts her head to look at
him intently; and somehow that look has the same effect as the she-wolf’s
silent call; it stops the cub as if she had sent a cry or a messenger after him. If
that happened once, you might overlook it as a [92]matter of mere chance; but
it happens again and again, and always in the same challenging way. The
eager cub suddenly checks himself, turns as if he had heard a command,
catches the vixen’s look, and back he comes like a trained dog to the whistle.

As the shadows lengthen on the hillside, and the evening comes when the
mother must go mousing in the distant meadow, she rises quietly to her feet.
Instantly the play stops; the cubs gather close, their heads all upturned to the
greater head that bends to them, and there they stand in mute intentness, as if
the mother were speaking and the cubs listening. For a brief interval that tense
scene endures, exquisitely impressive, while you strain your senses to catch
its meaning. There is no sound, no warning of any kind that ears can hear.
Then the cubs scamper quickly into the burrow; the mother, without once
looking back, slips away into the shadowy twilight. At the den’s mouth a foxy
little face appears, its nostrils twitching, its eyes following a moving shadow in
the distance. When the shadow is swallowed up in the dusk the face draws
back, and the wild hillside is wholly silent and deserted.

You can go home now. The vixen may be hours on her hunting, but not a cub
will again show his nose until she returns and calls him. If a [93]human mother
could exercise such silent, perfect discipline, or leave the house with the
certainty that four or five lively youngsters would keep out of danger or
mischief as completely as young fox cubs keep out of it, raising children might
more resemble “one grand sweet song” than it does at present.

So far as I have observed grown birds or beasts, the faculty of silent

communication occurs most commonly among those that are gregarious or
strongly social in their habits. The timber-wolves of the North are the first
examples that occur to me, and also the most puzzling. They are wary brutes,
so much so that those who have spent a lifetime near them will tell you that it
is useless to hunt a wolf by any ordinary method; that your meeting with him is
a matter of chance or rare accident; that not only has he marvelously keen
ears, eyes that see in the dark, and a nose that cannot be deceived, but he
can also “feel” a danger which is hidden from sight or smell or hearing. Such is
the Indian verdict; and I have followed wolves often and vainly enough to have
some sympathy with it.
The cunning of these animals would be uncanny if it were merely cunning; but
it is naturally explained, I think, on the assumption that wolves, [94]more than
most other brutes, receive silent warnings from one another, or even from a
concealed hunter, who may by his excitement send forth some kind of
emotional alarm. When you are sitting quietly in the woods, and a pack of
wolves pass near without noticing their one enemy, though he is in plain sight,
you think that they are no more cunning than a bear or a buck; and that is true,
so far as their cunning depends on what they may see or hear. Once when I
was crossing a frozen lake in a snow-storm a whole pack of wolves rushed out
of the nearest cover and came at me on the jump, mistaking me for a deer or
some other game animal; which does not speak very highly for either their
eyes or their judgment. They were the most surprised brutes in all Canada
when they discovered their mistake. But when you hide with ready rifle near
some venison which the same wolves have killed; when you see them break
out of the woods upon the ice, running free and confident to the food which
they know is awaiting them; when you see them stop suddenly, as if struck,
though they cannot possibly see or smell you, and then scatter and run by
separate trails to a meeting-point on another lake—well, then you may
conclude, as I do, that part of a wolf’s cunning lies deeper than his five senses.

Another lupine trait which first surprised and [95]then challenged my woodcraft
is this: in the winter-time, when timber-wolves commonly run in small packs, a
solitary or separated wolf always seems to know where his mates are hunting
or idly roving or resting in their day-bed. The pack is made up of his family
relatives, younger or older, all mothered by the same she-wolf; and by some
bond or attraction or silent communication he can go straight to them at any
hour of the day or night, though he may not have seen them for a week, and
they have wandered over countless miles of wilderness in the interim.

We may explain this fact, if such it be (I shall make it clear presently), on the
simple ground that the wolves, though incurable rovers, have bounds beyond
which they seldom pass; that they return on their course with more or less
regularity; and that in traveling, as distinct from hunting, they always follow
definite runways, like the foxes. Because of these fixed habits, a solitary wolf
might remember that the pack was due in a certain region on a certain day,
and by going to that region and putting his nose to the runways he could
quickly pick up the fresh trail of his fellows. There is nothing occult in such a
process; it is a plain matter of brain and nose.
Such an explanation sounds reasonable enough; too reasonable, in fact, since
a brute probably [96]acts more intuitively and less rationally; but it does not
account for the amazing certainty of a wounded wolf when separated from his
pack. He always does separate, by the way; not because the others would eat
him, for that is not wolf nature, but because every stricken bird or beast seeks
instinctively to be alone and quiet while his hurt is healing. I have followed with
keen interest the doings of one wounded wolf that hid for at least two days and
nights in a sheltered den, after which he rose from his bed and went straight as
a bee’s flight to where his pack had killed a buck and left plenty of venison
behind them.

In this case it is possible to limit the time of the wounded wolf’s seclusion,
because the limping track that led from the den was but a few hours old when I
found it, and the only track leading into the den was half obliterated by snow
which had fallen two nights previously. How many devious miles the pack had
traveled in the interim would be hard to estimate. I crossed their hunting or
roaming trails at widely separate points, and once I surprised them in their day-
bed; but I never found the limit of their great range. A few days later that same
limping wolf left another den of his, under a windfall, and headed not for the
buck, which was now frozen stiff, but for another deer which the same pack
had killed in a different [97]region, some eight or ten straight miles away, and
perhaps twice that distance as wolves commonly travel.

If you contend that this wounded wolf must have known where the meat was
by the howling of the pack when they killed, I grant that may be true in one
case, but certainly not in the other. For by great good luck I was near the pack,
following a fresh trail in the gray, breathless dawn, when the wolves killed the
second deer; and there was not a sound for mortal ears to hear, not a howl or
a trail cry or even a growl of any kind. They followed, killed and ate in silence,
as wolves commonly do, their howling being a thing apart from their hunting.
The wounded wolf was then far away, with miles of densely wooded hills and
valleys between him and his pack.

Do you ask, “How was it possible to know all this?” From the story the snow
told. At daybreak I had found the trail of a hunting pack, and was following it
stealthily, with many a cautious détour and look ahead, for they are
unbelievably shy brutes; and so it happened that I came upon the carcass of
the deer only a few minutes after the wolves had fed and roamed lazily off
toward their day-bed. I followed them too eagerly, and alarmed them before I
could pick the big one I wanted; whereupon they took to rough country,
[98]traveling a pace that left me hopelessly far behind. When I returned to the
deer, to read how the wolves had surprised and killed their game, I noticed the
fresh trail of a solitary wolf coming in at right angles to the trail of the hunting
pack. It was the limper again, who had just eaten what he wanted and trailed
off by himself. I followed and soon jumped him, and took after him on the lope,
thinking I could run him down or at least come near enough for a revolver-shot;
but that was a foolish notion. Even on three legs he whisked through the thick
timber so much easier than I could run on snow-shoes that I never got a
second glimpse of him.

By that time I was bound to know, if possible, how the limper happened to find
this second deer for his comfort; so I picked up his incoming trail and ran it
clear back to his den under the windfall, from which he had come as straight
as if he knew exactly where he was heading. His trail was from eastward; what
little air was stirring came from the south; so that it was impossible for his nose
to guide him to the meat even had he been within smelling distance, as he
certainly was not. The record in the snow was as plain as any other print, and
from it one might reasonably conclude that either the wolves can send forth a
silent food-call, with some added information, or [99]else that a solitary wolf
may be so in touch with his pack-mates that he knows not only where they are,
but also, in a general way, what they are doing.

In comparison with timber-wolves the caribou is rather a witless brute; but he,
too, has his “uncanny” moods, and one who patiently follows him, with deeper
interest in his anima than in his antlered head, finds him frequently doing some
odd or puzzling thing which may indicate a perception more subtle than that of
his dull eyes or keen ears or almost perfect nose. Here is one example of
Megaleep’s peculiar way:

I was trailing a herd of caribou one winter day on the barrens (treeless plains
or bogs) of the Renous River in New Brunswick. For hours I had followed
through alternate thick timber and open bog without alarming or even seeing
my game. The animals were plainly on the move, perhaps changing their
feeding-ground; and when Megaleep begins to wander no man can say where
he will go, or where stop, or what he is likely to do next. Once, after trailing him
eight or ten miles, twice jumping him, I met him head-on, coming briskly back
in his own tracks, as if to see what was following him. From the trail I read that
there were a dozen animals in the herd, and that one poor wounded brute
lagged continually behind the others. He was going on three legs; [100]his right
forefoot, the bone above it shattered by some blundering hunter’s bullet,
swung helplessly as he hobbled along, leaving its pathetic record in the snow.

On a wooded slope which fell away to a chain of barrens, halting to search the
trail ahead, my eye caught a motion far across the open, and through the field-
glass I saw my herd for the first time, resting unsuspiciously on the farther
edge of the barren, a full mile or more away. From my feet the trail led down
through a dense fringe of evergreen, and then straight out across the level
plain. A few of the caribou were lying down; others moved lazily in or out of the
forest that shut in the barren on that side; and as I watched them two animals,
yearlings undoubtedly, put their heads together for a pushing match, like
domestic calves at play.

Hardly had I begun to circle the barren, keeping near the edge of it but always
out of sight in the evergreens, when I ran upon a solitary caribou trail, the trail
of the cripple, who had evidently wearied and turned aside to rest, perhaps
knowing that his herd was near the end of its journey. A little farther on I
jumped him out of a fir thicket, and watched him a moment as he hobbled
deeper into the woods, heading away to the west. The course surprised me a
little, for his mates [101]were northward; and at the thought I quickly found an
opening in the cover and turned my glass upon the other caribou. Already they
were in wild alarm. For a brief interval they ran about confusedly, or stood
tense as they searched the plain and the surrounding woods for the source of
danger; then they pushed their noses out and racked away at a marvelous
pace, crossing the barren diagonally toward me and smashing into the woods
a short distance ahead, following a course which must soon bring them and
their wounded mate together. If I were dealing with people, I might say
confidently that they were bent on finding out what the alarm was about; but as
I have no means of knowing the caribou motive, I can only say that the two
trails ran straight as a string through the timber to a meeting-point on the edge
of another barren to the westward.

If you would reasonably explain the matter, remember that these startled
animals were far away from me; that the cripple and myself were both hidden
from their eyes, and that I was moving upwind and silently. It was impossible
that they should hear or see or smell me; yet they were on their toes a moment
after the cripple started up, as if he had rung a bell for them. It was not the first
time I had witnessed a herd of animals break away when, as I suspected, they
had received some [102]silent, incomprehensible warning, nor was it the last;
but it was the only time when I could trace the whole process without break or
question from beginning to end. And when, to test the matter to the bottom, I
ran the trail of the herd back to where they had been resting, there was no
track of man or beast in the surrounding woods to account for their flight.

One may explain this as a mere coincidence, which is not an explanation; or

call it another example of the fact that wild animals are “queer,” which is not a
fact; but in my own mind every action of the caribou and all the circumstances
point to a different conclusion—namely, that the fear or warning or impulse of
one animal was instantly transferred to others at a distance. I think, also, that
the process was not wholly unconscious or subconscious, but that one animal
sent forth his warning and the others acted upon it more or less intelligently.
This last is a mere assumption, however, which cannot be proved till we learn
to live in an animal’s skin.
 They stood tense as they searched the plain and surrounding
woods for the source of danger.

[102]