were mechanically trained to respond to signals, are identical or
not.]

In spelling, Hans was quite indifferent whether his table with the
eighty-four number signs upon it stood before him, for he had no
knowledge of letters. Neither Mr. von Osten nor Mr. Schillings required
it, for the former knew the table by heart and Mr. Schillings told me
that before every test he made a note of the numbers which were
necessary to indicate the required letters, trusting in this way to
control the responses of the horse and never guessing that by so doing
he was making it possible for the horse to answer correctly. The
newspaper reports aroused much interest at the time by stating that Hans
was able to spell such proper names as "Plueskow" and "Bethmann-Hollweg",
even to putting in the difficult "w" and "th". The friends of Mr. von
Osten at the same time called attention to the exquisite auditory
acuteness of the horse which enabled him to perceive the aspirated "w"
and to discriminate between the "th" and "t", (the "th" is softer than
the "t" in German.--_Translator_). This explanation, of course, must
have appeared somewhat daring even at that time.

Hans was quite guiltless of the many limitations imputed to him
concerning his knowledge of symbols. That he was unable to read capitals
or Latin script was merely a vagary of the master, like the belief that
it was necessary to confine one's self in one's questions to a certain
vocabulary and to a certain form. Mr. von Osten's apparent failure to
elicit responses from the horse on topics of which it was ignorant is a
beautiful illustration of the power of imagination. Mr. von Osten was
convinced from the very first that Hans could not answer such questions.
When the belief in success was lacking, of course there was not the
requisite amount of concentration which, alone, leads to perceptible
expressive movements and thus elicits a successful reaction on the part
of the horse.

Mr. Schillings, owing to his great impressionability, remained long
under the spell of Mr. von Osten's point of view. Thus I find in the
record of the September-Commission that the question "How much is 3 plus
2?" was answered incorrectly by Hans, but he responded correctly the
moment Mr. Schillings replaced the word "plus" which was "tabooed", by
the word "and". For a long time also he could receive no response to
questions put in French until one day he made the discovery that,
curiously enough, the