he questioner, have been reduced to a
single principle; no secondary hypothesis has been invoked, and but
slight place has been given to the element of chance. Nevertheless, it
may not be out of place to forestall two objections which might possibly
be raised. First, some may assert that it was through our
experimentation that the horse became mechanized and incapacitated as
regards conceptual thinking; that formerly he really could solve
arithmetical problems, and only later developed the very bad habit of
depending upon the signs which I gave him. This objection is to be
refuted in that I did not originate these signs, but first noted them in
Mr. von Osten, himself, and in that Hans still works as faithfully as
ever for Mr. von Osten. I have learned from many trustworthy witnesses
that the horse still continues to give brilliant exhibitions of his
"ability". If, on the other hand, anyone should assert that it was only
with us that Hans reacted to movements, but that with his master he
really thought and still thinks, then I must ask for proof. This latter
argument is by no means very original. When Faraday in 1853 proved
experimentally that "table-rapping" is the result of involuntary
movements on the part of the participants standing about the table, the
spiritualists asserted that his experiments had nothing in common with
their own proceedings, because his subjects (who by the way, had been up
to that time firm believers in table-rapping) probably did move the
table, they said, while they (the spiritualists) do no such thing.[96]

CHAPTER VI

GENESIS OF THE REACTION OF THE HORSE

In the preceding discussion we have regarded the achievements of the
horse as well as Mr. von Osten's explanation of them, as matters of
fact. Let us now consider the question: How did the horse come by these
achievements, and how did its master arrive at his curious theory in
explanation of them? Did he indeed seek to instill in the horse's mind
the rudiments of human culture through long years of painstaking
instruction in accordance with the method described in Supplement I
(page 245)? If that is the case, then, of course his hoped-for success
was only seeming, not real. Or did he, as so many critics aver,
systematically train the horse to respond automatically to certain cues,
and propound his theory merely for the purpose of misleading the public?
There might possibly be another alternative, viz.: was there a mixture
of ins