What could have been his motive? Some thought they detected
an effort at pecuniary speculation, and an advertisement of June, 1902,
in the "Militaerwochenblatt", in which Hans was offered for sale, seemed
to confirm the conjecture. Mr. von Osten says that this occurred at a
time when he himself was sick and had become tired of the job. And why
should he not be willing to sell even a thinking horse, since he had
become convinced that any other could be instructed in the same way?
Besides, I have it on good authority that after the publication of the
September report he received several exorbitant offers; to mention only
one of them: a local vaudeville company was ready to pay him 30,000 to
60,000 marks per month. He refused every one of these offers. Some may
say that perhaps he wanted still more. But if he knew that the day of
judgment was close at hand, he also knew that before then, if ever, was
the sunshiny day on which to make his hay. A more auspicious time he
could never hope to see again.--Let us add, once more, that he never
charged admission to any of Hans's performances, although there were
many who were anxious to see the horse, and many enthusiasts had come
from a great distance. And finally, he was an old man, unmarried and
entirely alone, a property owner, but a man whose wants were few and
very simple--and his Hans was almost his sole companion. Is it possible
that such a man, one who had all the pride of gentle birth, would become
a trickster in his old age, all for the love of money?

The unreliability of Mr. von Osten's signs is good proof of their
involuntary nature. Anyone who had seen him work with the horse could
not have helped noticing that he certainly did not have complete control
over the animal, and was not able, at a given moment, to make Hans
perform a certain feat, as would have been the case if the process had
been one of "training". Again and again Hans failed to make the right
count. Before a large audience, one time, it took four tests to get him
to tap properly up to 20, and in all four I could note clearly that it
was Mr. von Osten who, by his involuntary premature movements, was the
innocent cause of the failure. On another occasion, after Hans had done
some beautiful work in fractions, in the presence of a large number of
spectators, the master asked him the simple question: "Where is the
numerator in a fraction?"--The answer was first: "to the left", and
then, after a severe repri