would have had a
like experience if he had asked Hans concerning the value of Chinese
coins or the logarithm of 1000. However, he never did anything of the
kind, but always adhered closely to his plan. He required the questioner
to say: "2 and 2", and never "2 plus 2". Nor were capitals or Latin
script to be used in the written material. And if upon request he did
so, he did it, without faith in the result, and hence there was
failure. And so he declared that "if you use Latin script Hans becomes
confused and will be out of sorts for several weeks thereafter." Mr. von
Osten is, and ever will remain, the schoolmaster, and will never become
the psychologist, the "soul-vivisectionist". Who would work a child with
such puzzling questions? and Hans was to him like a child. Thus the old
man believed himself to be a witness of a continuous, organic
development of the animal soul--a development which in reality had no
other existence than in his own imagination.

Added to this pedantry was an extraordinary uncritical attitude of mind,
induced by his obsession by one favorite idea, which blinded him to all
objections. He met objectionable observations on the part of others in
one of two ways. One method was by attributing to Hans certain
remarkable qualities, such as an extraordinary keenness of hearing and a
wonderful power of memory, or again, certain defects, such as moodiness
and stubbornness,--which as a matter of fact, were only so many
back-doors by which he might escape from the necessity of offering
adequate explanations. When Hans was able to give off-hand a gentleman's
name which he had heard years before, it was called a case of
extraordinary memory. When the horse insisted that 2 times 2 was 5, he
maintained that it was an example of animal stubbornness. There was
still a simpler method of overcoming inconvenient objections and that
was by ignoring them altogether. The number 1, the simplest and most
fundamental in the system of numbers, was one of the most difficult for
Hans. (Page 67f.). Mr. von Osten was aware of this, but thought little
of it. During the very first visit of Professor Stumpf, Mr. von Osten
asked the horse: "By how much must you increase the numerator of the
fraction 7/8, in order to get a whole number?" Hans repeatedly answered
incorrectly and always tapped numbers that were too great. The same
question was then asked concerning the fraction 5/8, and immediately
there was a correct response, (the