favorite number 3). Mr. von Osten
said very naively: "In the case of the difference of 1, he always goes
wrong. It was just what I expected." Mr. von Osten still relates that
the distinction between right and left created far greater difficulty
for Hans than all of the work in fractions, and that even to-day it is
not thoroughly established; also, that the selection of colored cloths
is often a failure still, although it was one of the first things in
which he was given instruction. It appears never to have dawned upon Mr.
von Osten that the arts in which Hans seemed to excel, also formed the
standing repertoire of so many trained horses, regarding whom it was
well-known that they owed all of their cleverness to the training given
them by their masters. This fact alone should have induced him to make
some form of critical investigation.

When Hans suddenly became a celebrity, and he, himself, the object of an
enthusiastic following, the whole affair evidently took Mr. von Osten
off his feet. Strangers took the further instruction of the horse in
charge, and the rate and degree of Hans's progress became disconcerting.
One day it came to pass that the horse even understood French, and the
old gentleman, whose apostolic exterior had always exerted a high degree
of suggestion upon his admirers, in turn fell captive to the spell of
retroactive mass-suggestion. He no longer was uneasy concerning the most
glaring kinds of failure. On one occasion he even insisted upon the
completion of a series of tests in which procedure was "without
knowledge", which promised no results whatever. "The animal's
stubbornness must be broken," he commented. On the other hand, he
regarded every criticism as a form of personal insult. And once he
showed a member of the committee of the Society for the Protection of
Animals the door, because the man, without having looked at his watch,
wanted to show it to Hans and ask him the time. Many other critics had
similar experiences.

Summarizing the remarks of this chapter, our judgment must be as
follows: It is in the highest degree improbable that Mr. von Osten
purposely trained the horse to respond to certain cues. It is also
improbable that he knew that in every test he was giving signals,
(although I can form no judgment concerning what happened after the
publication of the latest report). To assume the contrary would land us
in the midst of insoluble contradictions of the many ascertained facts
i