176 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



ity. A horse can learn the significance of certain words which denote 

 pimple, definite reactions, as " gee," " haw," " get up," " whoa," and the 

 like. He can be taught to respond in special cases to a considerable 

 range of visual and auditory signs or cues, as may be observed in any 

 circus. He can discriminate strangers from his caretakers, alike by 

 smell and by sight, and also by the "feel" of the rein in driving him. 

 The dominant emotion of the horse is fear, and he is keen in noting the 

 characteristics of persons or places or objects which have been associated 

 in his experience with pain or terror. He is extremely cautious, which 

 keeps him ever on the alert, with the result that he will respond to 

 simple stimuli in the form of "lessons" much more readily than the 

 cow or the sheep, for instance. King is undoubtedly an average horse 

 in this respect. As a result of repeated "lessons," he has associated a 

 few visual and auditory signs with definite responses, and he has prob- 

 ably connected particular reactions with specific words, as " gentleman," 

 or " show the gentleman " which is, of course, but one word to him, de- 

 noting a specific reaction, just as "whoa" does. Unquestionably much 

 of his performance depends upon the peculiar vocal and bodily manner- 

 isms of his trainer. When these are removed, King is at sea, hopelessly 

 befogged when he is requested to do anything. 



Those who exploit the intelligence of the horse, and other animals 

 as well, usually try to show that they possess the traits of the human 

 mind, in that they can understand sentences in ordinary speech, can read 

 and spell and calculate numerically, can learn the names of people and 

 discriminate their character, can interpret facial expression, and so on. 

 Now, all these acts and processes demand a synthesis of particular ex- 

 periences which it is safe to say the equine brain is incapable of under 

 any kind or degree of education. If a horse could do these things, it 

 would cease to be a horse. The reason a horse is a horse psychically is 

 because it is limited to certain types of intellectual synthesis and affective 

 reaction, all of which have been determined by its ancestral history. It 

 would be just as sensible to say that a man could be educated to follow 

 the trail of a fox from the scent of its track, as to say that a horse, or 

 any other animal, can be trained to read or calculate sums or discern a 

 skeptic in an audience. This is not reflecting in any way upon the in- 

 telligence of the horse; it is simply discriminating between the char- 

 acteristic types of equine and of human intelligence. But if it were 

 not financially profitable for some persons to possess horses with " hu- 

 man intelligence," we probably should never be called upon to wonder 

 about them. 



