CESARESCO'S PSYCHOLOGY AND TRAINING OF HORSE 481 



such a criticism will not, of course, hold: for instance in the 

 description of gestures and caresses as inducing stimuli. In 

 the main, however, the reader is left with a feeling that the 

 description is couched too often in subjective terms such as: 

 "approval," "disapproval," "menacing." .... But the student 

 will find suggested, on the other hand, a wealth of problems 

 peculiarly significant. And their significance lies in this: that 

 the horse presents, probably more favorably than any other 

 form, opportunities for studying a mechanism of stimulus and 

 response approximating very closely the typical social situation. 



If Pfungst's work establishes the fact of a fine perception 

 of minimal movements of all kinds, as involved in the functionally 

 effective stimulus for responses in the horse, the treatise of 

 Cesaresco indicates what appears to be the salient characteristic 

 of the responsive phase, viz. : a finely balanced inhibition- 

 mechanism. It is this fact, plus the sensitiveness of the horse 

 to minimal changes in stimulation while the response is in prog- 

 ress, that makes its behavior so closely analogous to the reaction 

 of the human individual in the social situation. 



