REACTION OF THE HORSE 225 



beyond the usual content which in everyday practice is 

 put into the term " training ". Especially, when we cease 

 to regard the presence of purpose in the trainer's mind 

 (both in giving the stimulus as well as in the habituation 

 of the animal to them) as essential. When this is done, 

 the conception of training really resolves itself into the 

 much wider conception of habit-building, and the whole 

 discussion becomes merely a quarrel over words. In 

 order to obviate this, let us bear in mind that in the fol- 

 lowing, the word " training " is always taken in the usual 

 and narrower sense. The term then is still ambiguous 

 only in so far as it has not merely its original significance 

 of the act of purposely habituating (a person or an ani- 

 .mal) to perform certain definite movements, but by trans- 

 ference is also used to denote the effect, i. e., the occur- 

 ' rence of the movements in question. But this does not 

 really detract from the clearness of the concept itself. 

 Having cleared up the question of definition, let us re- 

 turn to our original problem: Does the hypothetical ac- , 

 count of the probable development of the horse's reac- ! 

 tions, which is given on pages 213 to 220, represent a j 

 case of training? This must be denied decidedly with ; 

 regard to the tapping of numbers and the solution of/ 

 arithmetical problems. For here the sensory stimuli which 

 were purposely given, i. e., the wooden pins, the balls, 

 and the spoken words, were intended to subserve the 

 function of arousing not movement, but thought proc- 

 esses in the horse; whereas the function of the horse's 

 movements was to give expression to these thought 

 processes. Of the really effective stimuli — the slight 

 movements on his part — the master was never conscious, 

 much less were they purposely made. The same holds 

 true for the " up " and " down ", " yes " and " no ", etc., 



