226 THE HORSE OF MR. VON OSTEN 



for here also Mr. von Osten counted upon the rise of the 

 corresponding concepts, and not merely upon a purely ex- 

 ternal, mechanical association of meaningless sounds with 

 certain movement-responses on the part of the horse. 

 This might also explain the genesis of Mr. von Osten's 

 belief that Hans was able mentally to put himself in the 

 place of the questioner, (page 19). At any rate it is 

 very improbable that he, Mr. von Osten himself, clearly 

 distinguished between the concept : " up " and the sound 

 of the word " up ". When we come to consider the 

 horse's selection of the colored cloths, and even more his 

 leaping and rearing, we find that the distinction between 

 " training " and " instruction " vanishes. If we had to 

 deal only with this class of achievements, we might per- 

 haps say, without fear of going very far wrong, that the 

 only difference between this and the ordinary form of 

 training was that Mr. von Osten had intended to train 

 the horse to respond to auditory signs (words), but had 

 unintentionally trained him to respond to visual signs in- 

 stead. But it is not this type of performance that has be- 

 come the bone of contention. Just as it would be mislead- 

 ing to maintain that Mr. von Osten's effort was nothing 

 other than a case of training, so it also would be unjustifi- 

 able to designate the results of his effort by that name, 

 since the really effective stimuli were not, as has been 

 pointed out just now, given intentionally. 



As far as the horse is concerned, it is a matter of in- 

 difference whether or not really effective stimuli were 

 given intentionally by the questioner. The animal knows 

 nothing of human purposes and if he were transferred to 

 a circus, he would find nothing new in the method em- 

 ployed there, except the use of the whip. We, however, 

 define our concepts from the human and not from the 



