234 THE HORSE OF MR. VON OSTEN 



" artificial " signals. The only example of involuntary 

 s^gns which. Mr. von Osten could have found in literature, 

 was that of Huggins's dog, which need not be considered 

 here, since, as was said on page 177, the really effective 

 signs in that case were not discovered^iA third means by 

 which Mr. von Osten might have gamed a knowledge of 

 the involuntary, natural expressive signs, would have 

 been by observing others. If he had had opportunity of 

 observing another von Osten and another Hans, he might 

 have gotten at the secret. But since this was not the 

 case, this possibility vanishes.M-A fourth possibility is 

 self-observation. We would then have to assume that 

 Mr. von Osten at first really tried to educate the horse 

 to think, but soon recognized the fruitlessness of such an 

 attempt. At the same time, he then would have noticed 

 his own involuntary movements and their effect upon the 

 horse, and having noted them, voluntarily reduced their 

 extent and utilized them in the training process. But 

 here also there is much that militates against this assump- 

 tion when we consider how great is the difficulty of con- 

 sciously refining movements which at first were rather 

 coarse, unless it be by the adjustment of the proper de- 

 gree of concentration of attention, a subtlety of method 

 of which we could hardly believed Mr. von Osten capable. 

 We must remember, also, that in the first publication re- 

 garding Hans which, by the way, marks the beginning 

 of his career, (" Das lesende und rechnende Pferd," by 

 Major-General E. Zobel, in the " Weltspiegel " of July 7, 

 1904), we may read the following: " He (Mr. von Osten) 

 is always willing to have the horse undergo an examina- 

 tion on the part of a stranger, and promises that after 

 Hans has become fairly well acquainted he will display 

 the same degree of efficiency as he displays with the mas- 



