238 THE HORSE OF MR. VON OSTEN 



tion }i, in order to get a whole number?" Hans re- 

 peatedly answered incorrectly and always tapped num- 

 bers that were too great. The same question was then 

 asked concerning the fraction ^, and immediately there 

 was a correct response, (the favorite number 3). Mr. 

 von Osten said very naively : " In the case of the differ- 

 ence of I, he always goes wrong. It was just what I 

 expected." Mr. von Osten still relates that the distinc- 

 tion between right and left created far greater difficulty 

 for Hans than all of the work in fractions, and that even 

 to-day it is not thoroughly established; also, that the se- 

 lection of colored cloths is often a failure still, although 

 it was one of the first things in which he was given in- 

 struction. It appears never to have dawned upon Mr. 

 von Osten that the arts in which Hans seemed to excel, 

 also formed the standing repertoire of so many trained 

 horses, regarding whom it was well-known that they 

 owed all of their cleverness to the training given them 

 by their masters. This fact alone should have induced 

 him to make some form of critical investigation. 



When Hans suddenly became a celebrity, and he, him- 

 self, the object of an enthusiastic following, the whole 

 affair evidently took Mr. von Osten off his feet. Stran- 

 gers took the further instruction of the horse in charge, 

 and the rate and degree of Hans's progress became dis- 

 concerting. One day it came to pass that the horse even 

 understood French, and the old gentleman, whose aposto- 

 lic exterior had always exerted a high degree of sugges- 

 tion upon his admirers, in turn fell captive to the spell of 

 retroactive mass-suggestion. He no longer was uneasy 

 concerning the most glaring kinds of failure. On one 

 occasion he even insisted upon the completion of a series 

 of tests in which procedure was " without knowledge ", 



