Clever Hans

“ Hans. If, for instance, he was able to indicate the component of a clang of three tones, it was not because he had the power to analyze the tone-complex, but because he was able to see the stops of the harmonica and was accustomed to give one tap for every stop which was closed. If he was able to tell time by the watch, it was not because he read it, but because he was always asked at the same hour of the day (which, of course, was contrary to fact) and because he had learned by heart the necessary number of taps. ”

“ Hans goes to Grettel.
When he got home he had the rope in his hand, but there was nothing at the end of it.
‘Good morning, Grettel.’
‘Good morning, Hans. What have you brought me?’
‘I ’ve brought you nothing. I want to take away something.’
‘I ’ll go with you myself, Hans.’
Hans ties Grettel to a rope, and leads her home, where he puts her in a stall, and ties her up. Then he goes into the house to his Mother. ”

“ The next question that arises is: why did only a few persons receive responses regularly from Hans, whereas the greater number were favored only occasionally? What was the selective principle involved? The answer is, that the successful person had to belong to a certain type, which embodied the following essential characteristics.
1. A certain measure of ability and tact in dealing with the horse. As in the case of dealing with wild animals, such as the lion, etc., Hans must not be made uneasy by timidity in the questioner, but must be approached with an air of quiet authority. ”

“ It was easy to obtain any answer one wished to a question, simply by focussing consciousness, with a great degree of intensity, upon the answer desired. Thus Hans answered my question: "How many angles has a hexagon?", first by 6, then 2, then 27, in accordance with the numbers that came into my mind. The animal always followed the ideas which were in the questioner's mind, and never his words, for it was with the former that the movements upon which the horse depended were bound up. ”

“ Hans's accomplishments are founded first upon a one-sided development of the power of perceiving the slightest movements of the questioner, secondly upon the intense and continued, but equally one-sided, power of attention, and lastly upon a rather limited memory, by means of which the animal is able to associate perceptions of movement with a small number of movements of its own which have become thoroughly habitual.
The horse's ability to perceive movements greatly exceeds that of the average man. ”

“ When he got home he related all that had befallen him, then the youngest boy, whose name was Hans, but who was always called Stupid Hans, came and asked his father if he might go with some apples. "Oh!" said the father, "thou would^t be just the right fellow for such a thing! If the clever ones can't manage it, what canst thou do?" ”

“ But do you know that every word we say and have said is written down, and will appear in the paper to-morrow? At every window you will see three clerks and an old alderman, and the alderman is the worst of all, for he doesn't understand anything." She said this to frighten Hans, and all the clerks giggled and upset the ink on the floor.
"Oh, these are the gentlemen, are they?" said Silly Hans; "then I suppose I must give the alderman the best;" and so he turned out his pocket and flung the mud right into his face.
"That was clever," said the king's daughter ”

“ He was soon able to imitate every one in the street; he could make fun of all their peculiarities and failings. 'He will turn out a clever fellow,' said people. But it was all that bit of glass in his heart, that bit of glass in his eye, and it made him tease little Gerda who was so devoted to him. He played quite different games now; he seemed to have grown older. One winter's day, when the snow was falling fast, he brought in a big magnifying glass; he held out the tail of his blue coat, and let the snow flakes fall upon it. ”

“ Let us turn now, from the tests in counting and computation to those in reading. We have seen that Hans manifested his seeming knowledge of language symbols in a threefold manner: he might approach a slate on which was written the symbol asked for, or he would indicate its location in a series of slates by means of tapping, or finally by means of so-called spelling of the word which was written upon a slate or placard. The responses by means of approaching a placard were very often unsuccessful, while indications by means of tapping were scarcely ever unsuccessful. ”

“ Mr. von Osten's apparent failure to elicit responses from the horse on topics of which it was ignorant is a beautiful illustration of the power of imagination. Mr. von Osten was convinced from the very first that Hans could not answer such questions. When the belief in success was lacking, of course there was not the requisite amount of concentration which, alone, leads to perceptible expressive movements and thus elicits a successful reaction on the part of the horse. ”

“ But we may console ourselves with the idea that the soul is most clever when it acts upon its own account; it is the body that makes it stupid.
As we have said, the watchman's body was taken to the hospital, and brought into the washing-room; and naturally enough the first thing they did there was to pull off the goloshes; and then the soul had to come back. It took its way directly towards the body, and in a few seconds there was life in the man. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Hans was requested to tap a certain number. Then the experimenter would step forward into the horse's field of vision and would put the same problem again. Since, in the tests of the first kind, Hans would [Pg 43] always make the most strenuous efforts to get a view of the questioner, and since he would rave and tear at the lines whenever the attempt was made to tie him,—a thing which he had never done hitherto,—it was impossible to determine in some cases whether or not he had seen the questioner during the process of tapping. ”

“ Is it possible that such a man, one who had all the pride of gentle birth, would become a trickster in his old age, all for the love of money?
The unreliability of Mr. von Osten's signs is good proof of their involuntary nature. Anyone who had seen him work with the horse could not have helped noticing that he certainly did not have complete control over the animal, and was not able, at a given moment, to make Hans perform a certain feat, as would have been the case [Pg 229] if the process had been one of "training". Again and again Hans failed to make the right count. ”

“ If one called him, while he was running about the courtyard, he paid no attention whatever, but if one beckoned to him, he came immediately. A raising of the hand brought him to a standstill. If one now stepped forward or pointed one's hand in that direction, he would step forward, or vice versa, he would step backward. By means of minimal movements of the head, of the arm nearest the horse, or of the whole body, Hans could be induced to assume the position one desired, without touching him or speaking a word. ”

“ I believe that my inability to evoke this specific reaction on the part of the horse, lay in the unfavorable position which I assumed, for it did not allow the horse to perceive my movements easily. For the same reason, Hans would at first indicate "no" and "zero" by turning to the right, seldom to the left.
As in the case of counting, a high degree of concentration was also necessary here, but with this difference, that here attention was directed to ideas present to the mind, ("yes", "no", etc.) ”

“ We shall begin with vision. That Hans was unable to select colored pieces of cloth merely upon the basis of color quality, without reference to their order, was shown in Chapter II. It would, however, be somewhat hasty to infer color-blindness from this fact, as did Romanes [32] on the basis of similar unsucessful responses on the part of a chimpanzee ("Sally" of the London Zoölogical Garden) . It is much easier to explain the failure of the horse than that of the monkey on the basis of intellectual poverty, a poverty of associative activity. ”

“ He required the questioner to say: "2 and 2", and never "2 plus 2". Nor were capitals or Latin script to be used in the written material. And if upon request he did so, he did it, without faith in the result, and hence there was failure. [Pg 237] And so he declared that "if you use Latin script Hans becomes confused and will be out of sorts for several weeks thereafter." Mr. von Osten is, and ever will remain, the schoolmaster, and will never become the psychologist, the "soul-vivisectionist". Who would work a child with such puzzling questions? and Hans was to him like a child. ”

“ When a position immediately behind the horse was taken—a somewhat dangerous proceeding, since Hans would at once begin to kick—no response could be obtained until he succeeded in turning far enough around to get the questioner within view. If he was restrained from turning completely around, he would at least turn his head,—and always to the right. One might even turn his back upon Hans during the tests, for the signal for stopping was not obtained from the face of the questioner, but from a movement of the head. ”

“ As soon as I closed the door, Hans refused to respond to the gentleman. Those who possessed sufficient power of concentration and the requisite motor tendency—the two characteristics mentioned under 1 and 2 above,—were able to obtain responses from the horse without any previous practice. Practice merely effected a more economic distribution of attention, so that the larger numbers especially were more successful as a result (pages 68 and 89) . ”

“ Hans responded first with 4 taps and then with 1. The tones c, e, g, a, (1, 3, 5, 6) were struck and the question asked, "Which tone must be eliminated to make the complex a chord?" In the tests in which the method had been procedure with knowledge, this question had always been answered correctly, but when procedure was without knowledge the responses were first 13, a tone which does [Pg 40] not exist for Hans, then 2, a tone which was not given in the clang to be analyzed, and finally 3, which was not the discordant tone. Hans's far-famed musical ability was an illusion. ”

“ This may partly account for the slight success of the horse in those tests in which he was required to select a piece of cloth of a designated color, in so far as these commands were not accompanied by calls or exhortations. Where human observers averaged eighty per cent correct responses (page 135) , Hans, under similar conditions was successful in only one-third of the tests. In his errors he was also wider of the mark than were the human observers (page 82) . The object perceived, to be sure, is a large one, viz.: the questioner, and he at close range. ”

“ Mr. von Osten, however, continued to exhibit Hans, and is probably doing so still, but in what frame of mind, I dare not judge. The spectators continue to look on, they are doubly alert to catch movements, and many of them have learned from Mr. Schillings what kind of movements they are to expect. But these "initiated" ones regularly return and declare that there is nothing in the movements and that they simply could not discover any aids given to the horse. ”

“ We must remember, also, that in the first publication regarding 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 examination 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 [Pg 235] ter, himself." ”

“ Clever Elsa burst into tears, and said: ‘If I marry Hans, and we have a child, when it grows big, and we send it down to draw beer, the pickaxe will fall on its head and kill it. So there she sat crying and lamenting loudly at the impending mishap. ”

“ And, returning to the considerations of the first chapter, if we ask what contributions does this case make toward a solution of the problem of animal consciousness, we may state the following: The proof which was expected by so many, that animals possess the power of thought, was not furnished by Hans. He has served to weaken, rather than strengthen, the position of these enthusiasts. But we must generalize this negative conclusion of ours with care,—for Hans cannot without further qualification be regarded as normal. Hans is a domesticated animal. ”

“ Hans was asked to go and point out the cloth of a certain color or the placard with a certain word upon it. If the cloth lay upon the ground, Hans picked it up with [Pg 79] his mouth and carried it to the questioner. If the cloth, like the placards, hung from the cord, he approached, pointed it out with his nose and then backed up to his original position. Before approaching the objects, Hans was required to indicate, by tapping, the number of the place in the series (counting from left to right) , which the cloth or placard occupied. Mr. von Osten never omitted this requirement. ”

“ But, in their turn, to this ignorant, freakish, wild little boy, the old women told stories, legends of troll and water-sprite, ghost and goblin and wizard, such as in those days the uninstructed imagination of the Scandinavian peasant teemed with.
When the child was eleven, his father, the gentle, consumptive young cobbler, fell deadly sick. Already Andersen had gained a reputation as a clever, uncanny boy ("he is cracked, like his grandfather," people said in Odense) ”