Chapter V · EXPLANATION OF THE OBSERVATIONS (continued 2)
Carl Leo Rahn translation
This, then, completes my explanation of the facts gleaned from observation and experimentation. It accomplishes all, I hope, that may be expected of an explanation. All the known achievements of the horse, all the successes and failures of the questioner, have been reduced to a single principle; no secondary hypothesis has been invoked, and but slight place has been given to the element of chance. Nevertheless, it may not be out of place to forestall two objections which might possibly be raised. First, some may assert that it was through our experimentation that the horse became mechanized and incapacitated as regards conceptual thinking; that formerly he really could solve arithmetical problems, and only later developed the very bad habit of depending upon the signs which I gave him. This objection is to be refuted in that I did not originate these signs, but first noted them in Mr. von Osten, himself, and in that Hans still works as faithfully as ever for Mr. von Osten. I have learned from many trustworthy witnesses that the horse still continues to give brilliant exhibitions of his "ability". If, on the other hand, anyone should assert that it was only with us that Hans reacted to movements, but that with his master he really thought and still thinks, then I must ask for proof. This latter argument is by no means very original. When Faraday in 1853 proved experimentally that "table-rapping" is the result of involuntary movements on the part of the participants standing about the table, the spiritualists asserted that his experiments had nothing in common with their own proceedings, because his subjects (who by the way, had been up to that time firm believers in table-rapping) probably did move the table, they said, while they (the spiritualists) do no such thing.[96]