Clever Hans Part 11

This self-deception is easily understood when we consider the two predominent characteristics of the man: the pedantry of the pedagogue, and his p.r.o.neness to be possessed by a single idea, which is a peculiarity of those of an inventive turn of mind. Adhering closely to a preformed plan, he carefully and narrowly circ.u.mscribed the scope and order of instruction. He would not go on to the number 5 if he were not thoroughly convinced that the 4 had been completely mastered, nor would he go on to a more difficult problem in multiplication, until he felt certain that Hans was entirely proficient in the problems of the simpler sort. If he had ever put a question to Hans before its regular order, he would have discovered, to his amazement, that there really existed no difficulties for Hans, and also that the horse really required no appreciable time to acquire new material. Mr. von Osten would have had a like experience if he had asked Hans concerning the value of Chinese coins or the logarithm of 1000. However, he never did anything of the kind, but always adhered closely to his plan. 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. 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. Thus the old man believed himself to be a witness of a continuous, organic development of the animal soul--a development which in reality had no other existence than in his own imagination.

Added to this pedantry was an extraordinary uncritical att.i.tude of mind, induced by his obsession by one favorite idea, which blinded him to all objections. He met objectionable observations on the part of others in one of two ways. One method was by attributing to Hans certain remarkable qualities, such as an extraordinary keenness of hearing and a wonderful power of memory, or again, certain defects, such as moodiness and stubbornness,--which as a matter of fact, were only so many back-doors by which he might escape from the necessity of offering adequate explanations. When Hans was able to give off-hand a gentleman's name which he had heard years before, it was called a case of extraordinary memory. When the horse insisted that 2 times 2 was 5, he maintained that it was an example of animal stubbornness. There was still a simpler method of overcoming inconvenient objections and that was by ignoring them altogether. The number 1, the simplest and most fundamental in the system of numbers, was one of the most difficult for Hans. (Page 67f.). Mr. von Osten was aware of this, but thought little of it. During the very first visit of Professor Stumpf, Mr. von Osten asked the horse: "By how much must you increase the numerator of the fraction 7/8, in order to get a whole number?" Hans repeatedly answered incorrectly and always tapped numbers that were too great. The same question was then asked concerning the fraction 5/8, and immediately there was a correct response, (the favorite number 3). Mr. von Osten said very navely: "In the case of the difference of 1, he always goes wrong. It was just what I expected." Mr. von Osten still relates that the distinction 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 selection of colored cloths is often a failure still, although it was one of the first things in which he was given instruction. 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, himself, the object of an enthusiastic following, the whole affair evidently took Mr. von Osten off his feet. Strangers took the further instruction of the horse in charge, and the rate and degree of Hans's progress became disconcerting.

One day it came to pa.s.s that the horse even understood French, and the old gentleman, whose apostolic exterior had always exerted a high degree of suggestion upon his admirers, in turn fell captive to the spell of retroactive ma.s.s-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", which promised no results whatever. "The animal's stubbornness must be broken," he commented. On the other hand, he regarded every criticism as a form of personal insult. And once he showed a member of the committee of the Society for the Protection of Animals the door, because the man, without having looked at his watch, wanted to show it to Hans and ask him the time. Many other critics had similar experiences.

Summarizing the remarks of this chapter, our judgment must be as follows: It is in the highest degree improbable that Mr. von Osten purposely trained the horse to respond to certain cues. It is also improbable that he knew that in every test he was giving signals, (although I can form no judgment concerning what happened after the publication of the latest report). To a.s.sume the contrary would land us in the midst of insoluble contradictions of the many ascertained facts in the case. The explanation here essayed, however, should prevent that.

To be sure, we, must then reckon with curious inner contradictions in Mr. von Osten's character. But such contradictions are to be found, upon earnest a.n.a.lysis, in nearly every human character. And Mr. von Osten may say with the poet: "Ich bin kein ausgeklugelt Buch. Ich bin ein Mensch mit seinem Widerspruch."

CONCLUSION

If we would make a brief summary of the status of Mr. von Osten's horse in the light of these investigations and try to understand what is the bearing upon the question of animal psychology in general, we may make the following statements.

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 a.s.sociate 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. This superiority is probably due to a different const.i.tution of the retina, and perhaps also of the brain.

Only a diminis.h.i.+ngly small number of auditory stimuli are involved.

All conclusions with regard to the presence of emotional reactions, such as stubbornness, etc., have been shown to be without warrant. With regard to the emotional life we are justified in concluding from the behavior of the horse, that the desire for food is the only effective spring to action.

The gradual formation of the a.s.sociations mentioned above, between the perception of movement and the movements of the horse himself, is in all probability not to be regarded as the result of a training-process, but as an unintentional by-product of an unsuccessful attempt at real education, which, though in no sense a training-process, still produced results equivalent to those of such a process.

All higher psychic processes which find expression in the horse's behavior, are those of the questioner. His relations.h.i.+p to the horse is brought about almost wholly by involuntary movements of the most minute kind. The interrelation existing between ideas having a high degree of affective coloring and the musculature of the body, (which is brought to light in this process), is by no means a novel fact for us.

Nevertheless, it is possible that this case may be of no small value, on account of the great difficulties which are usually met in the attempt to establish experimentally the more delicate details in this field.

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. It is possible (though the opposite is usually a.s.sumed), that our animals have suffered in the development of their mental life, as a result of the process of domestication. To be sure, in some respects they have become more specialized than their wild kin, (e. g., our hunting dogs), and in their habits they have become adapted largely to suit our needs.

This latter is shown by all the anecdotes concerning "clever" dogs, horses, etc. But with the loss of their freedom they have also gradually been deprived of the urgent need of self-preservation and of the preservation of their species, and thus lack one of the greatest forces that make for psychic development. And often their artificial selection and culture has been with a view to the development of muscle and sinew, fat and wool, all at the expense of brain development.[AP] Our horses are, as a rule, sentenced to an especially dull mode of life. Chained in stalls (and usually dark stalls at that,) during three-fourths of their lives, and more than any other domestic animal, enslaved for thousands of years by reins and whip, they have become estranged from their natural impulses, and owing to continued confinement they may perhaps have suffered even in their sensory life. A gregarious animal, yet kept constantly in isolation, intended by nature to range over vast areas, yet confined to his narrow courtyard, and deprived of opportunity for s.e.xual activity,--he has been forced by a process of education to develop along lines quite opposite to his native characteristics.

Nevertheless, I believe that it is very doubtful if it would have been possible by other methods, even, to call forth in the horse the ability to think. Presumably, however, it might be possible, under conditions and with methods of instruction more in accord with the life-needs of the horse, to awaken in a fuller measure those mental activities which would be called into play to meet those needs.

[Footnote AP: Buffon,[124] the great naturalist, expresses himself not less pessimistically in his own brilliant manner: "Un animal domestique est un esclave dont on s'amuse, dont on se sert, dont on abuse, qu'on altere, qu'on depase et que l'on denature."]

Though our investigations do not give support to the fantastic accounts of animal intelligence given by Brehms, they by no means warrant a return to Descartes and his theory of the animal-machine (as is advocated by a number of over-critical investigators). We cannot deny the validity of conclusions from a.n.a.logy without denying at the same time the possibility of an animal psychology--indeed of all psychology.

And all such conclusions indicate that the lower forms possess the power of sense-perception, that they, like us, presumably have at their disposal certain images, and that their psychic life is to a large extent also const.i.tuted of mere image-a.s.sociations, and that they too, learn by experience. Also that they are susceptible to feelings of pleasure and of pain and also to emotions, as jealousy, fear, etc., though these may be only of the kind which have a direct relation to their life-needs. We are in no position to deny _a priori_ the possibility of traces of conceptual thought in those forms nearest man in the scale--whether living in their natural manner or under artificial conditions. And even less so since the final word has not yet been spoken regarding the nature of conceptual thinking itself. All that is certain is that nothing of the kind has been proven to occur in the lower forms, and that as yet not even a suitable method of discovering its existence has been suggested. But the community of those elementary processes of mental life which we have mentioned above is in itself enough to connect the life of the lower forms with ours, and imposes upon us the duty of regarding them not as objects for exploitation and mistreatment, but as worthy of rational care and affection.

SUPPLEMENTS

SUPPLEMENT I

MR. VON OSTEN'S METHOD OF INSTRUCTION

[BY C. STUMPF]

The following is a report of the account, which Mr. von Osten gave Professor Schumann and me, of the method which he had used in the instruction of the horse, and which was ill.u.s.trated by actual demonstrations. I cannot testify, of course, that Mr. von Osten really did adhere to this method throughout the four years in which he tutored the horse, but I will say that I have several good reasons for believing that it was impossible for him to have trumped up this make-believe scheme afterward, merely to mislead us. Among the reasons are the following: He was always ready to give a detailed explanation of any question which we might interpose; the written statements of Major von Keller, who has known Mr. von Osten for a period of fifteen years; the testimony of General Zobel, who became acquainted with the whole process fully a year before any public exhibitions were given; the accounts given by the tenants in Mr. von Osten's house, who for years saw the process of instruction going on in the courtyard of the apartment building,--according to their account his intercourse with the horse was like that with a child at school,--he made much use of the apparatus and never did they notice anything like an habituation to respond to certain signals; and finally the appearance of the apparatus itself--some of which could not be bought at second hand--was most convincing.

The apparatus used for the work in arithmetic consisted mainly of a set of large wooden pins, a set of smaller ones (such as are to be had in toy-shops), a counting-machine, such as is commonly used in the schools, a chart upon which were pasted the numbers from 1 to 100, and finally the digits, cut large and in bra.s.s and suspended from a string. For the work in reading Mr. von Osten used the chart shown in the frontispiece of this book. Here we have the letters of the alphabet in small German script with numbers written below which serve to indicate the row, and what place in that row, the letters occupy. For tones, a small, child's organ was used with the diatonic scale C^1 to C^2, and for instruction in colors, a number of colored cloths were used.

The work in arithmetic began by placing a single wooden pin in front of Hans and then commanding him: "Raise the foot!--One!" Here we must a.s.sume that the horse had learned to respond to the command to raise the foot during the preceding period, when tapping in general had been taught. In order to get the horse to learn that he was to give only one tap, Mr. von Osten tried to control the tapping by means of holding the animal's foot, just as a teacher tries to aid a pupil in learning to write by guiding his hand. He repeated this exercise so often that finally the single tap was made. And always the right foot was insisted upon. Bread and carrots were the constant rewards.

Two of the pins were now set up and the command given: "Raise the foot!--One, two!" Mr. von Osten again aided the establishment of the proper a.s.sociation by using his hand as before. At the same time the two pins were pointed out, and the order was always without exception from left to right. Gradually it became unnecessary to touch the foot or to point to the pins, and instead the question was introduced: "How many are there?", in order that the horse should become accustomed to these words as an invitation to give the taps when he saw the wooden pins before him.

Then three pins were taken and the words "one, two, three" were spoken, and so on. In naming a number the preceding ones were always named along with it, in order that the normal order might thus be learned at the same time. Later the number alone, without the preceding ones, sufficed to elicit the proper number of taps. The last word of the series thus becomes characteristic of the series as a whole. It differs from all the others, and thus becomes the sign for the whole series of numbers thus named, each of which arises as a memory image at the proper place in the series and is accompanied by a tap of the foot. Thus, Mr. von Osten at any rate had accounted to himself for his success.

But Hans was not to acquire merely this relatively mechanical process of counting (hardly to be called counting), but he was to acquire also some meaning content for the number terms. For this purpose everything depended upon the concept "and". Only he who can grasp its meaning will be able to understand a number. 2 is 1 _and_ 1, 3 is 2 _and_ 1. Mr. von Osten had someone hold a large cloth before the horse, where the wooden pins usually were placed. He then had the cloth taken up and he would p.r.o.nounce emphatically the word "and". After this had been done a number of times, he put up two of the pins and obscured them by the cloth. The cloth was again raised and the word "and" p.r.o.nounced. Then Hans, as a result of his previous instruction (so Mr. von Osten thought) would give two taps at sight of the pins. The thing was repeated with three pins, then with one, and so on, and the horse would always execute the proper number of taps.

Now, five pins were set up, the three to the right being covered by the cloth. The horse tapped twice and Mr. von Osten said "two". Then the cloth was raised, Hans gave three further taps, and Mr. von Osten said "and three" with emphasis.

In this simple manner he tried to get the horse to understand that the three belongs to the two, and that both together make five. The image of the five pins as it was known from previous experience, was to be a.s.sociated with the combined groups of two and three, and conversely, it was to be reproduced when these groups were presented. Later the cloth and pins were omitted and the question was asked: "How much is two and three?". The horse tapped five times. It had learned how to add. Still this could be regarded only as a mechanical process, if the horse were able to add only those numbers which had been presented together one or more times in the manner just described. And so long as we remained within the first decade, we could get twenty-five binary combinations whose sum does not exceed 10 (counting inverted orders we would have forty-five binary permutations),--all of which might have been practised separately. But as a matter of fact, Mr. von Osten did not take this course, for as he himself says, he allowed Hans to discover a great deal for himself. "Hans had to develop the multiplication table for himself."--With larger numbers and more addends, the number of combinations becomes so great that there can be no doubt they were not practised separately.

Since, after all this preliminary instruction, Hans really began to give solutions of new problems, the master believed that this was proof that he had succeeded in inculcating the inner meaning of the number concepts, and not merely an external a.s.sociation of memory images with certain movement responses. But he always remained within the sphere of the ideas thus developed, and adhered closely to the customary vocabulary and its usage. Every new concept, each additional word was explained anew.

It would not be legitimate to condemn the whole procedure from the very beginning on the ground of the horse's lack of knowledge of language or of its use. It was Mr. von Osten's aim to convey to the horse an understanding of the language, by means of sense-presentations, adequate to give rise to the proper sense-perceptions. Helen Keller and other blind deaf-mutes have been educated to an understanding of the language without the aid of vision and hearing. They have come to it through the sense of touch alone. Everything depends upon whether or not the predisposition for it is present. And it was quite rational that Mr. von Osten should have chosen counting and arithmetical calculation as the processes by which to make his attack upon the animal mind, for as a matter of fact, nowhere else is it so easy to bridge the gap between perception and conception and nowhere else can the sign of success or failure be perceived so readily as in the handling of numbers. It is unfortunate, however, that he did not utilize these same signs for purposes of counter-testing also, as, for instance, by inquiring for the cube root of 729. But he was prevented from doing this by his close adherence to his pedagogical principle and by his unquestioning faith in the soundness of the entire procedure.

In teaching multiplication the counting machine was used. Two of the ten b.a.l.l.s on one of the rods were pushed far to the left, thus: 00. "How many are there?" Two taps. "Very well. That is once two." Another group of two was pushed to the left, at a short interval from the first group, thus: 00 00. "How many times two b.a.l.l.s are there?" was asked, with a decided movement of the hand toward the two groups. Two taps. "How many, therefore, are two times two?" Four taps.

The horse was supposed to learn the meaning of the word "times" by means of the spatial separation of the groups; he was to be taught to notice and to count the groups, and also the number of units in a single group.

Three times two then meant three groups with two units in each group.

The horse was supposedly aided by the following factors: the relative nearness of the units belonging to one group, as over against the s.p.a.ce interval between the groups themselves; also that the groups were pointed out as wholes in connection with the emphatic enunciation of the words 'once, twice,' etc.; and finally the touching and raising of the horse's foot by means of the hand until all the desired a.s.sociations of the ideas with one another and with the corresponding tapping movements were quite perfect.

Subtraction was taught in the following manner. Five pins were set up; the horse tapped five times. Mr. von Osten then removed two of them and said emphatically: "I take away,--minus. How many are still standing?"

The horse tapped three times. Here, too, there was at first some a.s.sistance by means of the hand to get the tapping.

In division four b.a.l.l.s were first pushed to the left end of the rod, thus: 0000. "How many b.a.l.l.s are there to the left?" Four taps. They were now divided into two pairs, thus: 00 00. Pointing to the units of one group, the teacher asks: "There are always how many in the group?" Two taps. Three groups were formed, thus: 00 00 00. "There are now how many b.a.l.l.s to the left?" Six taps. "And there are always how many in each group?", (pointing at them). Two taps. "And how often is two contained in six?", (pointing to the groups consecutively). Three taps, etc.

The ideas of 'part', of 'whole', and of 'being contained' were ill.u.s.trated by means of a chalk line which was interrupted in one or more places by erasure.

In all these operations Mr. von Osten adhered strictly to the rule, and required others to do so too, that the number upon which the operation was performed, must be mentioned first. Thus, one was not to say, "take 3 away from 7", but "from 7 take away 3." Otherwise, he believed, Hans would become easily confused. Also one was not allowed to say "to multiply", but to "take" a certain number so many "times". He, himself, never departed from this practice.

We will not go into the details of the method by which Hans was taught the meaning of the number signs, of the signs of operation, of the numbers above 10, or the significance of "digits", "tens", etc. Only this,--when in problems in addition the sum was greater than 10, the 10 was first tapped and then the remainder of the number added to the 10.

Thus: "You are to add 9 and 5. How much must you add to the 9 to have 10?" One tap. "But now, you were to add not merely 1, but 5; how much have you still to add to the 10?"--Four taps. In like manner, whenever the addends were below 20 or 30 and the sum above 20 or 30, Mr. von Osten would ask for the 20 or 30 taps first. He thought that he was thus giving his pupil an ever firmer grasp upon the principle of the structure of our number system, in which all higher numbers are const.i.tuted of tens and digits. For the same reason he used at first, instead of the words 'eleven' and 'twelve' ('elf' and 'zwolf' in the German), expressions which in English might be rendered as 'one-teen'

and 'two-teen' ('einzehn' and 'zweizehn' in the German); and only later, after the animal had seemingly mastered the meaning in question, did Mr.

von Osten replace them by the usual forms.

All this was beautifully conceived and might perhaps form the basis for the instruction of primitive races. But it is of immediate interest for us only because it enables us to better understand the origin of the conviction under which Mr. von Osten and his followers labored.