were disappointed with the report which it published, (Supplement II).
Some had been expecting a positive conclusive explanation; the
commission recommended further investigation. Some had asked for a
solution of the question whether or not the horse was able to think; the
commission maintained neither the one, nor the other. Some had indicated
as the main condition of a satisfactory investigation, that both Mr. von
Osten and Mr. Schillings be excluded from the tests; this was not done.

But the commission--which, by the way, did not give itself this name,
since it had been delegated by no one--undoubtedly had the right to
formulate its problem as it saw fit, and this was carefully expressed at
the beginning of its report as follows: "The undersigned came together
for the purpose of investigating the question whether or not there is
involved in the feats of the horse of Mr. von Osten anything of the
nature of tricks, that is, intentional influence or aid on the part of
the questioner." It was this preliminary question, and not whether or
not the horse could think, which the commission intended to answer. They
proposed to act as a sort of court of honor for the two gentlemen who
had been attacked. It is only in this light that even the _raison
d'etre_ of this body can be understood; for a scientific commission
composed of thirteen men, possessed of varying degrees of scientific
preparation, would have been an absurd travesty, and it will readily be
seen why the two men, who had been attacked, should not be excluded,
since it was they, and primarily Mr. von Osten, upon whom the
observations were to be made.

To be sure the commission did go one step beyond that which it had
proposed to itself, since it added that it believed that unintentional
signs of the kind which are at present familiar, were also excluded.
This led many to the unwarranted conclusion that the commission had
declared that Hans was able to think. Whereas the thing which might have
been logically suggested was that instead of the assumption of the
presence of independent thinking, the commission may have had in mind
unintentional signs of a kind hitherto unknown. I explained this to a
reporter of the "Frankfurter Zeitung" (Mr. A. Gold), who had come to me
for information, and in his article he made this hypothesis appear as
the most probable one.[A] Certain statements of the circus-manager
Busch, who speaks of a 'connection' of some sort, go to show that