reatise is placed at the end, whereas
in the report of the commission it came first. This was brought about by
the change that was made in the way of stating the problem. Then the
question discussed was whether 'tricks' were involved; now the question
is: What is the mechanism of the process? The question of the good faith
of the master was taken up once more only because the facts that were
brought to light by the later experimentation seemingly brought forward
new grounds for distrust. But by placing this discussion toward the end
of our report we wished to indicate that everything that is said of the
present status of facts, is quite independent of the view taken
concerning Mr. von Osten. Even assuming that the horse had been
purposely trained by him to respond to this kind of signal, the case
would still deserve a place in the annals of science. For visual signs,
planned and practiced so that they could not only be more readily
perceived by the animal than by man, but could be transferred from their
inventor to others without any betrayal of the secret,--this would be an
extraordinary invention, and Mr. von Osten would then be a fraud, but
also a genius of first rank.

In truth he probably was neither, but I was brief in my report, for
otherwise I would have been obliged to go into more detail than the case
warranted. And a judgment passed upon a human personality is quite a
different matter from a judgment upon a horse. If it is unscientific to
make unqualified statements concerning a horse after the performance of
only a few experimental tests, it is certainly an unwarranted thing to
pass a moral judgment upon a man upon the basis of meagre material.
Anyone who would assume the role of judge should bear in mind that here
too we have more than a hundredfold the material which they could bring
forward, and among it some which, if taken alone, would be more
unfavorable than any that they had. But here all things should be
weighed together, and not in isolation. A former instructor of
mathematics in a German gymnasium, a passionate horseman and hunter,
extremely patient and at the same time highly irrascible, liberal in
permitting the use of the horse for days at a time and again tyrannical
in the insistence upon foolish conditions, clever in his method of
instruction and yet at the same time possessing not even the slightest
notion of the most elementary conditions of scientific procedure,--all
this, and more, goes t