and interested in anatomy, will bother, at the sight of the most beautiful statue of an angel, concerning the construction of the limbs, the wings, and their relation to the skeleton. In certain directions, therefore, the imagination is too weak to conceive an ethereal being in human form floating in the air. Further, one authority points out that we think more frequently of centaurs than of human beings with serpentine bodies, not because centaurs are more
It is significant that when others help us and we happen to find pleasure therein, we answer to very difficult demands upon the imagination. In the opera the deviation from reality is so powerful that it seems silly to one unaccustomed to it. But we do not need the unaccustomed person. We need only to imagine the most ordinary scene in an opera, i. e., a declaration of love, sung; an aria declining it; an aria before committing suicide; a singing choir with a moral about this misfortune. Has anything even remotely like it ever been seen in real life? But we accept it quietly and find it beautiful and affecting simply because others perform it without difficulty before our eyes and we are willing to believe it possible.
The rule to be derived from all the foregoing is this. Whenever we believe a statement to be based on imagination, or to have been learned from some imaginative source, we must always connect it with its most proximate neighbors, and step by step seek out its elements and then compound them in the simplest possible form. We may, in this fashion, get perhaps at the proper content of the matter. Of course it need not yield another imaginary image. And its failure to do so would be an objection if the compound were the end of the work and were to be used in itself. But that is not the
case. All that is required is to derive a certain starting-point from the hodge-podge of uncertainties and unintelligibility. When the construction is made it must be compared with all the material at hand and tested by that material. If the two agree, and only when they agree, may it be a.s.sumed that the starting-point has been properly chosen. But not to make this construction means to feel around aimlessly, and to give up the job before it has been really begun.
Let us take the simplest possible instance of such a situation. In a bowling alley, two youths, A and B, had a lively quarrel, in which A held the ball in his hand and threatened to throw it at B"s head. B, frightened, ran away, A pursued him, after a few steps threw the ball into the gra.s.s, caught B, and then gave him an easy blow with the fiat of his hand on the back of his head. B began to wabble, sank to the ground, became unconscious, and showed all the signs of a broken head (unconsciousness, vomiting, distention of the pupils, etc.). All the particular details of the event are unanimously testified to by many witnesses, non-partisan friends of A and B, and among them the parish priest. Simulation is completely excluded inasmuch as B, a simple peasant lad, certainly did not know the symptoms of brain-fever, and could not hope for any damages from the absolutely poor A. Let us now consider what the nearest facts are. The elements of the case are: B sees a heavy ball in A"s hand; A threatens B with it and pursues him; B feels a blow on the head. The compounding of these elements results in the invincible a.s.sumption on B"s part that A had struck him on the head with the ball. The consequence of this imaginative feeling was the development of all the phenomena that would naturally have followed if B had actually been struck on the head.
It would be wrong to say that these cases are so rare as to be useless in practice. We simply do not observe them for the reason that we take much to be real because it is confirmed reliably. More accurate examination would show that many things are merely imaginative. A large portion of the contradictions we meet in our cases is explicable by the fact that one man is the victim of his fancies and the other is not. The great number of such fancies is evinced by the circ.u.mstance that there can nowhere be found a chasm or boundary between the simplest fancies of the normal individual and the impossible imaginings of the lunatic. Every man imagines frequently the appearance of an absent friend, of a landscape he has once seen. The painter draws even the features of an absent
model; the practiced chess-master plays games without having the board before him; persons half asleep see the arrival of absentees; persons lost in the wood at night see spirits and ghosts; very nervous people see them at home, and the lunatic sees the most extraordinary and disgusting things-all these are imaginations beginning with the events of the daily life, ending with the visions of diseased humanity. Where is the boundary, where a lacuna?
Here, as in all events of the daily life, the natural development of the extremely abnormal from the ordinary is the incontrovertible evidence for the frequency of these events.
Of course one must not judge by one"s self. Whoever does not believe in the devil, and never as a child had an idea of him in mind, will never see him as an illusion. And whoever from the beginning possesses a restricted, inaccessible imagination, can never understand the other fellow who is accompanied by the creatures of his imagination. We observe this hundreds of times. We know that everybody sees a different thing in clouds, smoke, mountain tops, ink blots, coffee stains, etc.; that everybody sees it according to the character and intensity of his imagination, and that whatever seems to be confused and unintelligible is to be explained as determined by the nature of the person who expresses or possesses it.
So in the study of any work of art. Each is the portrayal of some generality in concrete form. The concrete is understood by anybody who knows enough to recognize it. The generality can be discovered only by him who has a similar imagination, and hence each one draws a different generalization from the same work of art. This variety holds also in scientific questions. I remember how three scholars were trying to decipher hieroglyphs, when that branch of arch
And how little we can apprehend the imaginations of others or judge them! This is shown by the fact that we can no longer tell whether children who vivify everything in their imagination see their fancies as really alive. It is indubitable that the savage who takes his fetish to be alive, the child that endows its doll with life, would wonder if fetish and doll of themselves showed signs of
vitality-but whether they really take them to be alive is unknown to the adult. And if we can not sympathetically apprehend the views and imaginings of our own youth, how much less possible is it so to apprehend those of other people. We have to add to this fact, moreover, the characteristic circ.u.mstance that less powerful effects must be taken into consideration. The power of imagination is much more stimulated by mild, peaceful impressions than by vigorous ones. The latter stun and disquiet the soul, while the former lead it to self-possession. The play of ideas is much more excited by mild tobacco smoke, than by the fiery column of smoking Vesuvius; the murmur of the brook is much more stimulating than the roar of the stormy sea. If the converse were true it would be far easier to observe the effects in others. We see that a great impression is at work, our attention is called to its presence, and we are then easily in the position of observing its effect in others. But the small, insignificant phenomena we observe the less, the less obvious their influence upon the imagination of others appears to be. Such small impressions pa.s.s hundreds of times without effect. For once, however, they find a congenial soul, their proper soil, and they begin to ferment. But how and when are we to observe this in others?
We rarely can tell whether a man"s imagination is at work or not. Nevertheless, there are innumerable stories of what famous men did when their imagination was at work. Napoleon had to cut things to pieces. Lenau used to sc.r.a.pe holes in the ground. Mozart used to knot and tear table-cloth and napkins. Others used to run around; still others used to smoke, drink, whistle, etc. But not all people have these characteristics, and then we who are to judge the influence of the imagination on a witness or a criminal are certainly not present when the imagination is at work. To get some notion of the matter through witnesses is altogether too unsafe a task. Bain once justly proposed keeping the extremities quiet as a means of conquering anger. Thus it may be definitely discovered whether a man was quite angry at a given instant by finding out whether his hands and feet were quiet at the time, but such indices are not given for the activity of imagination.
Moreover, most people in whom the imagination is quite vigorously at work know nothing about it. Du Bois-Reymond says somewhere, "I"ve had a few good ideas in my life, and have observed myself when I had them. They came altogether involuntarily, without my ever having thought of them." This I do not believe. His imagination, which was so creative, worked so easily and without
effort that he was not aware of its activity, and moreover, his fundamental ideas were so clear that everything fell into lines spontaneously without his being conscious of it later. This "working" of the imagination is so effortless to fortunate natures that it becomes an ordinary movement. Thus Goethe tells of an imaginary flower which broke into its elements, united again, broke again, and united in another form, etc. His story reveals one of the reasons for the false descriptions of perception. The perception is correct when made, then the imagination causes movements of ideas and the question follows which of the two was more vigorous, the perceptive or the imaginal activity? If the one was intenser, memory was correct; if the other, the recollection was erroneous. It is hence important, from the point of view of the lawyer, to study the nature and intensity of witnesses" imagination.[1] We need only to observe the influence of imaginal movements on powerful minds in order to see clearly what influence even their weak reflection may have on ordinary people. Schopenhauer finds the chief pleasure of every work of art in imagination; and Goethe finds that no man experiences or enjoys anything without becoming productive.
Most instructive is the compilation of imaginative ideas given by Hfler[2] and put together from the experiences of scholars, investigators, artists, and other important persons. For our purposes it would be better to have a number of reliable statements from other people which would show how normal individuals were led astray by their imaginations. We might then learn approximately what imaginative notions might do, and how far their limits extend. Sully calls attention to the fact that d.i.c.kens"s characters were real to him and that when the novel was completed, its dramatic personA physician, Dr. Hadekamp, said that he used to see the flow of blood before he cut the vein open. Another physician, Dr. Schmeisser, confirms this experience. Such cases are controlled physically, the flow of blood can not be seen before the knife is removed. Yet how often, at least chronologically, do similar mistakes occur when no such control is present? There is the story of a woman who could describe so accurately symptoms which resulted from a swallowed needle, that the physicians were deceived and undertook
[1] Cf. Witasek: Zeitschrift f. Psychologie. Vol. XII. "ber Willkrliche Vorstellungsverbindung."[2] Psychologie. Wien u. Prag. 1897.
operations which only served to show that the woman had merely imagined it all. A similar case is that of a man who believed himself to have swallowed his false teeth. He even had serious feelings of choking which immediately disappeared on the discovery of the teeth under his night-table. A prominent oculist told me that he had once treated for some time a famous scholar because the latter so accurately described a weakening of the retina that the physician, in spite of his objective discoveries, was deceived and learned his mistake only when it appeared that the great scholar fortunately had been made game of by his own imagination. Maudsley tells how Baron von Swieten once saw burst a rotten corpse of a dog, and, for years after, saw the same thing whenever he came to the same place. Many people, Goethe, Newton, Sh.e.l.ley, William Black, and others, were able completely to visualize past images. Fechner tells of a man who claimed voluntarily to excite anywhere on his skin the feeling of pressure, heat, and cold, but not of cut, p.r.i.c.k or bruise, because such imaginations tended to endure a long time. There is the story of another man who had a three days" pain in his finger because he had seen his child crush an a.n.a.logous finger.
Abercrombie tells of an otherwise very excitable person who believed in the reality of the luck that a fortune-teller had predicted for him, and some authorities hold that practically everybody who eagerly awaits a friend hears his step in every sound. Hoppe"s observation that pruritus vulvller cites a lady who was permitted to smell from an empty bottle and who regularly lost consciousness when she was told that the bottle contained laughing gas. Women often a.s.sert that when about to change their homes they often see the new residence in dreams just as it really appears later on. Then there is a story of a man blind for fourteen years who nevertheless saw the faces of acquaintances and was so troubled thereby that the famous Graefe severed his optic nerve and so released him from his imagination.Taine describes the splendid scene in which Balzac once told Mad. de Girardin that he intended to give Sandeau a horse. He did not do so, but talked so much about it that he used to ask Sandeau how the horse was. Taine comments that it is clear that the starting point of such an illusion is a voluntary fiction. The person
in question knows it as such in the beginning but forgets it at the end. Such false memories are numerous among barbarous peoples and among raw, untrained, and childish minds. They see a simple fact; the more they think of it the more they see in it; they magnify and decorate it with environing circ.u.mstances, and finally, unite all the details into a whole in memory. Then they are unable to distinguish what is true from what is not. Most legends develop in this way. A peasant a.s.sured Taine that he saw his sister"s soul on the day she died,-though it was really the light of a brandy bottle in the sunset.
In conclusion, I want to cite a case I have already mentioned, which seems to me significant. As student I visited during vacation a village, one of whose young peasant inhabitants had gone to town for the first time in his life. He was my vacation play-mate from earliest childhood, and known to me as absolutely devoted to the truth. When he returned from his visit, he told me of the wonders of the city, the climax of which was the menagerie he had visited. He described what he saw very well, but also said that he had seen a battle between an anaconda and a lion. The serpent swallowed the lion and then many Moors came and killed the serpent. As was immediately to be inferred and as I verified on my return, this battle was to be seen only on the advertising posters which are hung in front of every menagerie. The lad"s imagination had been so excited by what he had seen that day that the real and the imagined were thoroughly interfused. How often may this happen to our witnesses!
If the notion of imagination is to be limited to the activity of representation, we must cla.s.s under it the premonitions and forewarnings which are of influence not only among the uneducated. Inasmuch as reliable observations, not put together a posteriori, are lacking, nothing exact can be said about them. That innumerable a.s.sertions and a semi-scientific literature about the matter exists, is generally familiar. And it is undeniable that predictions, premonitions, etc., may be very vivid, and have considerable somatic influence. Thus, prophecy of approaching death, certain threats or knowledge of the fact that an individual"s death is being prayed for, etc., may have deadly effect on excited people. The latter superst.i.tion especially, has considerable influence. Praying for death, etc., is aboriginal. It has been traced historically into the twelfth century and is made use of today. Twelve years ago I was told of a case in which an old lady was killed because an enemy of hers had the
death-ma.s.s read for her. The old lady simply died of fright. In some degree we must pay attention to even such apparently remote questions.
(d) Misunderstandings.
Section 106. (I) Verbal Misunderstandings.[1]
Here too it is not possible to draw an absolutely definite boundary between acoustic illusions and misunderstandings. Verbally we may say that the former occur when the mistake, at least in its main characteristic, is due to the aural mechanism. The latter is intended when there is a mistake in the comprehension of a word or of a sentence. In this case the ear has acted efficiently, but the mind did not know how to handle what had been heard and so supplements it by something else in connection with matter more or less senseless. Hence, misunderstandings are so frequent with foreign words. Compare the singing of immigrant school children, "My can"t three teas of tea" for "My country "tis of thee," or "Pas de lieu Rhone que nous" with "Paddle your own canoe."[2]
The question of misunderstandings, their development and solution, is of great importance legally, since not only witnesses but clerks and secretaries are subject to them. If they are undiscovered they lead to dangerous mistakes, and their discovery causes great trouble in getting at the correct solution.[3] The determination of texts requires not only effort but also psychological knowledge and the capacity of putting one"s self in the place of him who has committed the error. To question him may often be impossible because of the distance, and may be useless because he no longer knows what he said or wanted to say. When we consider what a tremendous amount of work cla.s.sical philologists, etc., have to put into the determination of the proper form of some misspelled word, we can guess how needful it is to have the textual form of a protocol absolutely correct. The innocence or guilt of a human being may depend upon a misspelled syllable. Now, to determine the proper and correct character of the text is as a rule difficult, and in most cases impossible. Whether a witness or the secretary has misunderstood, makes no difference in the nature of the work. Its importance remains unaffected, but in the latter case the examining justice, in so far as he correctly
[1] Many omissions have been necessitated by the feet that no English equivalents for the German examples could be found. [Translator.]
[2] Cf. S. Freud: Psychopathologie des Alltagsleben
[3] Cited by James, Psychology, Buefer Course.
remembers what he has heard, may avoid error. The mistakes of the secretaries may in any event be reduced to a minimum if all protocols are read immediately, and not by the secretary but by the examining judge himself. If the writer reads them he makes the same mistakes, and only a very intelligent witness will perceive them and call attention to them. Unless it so happens the mistake remains.
I cite a few of the errors that I have observed. From a protocol with the suspect: "On the twelfth of the month I left Marie Tomizil" (instead of, "my domicile"). Instead of "irrelevant,"-"her elephant." Very often words are written in, which the dictator only says by the way; e. g., "come in," "go on," "hurry up," "look out," etc. If such words get into the text at all it is difficult to puzzle out how they got in. How easily and frequently people misunderstand is shown by the oath they take. Hardly a day pa.s.ses on which at least one witness does not say some absolute nonsense while repeating it.
The discovery of such errors and the subst.i.tution of what is correct brings us back to the old rule that the mere study of our own cases can not teach us anything, since the field of view is too narrow, the material too uniform, and the stimulation too light. Other disciplines must be studied and examples from the daily life must be sought. Goethe, in particular, can teach us here. In his little monograph, "Hr-, Schreib- and Druckfehler," he first tells that he had discovered the most curious mistakes in hearing when he reread dictated letters, mistakes which would have caused great difficulty if not immediately looked after. The only means for the solution of these errors is, he says, "to read the matter aloud, get thoroughly into its meaning and repeat the unintelligible word so long that the right one occurs in the flow of speech. n.o.body hears all that he knows, n.o.body is conscious of all that he senses, is able to imagine, or to think. Persons who have never been to school tend to turn into German all Latin and Greek expressions. The same thing happens just as much with words from foreign languages whose p.r.o.nunciation is unknown to the writer ... and in dictation it occurs that a hearer sets his inner inclination, pa.s.sion, and need in the place of the word he has heard, and subst.i.tutes for it the name of some loved person, or some much desired good morsel." A better device for the detection of errors than that suggested by Goethe cannot be found, but the protocol or whatever else it may be must be *read; otherwise nothing helps. Many mistakes are due, as Mnsterberg points out, to the fact that the word is seen for just an instant, and it is easy to misread a word so seen if some similar word had been heard or seen just before. The most senseless corruptions of text occur often, and it seems extraordinary how they may be overlooked. Andresen points out that the reason for all popular explanations is the consciousness of language which struggles against allowing any name to be an empty sound, and still more, strives to give each term a separate meaning and an indubitable intelligibility. The human mind acts here instinctively and navely without any reflection, and is determined by feeling or accident. Then it makes all kinds of transformations of foreign words.This fits with the a.n.a.logous observation that a group of Catholic patron saints depend for their character on their names. Santa Clara makes clear vision, St. Lucy sounds like lucida, and is the saint of the blind; St. Mamertus is a.n.a.logous to mamma, the feminine breast, and is the patron saint of nurses and nursing women. Instructive subst.i.tutions are Jack Spear, for Shakespeare, Apolda for Apollo; Great victory at le Mans, for Great victory at Lehmanns; "plaster depot," for "place de Repos."
Andresen warns us against going too far in a.n.a.lysis. Exaggerations are easy, particularly when we want to get at the source of a misunderstanding because of the illegibility of the style. Our task consists, first of all, in getting at the correctness of what has been said or written, otherwise we have nothing whatever to go by. Only when that is quite impossible may we a.s.sume misunderstandings and seek them out. The procedure then must be necessarily linguistic and psychological and requires the consultation of experts in both fields. Certain instructive misunderstandings of the most obvious sort occur when the half-educated drop their dialect, or thoroughly educated people alter the dialectical expressions and try to translate them into high German.
It is frequently important to understand the curious transposition in meaning which foreign words get, e. g., commode, fidel, and famos. A commode gentleman means in German, a pliable person; and a fidel lad is not a loyal soul, but a merry, pleasure- seeking one; famos-originally "famous,"-means expensive or pleasant.
It may be not unimportant to understand how names are altered. Thus, I know a man who curiously enough was called Kammerdiener, whose father was an immigrant Italian called Comadina, and I know two old men, brothers, who lived in different parts of the
country, one of whom was called Joseph Waldhauser, the other Leopold Balthasar. In the course of the generation the name had so completely changed that it is impossible to say which is correct. Again, a family bearing the name Theobald is of French origin and used really to be called Du Val. In Steiermark, which had been over-run with Turks two hundred years ago, there are many family names of Turkish origin. Thus Hasenhrl may come from Ha.s.san ri; Salata from Saladin; Mullenbock, from Mullei Beg; Sullman from Soliman.Section 107. (2) Other Misunderstandings.
The quant.i.tative method of modern psychophysics may lead to an exact experimental determination of such false conceptions and misunderstandings as those indicated above, but it is still too young to have any practical value. It is vitiated by the fact that it requires artificial conditions and that the results have reference to artificial conditions. Wundt has tried to simplify apparatus, and to bring experiment into connection with real life. But there is still a far cry from the psychological laboratory to the business of life. With regard to misunderstandings the case is certainly so. Most occur when we do not hear distinctly what another person is saying and supplement it with our own notions. Here the misunderstanding is in no sense linguistic, for words do not receive a false meaning. The misunderstanding lies in the failure to comprehend the sense of what we have heard, and the subst.i.tution of incorrect interpretations. Sometimes we may quite understand an orator without having heard every word by simply adding these interpretations, but the correctness of the additions is always questionable, and not only nature and training, but momentary conditions and personal att.i.tude, make a considerable difference. The worst thing about the matter is the fact that n.o.body is likely to be aware that he has made any interpretations. Yet we do so not only in listening, but in looking. I see on a roof in the distance four white b.a.l.l.s about the nature of which I am uncertain. While looking, I observe that one of the b.a.l.l.s stretches out head and tail, flaps its wings, etc., and I immediately think, "Oh, those are four pigeons." Now it may be true that they are four pigeons, but what justification had I for such an interpretation and generalization from the action of one pigeon? In this instance, no doubt, it would have been difficult for me to make a mistake, but there are many cases which are not so obvious and where the interpretation is nevertheless made, and then the misunderstanding
is ready to hand. Once my wife and I saw from our seats in the car a chimney-sweep who stood in a railroad station. As he bent over, looking for a lost coin, my very myopic wife cried out, "Look at the beautiful Newfoundland dog." Now this is a conceivable illusion for a short-sighted individual, but on what basis could my good lady interpret what she saw into the judgment that it was a Newfoundland dog, and a beautiful one at that? Taine ill.u.s.trates a similar process with the story of a child who asked why his mother had put on a white dress. He was told that his mother was going to a party and had to put on her holiday clothes for that purpose. After that, whenever the child saw anybody in holiday attire, green or red or any other color, it cried out,-"Oh, you have a white dress on!" We adults do exactly the same thing. As Meinong says so well, we confuse ident.i.ty with agreement. This proposition would save us from a great many mistakes and misunderstandings if kept in mind.
How frequently and hastily we build things out is shown by a simple but psychologically important game. Ask anybody at hand how the four and the six look on his watch, and let him draw it. Everybody calmly draws, IV and VI, but if you look at your watch you will find that the four looks so, IIII, and that there is no six. This raises the involuntary question, "Now what do we see when we look at the watch if we do not see the figures?" and the further question, "Do we make such beautiful mistakes with all things?"
I a.s.sert that only that has been reliably seen which has been drawn. My father asked my drawing teacher to teach me not to draw but to observe. And my teacher, instead of giving me copies, followed the instruction by giving me first one domino, then two, then three, one upon the other, then a match box, a book, a candlestick, etc. And even today, I know accurately only those objects in the household which I had drawn. Yet frequently we demand of our witnesses minutely accurate descriptions of things they had seen only once, and hastily at that.
And even if the thing has been seen frequently, local and temporal problems may make great difficulties. With regard to the first cla.s.s of problems, Exner[1] cites the example of his journey from Gmunden to Vienna in which, because of a sharp curve in the road, he saw everything at Lambach reversed, although the whole stretch of road was familiar to him. The railroad trains, the public buildings, the rivers, all the notable places seemed to lie on the wrong side. This
[1] S. Exner: Entwurf, etc.
is particularly characteristic if a city is entered, especially at night, through a railroad terminal, and the locomotive is attached to the rear of the train. In the daily life the alteration of objects by locations is familiar. How different a landscape seems at night or in winter, although it has been observed hundreds of times during the day or in summer. It is good to look around frequently on the road, particularly at cross-roads, if the way back is to be kept in mind. Even the starting point may have a disturbing effect on the sense of place. For example, if you have traveled numerous times on the train from A to B, and for once you start your journey from C, which is beyond A, the familiar stretch from A to B looks quite different and may even become unrecognizable. The estimation of time may exercise considerable influence on such and similar local effects. Under most circ.u.mstances we tend, as is known, to reduce subjectively great time-spans, and hence, when more time than customary is required by an event, this becomes subjectively smaller, not only for the whole event but also for each of its parts. In this way what formerly seemed to extend through an apparently long period seems now to be compressed into a shorter one. Then everything appears too soon and adds to the foreign aspect of the matter.
The case is similar for time-differences. Uphues[1] cites an example: "If a person has not heard a bell or anything else for some time and then hears it again, the question whether the object existed in the interval does not arise. It is recognized again and that is enough." Certainly it is enough for us, but whether the thing is true, whether really the same phenomena or only similar ones have been noted, is another question rarely asked. If the man or the bell is the same that we now perceive anew, the inference is involuntarily drawn that they must have persisted, but we eliminate altogether the lapse of time and suppose unconsciously that the ent.i.ty in question must have been on the spot through the whole period. One needs only to observe how quickly witnesses tend to identify objects presented for identification: e. g. knives, letters, purses, etc. To receive for identification and to say yes, is often the work of an instant. The witness argues, quite unconsciously, in this fashion: "I have given the judge only one clew (perhaps different from the one in question), now here again is a clew, hence, it must be the one I gave him." That the matter may have changed, that there has been some confusion, that perhaps
[1] Die Wahrnehmung und Empfinding. Leipzig 1888.
other witnesses have given similar things, is not at all considered. Here again we have to beware of confusing of ident.i.ties with agreements.
Finally, we must consider fatigue and other conditions of excitation. Everybody knows how things read late at night seem absolute nonsense, and become simple and obvious the next morning. In the same way, we may take a thing to be thus and so while tired in the evening, and in the morning see our notion to be a coa.r.s.e misunderstanding. Hoppe tells of a hospital interne who became so excited and tired through frequent calls that he heard the tick- tack of his watch as "Oh-doc-tor." A witness who has been subjected to a prolonged and fatiguing examination falls into a similar condition and knows at the end much less than at the beginning. Finally, he altogether misunderstands the questions put to him. The situation becomes still worse when the defendant has been so subjected to examination, and becomes involved, because of fatigue, etc., in the famous "contradictions." If "convincing contradictions" occur at the end of a long examination of a witness or a defendant, it is well to find out how long the examination took. If it took much time the contradictions mean little.
The same phenomena of fatigue may even lead to suspicion of negligence. Doctors, trained nurses, nursery maids, young mothers, etc., who became guilty of "negligence" of invalids and children have, in many instances, merely "misunderstood" because of great fatigue. It is for this reason that the numerous sad cases occur in which machine-tenders, switch-tenders, etc., are punished for negligence. If a man of this cla.s.s, year after year, serves twenty-three hours, then rests seven hours, then serves twenty-three hours again, etc., he is inevitably overtaken by fatigue and nervous relaxation in which signals, warnings, calls, etc., are simply misunderstood. Statistics tend to show that the largest number of accidents occur at the end of a period of service, i. e., at the time of greatest fatigue. But even if this were not the case some reference must be made to chronic fatigue. If a man gets only seven hours" rest after intense labor, part of the fatigue-elements must have remained. They acc.u.mulate in time, finally they summate, and exercise their influence even at the beginning of the service. Socialists complain justly about this matter. The most responsible positions are occupied by chronically fatigued individuals, and when nature extorts her rights we punish the helpless men.
The case is the same with people who have much to do with
money-tax, post, bank, and treasury officials, who are obliged to attend rigorously to monotonous work-the reception and distribution of money, easily grow tired. Men of experience in this profession have a.s.sured me that they often, when fatigued, take money, count it, sign a receipt and then-return the money to the person who brought it. Fortunately they recognize their mistake in the astonishment of the receiver. If, however, they do not recognize it, or the receiver is sly enough calmly to walk off with the money, if the sum is great and rest.i.tution not easily possible, and if, moreover, the official happens to be in the bad graces of his superiors, he does not have much chance in the prosecution for embezzlement, which is more likely than not to be begun against him.[1] Any affection, any stimulus, any fatigue may tend to make people pa.s.sive, and hence, less able to defend themselves.
A well known Berlin psychiatrist tells the following story: "When I was still an apprentice in an asylum, I always carried the keys of the cells with me. One day I went to the opera, and had a seat in the parquette. Between the acts I went into the corridor. On returning I made a mistake, and saw before me a door which had the same kind of lock as the cell-doors in the asylum, stuck my hand into my pocket, took out my key-which fitted, and found myself suddenly in a loge. Now would it not be possible in this way, purely by reflex action, to turn into a burglar?" Of course we should hardly believe a known burglar if he were to tell us such a story.
(e) The Lie. Section 108. (I) I. General Considerations.
In a certain sense a large part of the criminalist"s work is nothing more than a battle against lies. He has to discover the truth and must fight the opposite. He meets this opposite at every step. The accused, often one who has confessed completely, many of the witnesses, try to get advantage of him, and frequently he has to struggle with himself when he perceives that he is working in a direction which he can not completely justify. Utterly to vanquish the lie, particularly in our work, is of course, impossible, and to describe its nature exhaustively is to write a natural history of mankind. We must limit ourselves to the consideration of a definite number of means, great and small, which will make our work easier,