Section 83. (d) Differences in Conception.
I should like to add to what precedes, that senility presents fact
and judgment together. In a certain sense every age and person
does so and, as I have repeatedly said, it would be foolish to assert
that we have the right to demand only facts from witnesses. Setting
aside the presence of inferences in most sense-perceptions, every
exposition contains, without exception, the judgment of its
subject-matter, though only, perhaps, in a few dry words. It may lie in
some choice expression, in the tone, in the gesture but it is there,
open to careful observation. Consider any simple event, e. g.,
two drunkards quarreling in the street. And suppose we instruct
any one of many witnesses to tell us only the facts. He will do so,
but with the introductory words, "It was a very ordinary event,"
"altogether a joke," "completely harmless," "quite disgusting,"
"very funny," "a disgusting piece of the history of morals," "too
sad," "unworthy of humanity," "frightfully dangerous," "very
interesting," "a real study for hell," "just a picture of the future,"
etc. Now, is it possible to think that people who have so variously
characterized the same event will give an identical description of
the mere fact? They have seen the event in accordance with their
attitude toward life. One has seen nothing; another this; another
that; and, although the thing might have lasted only a very short
time, it made such an impression that each has in mind a completely
different picture which he now
reproduces.[1] As Volkmar said, "One
nation hears in thunder the clangor of trumpets, the hoof-beats of
divine steeds, the quarrels of the dragons of heaven; another hears
the mooing of the cow, the chirp of the cricket, the complaint of
the ancestors; still another hears the saints turn the vault of heaven,
and the Greenlander, even the quarrel of bewitched women concerning
a dried skin." And Voltaire says, "If you ask the devil
what beauty is, he will tell you that beauty is a pair of horns, four
hoofs, and a tail." Yet, when we ask a witness what is beautiful,
we think that we are asking for a brute fact, and expect as reliable
an answer as from a mathematician. We might as well ask for
cleanliness from a person who thinks he has set his house in order
by having swept the dirt from one corner to another.
To compare the varieties of intellectual attitude among men
generally, we must start with sense-perception, which, combined
with mental perception, makes a not insignificant difference in
each individual. Astronomers first discovered the existence of this
difference, in that they showed that various observers of contemporaneous
events do not observe at the same time. This fact is
called "the personal equation." Whether the difference in rate
of sense-perception, or the difference of intellectual apprehension,
or of both together, are here responsible, is not known, but the
proved distinction (even to a second) is so much the more important,
since events which succeed each other very rapidly may cause individual
observers to have quite different images. And we know as
little whether the slower or the quicker observer sees more correctly,
as we little know what people perceive more quickly or more slowly.
Now, inasmuch as we are unable to test individual differences with
special instruments, we must satisfy ourselves with the fact that
there are different varieties of conception, and that these may be
of especial importance in doubtful cases, such as brawls, sudden
attacks, cheating at cards, pocket-picking, etc.
The next degree of difference is in the difference of observation.
Schiel says that the observer is not he who sees the thing, but who
sees of what parts it is made. The talent for such vision is rare.
One man overlooks half because he is inattentive or is looking at
the wrong place; another substitutes his own inferences for objects,
while another tends to observe the quality of objects, and neglects
their quantity; and still another divides what is to be united, and
unites what is to be separated. If we keep in mind what profound
differences may result in this way, we must recogruze the source
of the conflicting assertions by witnesses. And we shall have to
grant that these differences would become incomparably greater
and more important if the witnesses were not required to talk of the
event immediately, or later on, thus approximating their different
conceptions to some average. Hence we often discover that when
the witnesses really have had no chance to discuss the matter and
have heard no account of it from a third person, or have not seen the
consequences of the deed, their discussions of it showed distinct and
essential differences merely through the lack of an opportunity or
a standard of correction. And we then suppose that a part of what
the witnesses have said is untrue, or assume that they were inattentive,
or blind.
Views are of similar importance.[2]
Fiesto exclaims, "It is scandalous
to empty a full purse, it is impertinent to misappropriate a
million, but it is unnamably great to steal a crown. The shame
decreases with the increase of the sin." Exner holds that the
ancients conceived Oedipus not as we do; they found his misfortune
horrible; we find it unpleasant.
These are poetical criminal cases presented to us from different
points of view; and we nowadays understand the same action still
more differently, and not only in poetry, but in the daily life. Try,
for example, to get various individuals to judge the same formation
of clouds. You may hear the clouds called flower-stalks with spiritual
blossoms, impoverished students, stormy sea, camel, monkey,
battling giants, swarm of flies, prophet with a flowing beard, dunderhead,
etc. We have coming to light, in this accidental interpretation
of fact, the speaker's view of life, his intimacies, etc. This emergence
is as observable in the interpretation also of the ordinary events of
the daily life. There, even if the judgments do not vary very much,
they are still different enough to indicate quite distinct points of
view. The memory of the curious judgment of one cloud-formation
has helped me many a time to explain testimonies that seemed to
have no possible connection.
Attitude or feeling—this indefinable factor exercises a great
influence on conception and interpretation. It is much more wonderful
than even the march of events, or of fate itself. Everybody
knows what attitude (stimmung) is. Everybody has suffered from
it, everybody has made some use of it, but nobody can altogether
define it. According to Fischer, attitude consists in the compounded
feelings of all the inner conditions and changes of the organism,
expressed in consciousness. This would make attitude a sort of
vital feeling, the resultant of the now favorable, now unfavorable
functioning of our organs. The description is, however, not unexceptionable,
inasmuch as single, apparently insignificant influences
upon our senses may create or alter our attitudes for a long time
without revealing its effect on any organ or its integration with the
other mental states. I know how merely good or bad weather
determines attitude, how it may be helped immediately by a good
cigar, and how often we may pass a day, joyous or dejected, only to
discover that the cause is a good or a bad dream of the foregoing
night. Especially instructive in this regard was a little experience
of mine during an official journey. The trouble which brought me
out was an ordinary brawl between young peasants, one of whom was
badly cut up and was to be examined. Half-way over, we had to
wait at a wayside inn where I expected a relieving gendarme. A
quarter of an hour after the stop, when we renewed the journey, I
found myself overcome by unspeakable sadness, and this very
customary brawl seemed to me especially unpleasant. I sympathized
with the wounded boy, his parents, his opponents, all strangers to
me, and I bewrayed the rawness of mankind, its love for liquor, etc.
This attitude was so striking that I began to seek its cause. I found
it, first of all, in the dreary region,—then in the cup of hot coffee
that I had drunk in the restaurant, which might possibly have been
poisonous;—finally, it occurred to me that the hoof-beats of the
horses were tuned to a very saddening minor chord. The coachman
in his hurry had forgotten to take bells with him, and in order to
avoid violating police regulations he had borrowed at the inn another
peal, and my sad state dated from the moment I heard it. I
banished the sound and immediately I found myself enjoying the
pretty scenery.
I am convinced that if I had been called to testify in my sad state,
I would have told the story otherwise than normally. The influence
of music upon attitude is very well known. The unknown influence
of external conditions also makes a difference on attitude. "If you
are absorbed in thought," says Fechner, "you notice neither sunshine
nor the green of the meadows, etc., and still you are in a quite
different emotional condition from that which would possess you in
a dark room."
The attitude we call indifference is of particular import. It
appears, especially, when the ego, because of powerful impressions,
is concerned with itself; pain, sadness, important work, reflection,
disease, etc. In this condition we depreciate or undervalue the significance
of everything that occurs about us. Everything is brought
into relation to our personal, immediate condition, and is from the
point of view of our egoism, more or less indifferent. It does not
matter whether this attitude of indifference occurs at the time of
perception or at the time of restatement during the examination.
In either case, the fact is robbed of its hardness, its significance, and
its importance; what was white or black, is described as gray.
There is another and similar attitude which is distinguished by
the fact that we are never quite aware of it but are much subject
to it. According to Lipps[3] and
Lotze,[4] there is to be observed in
neurotic attitudes a not rare and complete indifference to feeling,
and in consciousness an essential lack of feeling-tone in perception.
Our existence, our own being, seems to us, then, to be a
foreign thing, having little concern with us—a story we need not
earnestly consider. That in such condition little attention is paid
to what is going on around us seems clear enough. The experiences
are shadowy and superficial; they are indifferent and are represented
as such only. This condition is very dangerous in the law
court, because, where a conscientious witness will tell us that, e. g.,
at the time of the observation or the examination he was sick or
troubled, and therefore was incorrect, a person utterly detached
in the way described does not tell the judge of his condition, probably
because he does not know anything about it.
There are certain closely-related mental and physical situations
which lead to quite a different view. Those who are suffering physically,
those who have deeply wounded feelings, and those who have
been reduced by worry, are examined in the same way as normal
people, yet they need to be measured by quite a different standard.
Again, we are sometimes likely to suppose great passions that have
long since passed their period, to be as influential as they were in
their prime. We know that love and hate disappear in the distance,
and that love long dead and a long-deferred hatred tend to express
themselves as a feeling of mildness and forgiveness which is pretty
much the same in spite of its diverse sources. If the examiner knows
that a great passion, whether of hate or of love, exists, he thinks he is
fooled when he finds a full, calm and objective judgment instead of it.
It seems impossible to him, and he either does not believe the probably
accurate witness, or colors his testimony with that knowledge.
Bodily conditions are still more remarkable in effecting differences
in point of view. Here no sense-illusion is presented since no change
occurs in sense-perception; the changes are such that arise after
the perception, during the process of judgment and interpretation.
We might like an idea when lying down that displeases us when we
stand up. Examination shows that this attitude varies with the
difference in the quantity of blood in the brain in these two positions,
and this fact may explain a whole series of phenomena. First of
all, it is related to plan-making and the execution of plans. Everybody
knows how, while lying in bed, a great many plans occur that
seem good. The moment you get up, new considerations arise, and
the half-adopted plan is progressively abandoned. Now this does
not mean anything so long as nothing was undertaken in the first
situation which might be binding for the resolution then made. For
example, when two, lying in bed, have made a definite plan, each
is later ashamed before the other to withdraw from it. So we often
hear from criminals that they were sorry about certain plans, but
since they were once resolved upon, they were carried out. Numbers
of such phenomena, many of them quite unbelievable in appearance,
may be retroduced to similar sources.
A like thing occurs when a witness, e. g., reflects about some
event while he is in bed. When he thinks of it again he is convinced,
perhaps, that the matter really occurred in quite another way than
he had newly supposed it to. Now he may convince himself that
the time at which he made the reflections was nearer the event, and
hence, those reflections must have been the more correct ones—
in that case he sticks to his first story, although that might have
been incorrect. Helmholtz[5] has
pointed to something similar:
"The colors of a landscape appear to be much more living and definite
when they are looked at obliquely, or when they are looked at with
the head upside down, than when they are looked at with the head
in its ordinary position. With the head upside down we try correctly
to judge objects and know that, e. g., green meadows, at a certain
distance, have a rather altered coloration. We become used to that
fact, discount the change and identify the green of distant objects
with the shade of green belonging to near objects. Besides, we see
the landscape from the new position as a flat image, and incidentally
we see clouds in right perspective and the landscape flat, like clouds
when we see them in the ordinary way." Of course, everybody knows
this. And of course, in a criminal case such considerations will
hardly ever play any rôle. But, on the other hand, it is also a matter
of course that the reason for these differences might likewise be the
reason for a great many others not yet discovered, and yet of great
significance to criminalists.
Such is the situation with regard to comparison. Schiel laid much
emphasis on the fact that two lines of unequal length seem equal
when they diverge, although their difference is recognized immediately
if they are parallel, close together, and start from the same level.
He says that the situation is similar in all comparison. If things may
be juxtaposed they can be compared; if not, the comparison is
bound to be bad. There is no question of illusion here, merely of
convenience of manipulation. Juxtaposition is frequently important,
not for the practical convenience of comparison, but because we
must know whether the witness has discovered the right juxtaposition.
Only if he has, can his comparison have been good. To
discover whether he has, requires careful examination.
Conception and interpretation are considerably dependent on the
interest which is brought to the object examined. There is a story
of a child's memory of an old man, which was not a memory of
the whole man, but only of a green sleeve and a
wrinkled hand
presenting a cake of chocolate. The child was interested only in
the chocolate, and hence, understood it and its nearest environment
—the hand and the sleeve. We may easily observe similar cases.
In some great brawl the witness may have seen only what was happening
to his brother. The numismatist may have observed only
a bracelet with a rare coin in a heap of stolen valuables. In a long
anarchistic speech the witness may have heard only what threatened
his own welfare. And so on. The very thing looks different if,
for whatever reason, it is uninteresting or intensely interesting.
A color is quite different when it is in fashion, a flower different
when we know it to be artificial, the sun is brighter at home, and
home-grown fruit tastes better. But there is still another group
of specific influences on our conceptions and interpretations, the
examples of which have been increasing unbrokenly. One of these
is the variety in the significance of words. Words have become
symbols of concepts, and simple words have come to mean involved
mathematical and philosophical ideas. It is conceivable that two
men may connote quite different things by the word "symbol."
And even in thinking and construing, in making use of perceived
facts, different conceptions may arise through presenting the fact
to another with symbols, that to him, signify different things. The
difference may perhaps not be great, but when it is taken in connection
with the associations and suggestions of the word used, small
mistakes multiply and the result is quite different from what it
might have been if another meaning had been the starting-point.
The use of foreign words, in a sense different from that used by us,
may lead us far astray. It must be borne in mind that the meaning
of the foreign word frequently does not coincide with the sense it
has in the dictionary. Hence, it is dangerous in adducing evidence
to use foreign expressions when it is important to adhere strictly to a
single meaning. Taine says, correctly: "Love and amour, girl and
jeune fille, song and chanson, are not identical although they are
substituted for one another." It is, moreover, pointed out that
children, especially, are glad to substitute and alter ideas for which
one word stands, so that they expand or contract its meaning haphazard.
Bow-wow may first mean a dog, then a horse, then all
animals, and a child who was once shown a fir tree in the forest
said it wasn't a fir tree, for fir trees come only at Christmas.
This process is not confined to children. At one time or another
we hear a word. As soon as we hear it we connect it with an idea.
This connection will rarely be correct, largely because we have heard
the word for the first time. Later, we get our idea from events in
which this word occurs, of course, in connection with the object
we instantaneously understand the word to mean. In time we learn
another word, and word and meaning have changed, correctly
or incorrectly. A comparison of these changes in individuals
would show how easy both approximations and diversifications in
meaning are. It must follow that any number of misunderstandings
can develop, and many an alteration in the conception of justice
and decency, considered through a long period, may become very
significant in indicating the changes in the meaning of words. Many
a time, if we bear thoroughly in mind the mere changes in the meaning
of the word standing for a doubtful fact, we put ourselves in possession
of the history of morals. Even the most important quarrels would
lapse if the quarreling persons could get emotionally at the intent
of their opponent's words.
In this connection questions of honor offer a broad field of examples.
It is well known that German is rich in words that show personal
dislikes, and also, that the greater portion of these words are harmless
in themselves. But one man understands this, the other that,
when he hears the words, and finally, German is in the curious position
of being the cause of the largest number of attacks on honor
and of cases of slander in the world. Where the Frenchman laughs
and becomes witty, the German grows sullen, insulting, and looks
for trouble. The French call sensitiveness to insignificant and worthless
things, the German way of quarreling (faire querelle d'allemand).
Many a slander case in court is easily settled by showing people
the value of the word. Many who complained that they were called
a creature, a person, etc., went away satisfied as soon as the whole
meaning of the words had been explained to them.
In conclusion, just a word concerning the influence of time on
conception. Not the length of past time, but the value of the time-span
is what is important in determining an event. According to
Herbart, there is a form of temporal repetition, and time is the form
of repetition. If he is right it is inevitable that time, fast-moving
or slow-moving, must influence the conception of events. It is
well-known that monotony in the run of time makes it seem slow,
while time full of events goes swiftly, but appears long in memory,
because a large number of points have to be thought through. Münsterberg
shows that we have to stop at every separate point, and so
time seems, in memory, longer. But this is not universally valid.
Aristotle had already pointed out that a familiar road appears to
be shorter than an unfamiliar one, and this is contradictory to the
first proposition. So, a series of days flies away if we spend them
quietly and calmly in vacation in the country. Their swiftness is
surprising. Then when something of importance occurs in our
life and it is directly succeeded by a calm, eventless period, this
seems very long in memory, although it should have seemed long
when it occurred, and short in the past. These and similar phenomena
are quite unexplained, and all that can be said after numerous
experiments is, that we conceive short times as long, and long times
as short. Now, we may add the remarkable fact that most people
have no idea of the duration of very small times, especially of the
minute. Ask any individual to sit absolutely quiet, without counting
or doing anything else, and to indicate the passing of each minute
up to five. He will say that the five minutes have passed at the end
of never more than a minute and a half. So witnesses in estimating
time will make mistakes also, and these mistakes, and other nonsense,
are written into the protocols.
There are two means of correction. Either have the witness
determine the time in terms of some familiar form, i. e., a paternoster,
etc., or give him the watch and let him observe the second
hand. In the latter case he will assert that his ten, or his five, or
his twenty minutes were, at most, no more than a half or a whole
minute.
The problem of time is still more difficult when the examination
has to be made with regard to the estimation of still longer periods—
weeks, months, or years. There is no means of making any test.
The only thing that experience definitely shows is, that the certainty
of such estimates depends on their being fixed by distinct events.
If anybody says that event A occurred four or five days before event
B, we may believe him if, e. g., he adds, "For when A occurred we
began to cut corn, and when B occurred we harvested it. And
between these two events there were four or five days." If he can
not adduce similar judgments, we must never depend upon him,
for things may have occurred which have so influenced his conception
of time that he judges altogether falsely.
It often happens in such cases that defective estimates, made in
the course of lengthy explanations, suddenly become points of
reference, and then, if wrong, are the cause of mistakes. Suppose
that a witness once said that an event occurred four years ago.
Much later an estimation of the time is undertaken which shows
that the hasty statement sets the event in 1893. And then all the
most important conclusions are merely argued from that. It is best,
as is customary in such cases, to test the uncertainty and incorrectness
of these estimates of time on oneself. It may be assumed that
the witness, in the case in question, is likely to have made a better
estimate, but it may equally be assumed that he has not done so.
In short, the conception of periods of time can not be dealt with too
cautiously.
[[ id="n83.1"]]
Cf. H. Gross's Archiv XIV, 83.
[[ id="n83.2"]]
Marie Borst: Recherches experimentales sur l'éducation et la
fidelité du
temoignage. Archives de Psychologie. Geneva. Vol. III. no. 11.
[[ id="n83.3"]]
T. Lipps: Die Grundtatsachen des Seelenlebens. Bonn 1883
[[ id="n83.4"]]
R. H. Lotze: Medizinische Psychologie. Leipzig 1882.
[[ id="n83.5"]]
Handbuch der physiologischen Optik. Leipzig 1865.