Section 89. (5) Other Differences.
The ancient classification of individuals according to temperaments
is of little use. There were four of them, called humors, and a
series of characteristics was assigned to each, but not one of them had
all of its characteristics at once. Hence temperaments determined
according to these four categories do not really exist, and the categorical
distinction can have no practical value. If, however, we make
use of the significant general meaning of temperament, the apparatus
of circumstance which is connected with this distinction becomes
superfluous. If you call every active person choleric, every truculent
one sanguine, every thoughtful one phlegmatic, and every sad one
melancholy, you simply add a technical expression to a few of the
thousands of adjectives that describe these things. These four
forms are not the only ones there are. Apart from countless medial
and transitional forms, there are still large numbers that do not fit
in any one of these categories. Moreover, temperament alters with
age, health, experience, and other accidents, so that the differentiation
is not even justified by the constancy of the phenomenon.
Nevertheless, it is to some degree significant because any form of it
indicates a certain authority, and because each one of these four
categories serves to connect a series of phenomena and assumes this
connection to be indubitable, although there is absolutely no necessity
for it. When Machiavelli says that the world belongs to the
phlegmatic, he certainly did not have in mind that complex of
phenomena which are habitually understood as the characteristics
of the phlegmatic humor. He wanted simply to say that extremes
of conduct lead to as little in the daily life as in politics; that everything
must be reflected upon and repeatedly tested before its realization
is attempted; that only then can progress, even if slow, be made.
If he had said, the world belongs to the cautious or reflective person,
we should not have found his meaning to be different.
When we seek clearly to understand the nature and culture of
an individual, an investigation into his temperament does not help
us in the least. Let us consider then, some other characteristic on
which is based the judgment of individuals. The proverb says that
laughter betrays a man. If in the theater, you know the subject
of laughter, the manner of laughter, and the point at which laughter
first occurred, you know where the most educated and the least
educated people are. Schopenhauer says that the intelligent man
finds everything funny, the logical man nothing; and according to
Erdmann (in Über die Dummheit), the distressing or laughable
characteristics of an object, shows not its nature, but the nature
of the observer. It would seem that the criminalist might save
himself much work by observing the laughter of his subjects. The
embarrassed, foolish snickering of the badly observing witness; the
painful smile of the innocent prisoner, or the convicted penitent; the
cruel laughter of the witness glad of the damage he has done; the
evil laughter of the condemning accomplice; the happy, weak
laughter of the innocent who has adduced evidence of his innocence,
and the countless other forms of laughter, all these vary so much
with the character of the laugher, and are so significant, that hardly
anything compares with them in value. When you remember, moreover,
that concealment during laughter is not easy, at least at the
moment when the laughter ceases, you see how very important
laughter may be in determining a case.
Of equal importance with laughter are certain changes which
may occur in people during a very short time. If we observe in the
course of the daily life, that people, without any apparent reason,
so change that we can hardly recognize them, the change becomes
ten times more intense under the influence of guilt or even of imprisonment.
Somebody said that isolation has revealed the greatest
men, the greatest fools, and the greatest criminals. What, then,
might be the influence of compulsory isolation, i. e., of imprisonment!
We fortunately do not live in a time which permits imprisonment
for months and years in even the simplest cases, but under certain
circumstances even a few days' imprisonment may completely alter
a person. Embitterment or wildness may exhibit itself, just as
sorrow and softness, during the stay under arrest. And hence, the
criminalist who does not frequently see and deal with his subjects
does not perform his duty. I do not mean, of course, that he should
see them for the purpose of getting a confession out of an attack of
morbidity; I mean only, that this is the one way of getting a just
and correct notion of the case. Every criminalist of experience will
grant that he sees the event, particularly the motives of the criminal,
otherwise after the first examination than after the later ones, and
that his later notions are mainly the more correct ones. If we set
aside the unfortunate cases in which the individual held for examination
is instructed by his prison-mates and becomes still more
spoiled, I might permit myself the assertion that imprisonment tends
to show the individual more correctly as he is; that the strange
surroundings, the change from his former position, the opportunity to
think over his situation may, if there are no opposing influences,
help the criminalist a great deal, and this fact is confirmed in the
superior results of later to earlier examinations.
In addition, the bodily condition and the health of the prisoner
change almost always. The new mode of life, the different food and
surroundings, the lack of movement, the moral effect, work directly
on the body, and we must confess, unfortunately, on health. There
are, however, cases in which health has been improved by imprisonment,
especially the health of people who have led a wild, irregular,
drunken life, or such who have had to worry and care too much.
But these are exceptions, and as a rule the prisoner's physique
suffers a great deal, but fortunately for a short time only. The
influence of such effects on the mind is familiar. The bodily misfortune
gives a wide opening for complete change in moral nature;
health sustains the atheist in darkness. This fact, as mentioned by
Bain, may serve to explain the origin of many a confession which
has saved an innocent person at the last moment.
Nor must we forget that time—and for the prisoner, imprisonment
is time endowed with power—effects many an adjustment of
extremes. We know that utter evil is as rare as perfect virtue.
We have nothing to do with the latter, but we almost as infrequently
meet the former. The longer we deal with "bad men," the more
inclined are we to see the very summit of devilment as the result
of need and friendlessness, weakness, foolishness, flightiness, and
just simple, real, human poorness of spirit. Now, what we find
so redistributed in the course of years, we often find crushed together
and fallen apart in a short time. Today the prisoner seems to us
the most dreadful criminal; in a few days, we have calmed down,
have learned to know the case from another side, the criminal has
shown his real nature more clearly, and our whole notion of him has
changed.
I frequently think of the simple story of Charles XII's sudden
entry into Dresden. The city fathers immediately called an extraordinary
traordinary session for the next day in order to discuss, as the Swedish
king supposed, what they should have done the day before. Every
examined prisoner does the same thing. When he leaves the court
he is already thinking of what he should have said differently, and
he repeats his reflections until the next examination. Hence, his
frequently almost inexplicable variety of statements, and hence,
also, the need of frequent examination.
Finally, there is the fact Mittermaier has pointed to—the
importance of the criminalist's own culture and character. "If a
girl testifies for her lover and against her brother, the question in
judgment arises, which voice is the more powerful? The judge will
not easily be able to divorce this standard of judgment from himself
and his own view of life." This is a frequent occurrence. You consider
a difficult psychological case in all its aspects, and suddenly,
without knowing how or why, you have found its solution: "It
must have been so and not otherwise; he has acted so and so for
this reason, etc." A close examination of such a definite inference
will convince you that it is due to the pathetic fallacy, i. e., you
have so inferred because you would have done so, thought and
desired so, under similar circumstances. The commission of the
pathetic fallacy is the judge's greatest danger.
