Topic 3. IMAGINATION.
Section 45.
The things witnesses tell us have formerly existed in their
imaginations,
and the how of this existence determines in a
large degree the
quale of what they offer us. Hence, the nature of imagination must
be of interest to us, and the more so, as we need not concern ourselves
with the relation between being and imagination. It may be
that things may exist in forms quite different from those in which
we know them, perhaps even in unknowable forms. The idealist,
according to some authorities, has set this possibility aside and
given a scientific reply to those who raised it.
So far as we lawyers are concerned, the "scientific reply" does
not matter. We are interested in the reliability of the imagination
and in its identification with what we assume to exist and to
occur. Some writers hold that sensory objects are in sense-perception
both external and internal, external with regard to each other,
and internal with regard to consciousness. Attention is called to
the fact that the distinction between image and object constitutes
no part of the act of perception. But those who remark this fact
assume that the act does contain an image. According to St. Augustine
the image serves as the knowledge of the object; according to
Erdmann the object is the image objectified.
Of great importance is the substitutional adequacy of images.
E. g., I imagine my absent dog, Bismarck's dog, whom I know only
pictorially, and finally, the dog of Alcibiades, whose appearance is
known only by the fact that he was pretty and that his master
had cut off his tail. In this case, the representative value of these
images will be definite, for everybody knows that I can imagine
my own dog very correctly, that the image of Bismarck's beast will
also be comparatively good inasmuch as this animal has been frequently
pictured and described, while the image of Alcibiades' dog will
want much in the way of reliability—although I have imagined this
historic animal quite vividly since boyhood. When, therefore, I speak
of any one of these three animals everybody will be able properly
to value the correctness of my images because he knows their conditions.
When we speak with a witness, however, we rarely know
the conditions under which he has obtained his images, and we learn
them only from him. Now it happens that the description offered
by the witness adds another image, i. e., our own image of the matter,
and this, and that of the witness, have to be placed in specific
relation to each other. Out of the individual images of all concerned
an image should be provided which implies the image of the represented
event. Images can be compared only with images, or images
are only pictures of images.
[1]
The difficulty of this transmutation lies fundamentally in the
nature of representation. Representation can never be identical
with its object. Helmholtz has made this most clear: "Our visions
and representations are effects; objects seen and represented have
worked on our nervous system and on our consciousness. The nature
of each effect depends necessarily upon the nature of its cause,
and the nature of the individual upon whom the cause was at work.
To demand an image which should absolutely reproduce its object
and therefore be absolutely true, would be to demand an effect
which should be absolutely independent of the nature of that object
on which the effect is caused. And this is an obvious contradiction."
What the difference between image and object consists of, whether
it is merely formal or material, how much it matters, has not yet
been scientifically proved and may never be so. We have to assume
only that the validity of this distinction is universally known, and
that everybody possesses an innate corrective with which he assigns
proper place to image and object, i. e., he knows approximately the
distinction between them. The difficulty lies in the fact that not
all people possess an identical standard, and that upon the creation
of the latter practically all human qualities exert an influence.
This variety in standards, again, is double-edged. On the one side
it depends on the essence of image and of object, on the other it
depends on the alteration which the image undergoes even during
perception as well as during all the ensuing time. Everybody
knows this distinction. Whoever has seen anything under certain
circumstances, or during a certain period of his life, may frequently
produce an image of it varying in individual characteristics, but
in its general character constant. If he sees it later under different
conditions, at a different age, when memory and imaginative disposition
have exercised their alterative influence, image and object
fail to correspond in various directions. The matter is still worse
with regard to images of things and events that have never been
seen. I can imagine the siege of Troy, a dragon, the polar night
and Alexander the Great, but how different will the image be from
the object!
This is especially obvious when we have perceived something
which did not appear to us altogether correct. We improve the
thing, i. e., we study how it might have been better, and we remember
it as improved; then the more frequently this object as imagined
recurs, the more fixed its form becomes, but not its actual form,
only its altered form. We see this with especial clearness in the
case of drawings that in some way displease us. Suppose I do not
like the red dress of a woman in some picture and I prefer brown. If
later I recall the picture the image will become progressively browner
and browner, and finally I see the picture as brown, and when I
meet the real object I wonder about the red
dress.[2]
We get this situation in miniature each time we hear of a crime,
however barren the news may be,—no more than a telegraphic
word. The event must naturally have some degree of importance,
because, if I hear merely that a silver watch has been stolen, I do
not try to imagine that situation. If, however, I hear that near
a hostelry in X, a peasant was robbed by two traveling apprentices
I immediately get an image which contains not only the unknown
region, but also the event of the robbery, and even perhaps the
faces of those concerned. It does not much matter that this image
is completely false in practically every detail, because in the greater
number of cases it is corrected. The real danger lies in the fact that
this correction is frequently so bad and often fails altogether and
that, in consequence, the first image again breaks through and
remains the most vigorous.[3] The
vigor is the greater because we
always attach such imagination to something actual or approximately
real, and inasmuch as the latter thing is either really seen,
or at least energetically imagined, the first image acquires renewed
power of coming up. According to Lipps, "Reproductive images
presuppose dispositions. Dispositions ensue upon perceptions that
they imply; still there are reproductive images and imagined
wholes which imply no preceding perceptions. This contradiction
is solved when dispositions are contained in other things at the
same time. A finite number of dispositions may in this way be also
infinite.... Dispositions are transformed power itself, power
transformed in such a way as to be able to respond actively to inner
stimulations."
The process is similar in the reproduction of images during speech.
The fact that this reproduction is not direct but depends on the
sequence of images, leads to the garrulity of children, old men, and
uneducated people, who try to present the whole complex of relations
belonging to any given image. But such total recall drives
the judge to despair, not only because he loses time, but because
of the danger of having the attention turned from important to
unimportant things. The same thing is perceived in judicial documents
which often reveal the fact that the dictator permitted himself
to be led astray by unskilful witnesses, or that he had himself
been responsible for abstruse, indirect memories. The real thinker
will almost always be chary of words, because he retains, from among
the numberless images which are attached to his idea, only those
most closely related to his immediate purpose. Hence good protocols
are almost always comparatively short. It is even as instructive as
amusing to examine certain protocols, with regard to what ought
to be omitted, and then with regard to the direct representations,
i. e., to everything that appertains to the real illumination of the
question. It is astounding how little of the latter thing is indicated,
and how often it enters blindly because what was important has
been forgotten and lost.
Of course, we must grant that the essence of representation involves
very great difficulties. By way of example consider so ordinary
a case as the third dimension. We are convinced that according
to its nature it is much more complex than it seems to be. We are
compelled to believe that distance is not a matter of sensation and
that it requires to be explained.[4]
Psychologists indicate that the representation of the third dimension
would be tremendously difficult without the help of experience.
But experience is something relative, we do not know how much
experience any man possesses, or its nature. Hence, we never can
know clearly to what degree a man's physical vision is correct if
we do not see other means of verification. Consider now what is
required in the assumption of the idea of the fourth dimension.
Since its introduction by Henry More, this idea should quite have
altered our conception of space. But we do not know how many
cling to it unconsciously, and we should make no mistake if we said
that nobody has any knowledge of how his neighbor perceives
space.
[5]
Movement is another thing difficult to represent or imagine.
You can determine for yourself immediately whether you can imagine
even a slightly complicated movement. I can imagine one individual
condition of a movement after another, sequentially, but I can not
imagine the sequence. As Herbart says somewhere, a successive
series of images is not a represented succession. But if we can not
imagine this latter, what do we imagine is not what it ought to be.
According to Stricker,[6] the
representation of movement is a quale
which can not be given in terms of any other sensory quality, and
no movement can be remembered without the brain's awakening
a muscle-movement. Experience verifies this theory. The awakening
of the muscular sense is frequently obvious whenever movement is
thought of, and we may then perceive how, in the explanation or
description of a movement, the innervation which follows the image
in question, occurs. This innervation is always true. It agrees at
least with what the witness has himself perceived and now tries to
renew in his story. When we have him explain, for example, how
some man had been choked, we may see movements of his hands
which, however slight and obscure, still definitely indicate that he
is trying to remember what he has seen, and this irrelevantly of what
he is saying. This makes it possible to observe the alterations of
images in the individual in question, an alteration which always
occurs when the images are related to movements.
It follows further from the fact that movements are difficult to
represent that the witness ought not to be expected accurately to
recall them. Stricker says that for a long time he could not image a
snow-fall, and succeeded only in representing one single instant of it.
Now what is not capable of representation, can not well be recalled,
and so we discover that it merely causes trouble to ask the witness
to describe point by point even a simple sequence. The witness has
only successive images, and even if the particular images are correct,
he has nothing objective for the succession itself, nothing rooted in
the sequence. He is helped, merely, by the logic of events and his
memory—if these are scanty, the succession of images is scanty,
and therefore the reproduction of the event is inadequate. Hence
this scantiness is as little remarkable as the variety of description
in various witnesses, a variety due to the fact that the sequentialization
is subjective.
Drawing is a confirmation of the fact that we represent only a
single instant of motion, for a picture can never give us a movement,
but only a single state within that movement. At the same time we
are content with what the picture renders, even when our image
contains only this simple moment of movement. "What is seen or
heard, is immediately, in all its definiteness, content of consciousness"
(Schuppe)—but its movement is not.
The influence of time upon images is hardly indifferent. We have
to distinguish the time necessary for the construction of an image,
and the time during which an image lasts with uniform vividness.
Maudsley believes the first question difficult to answer. He leans
on Darwin, who points out that musicians play as quickly as they
can apprehend the notes. The question will affect the lawyer in
so far as it is necessary to determine whether, after some time, an
image of an event may ensue from which it is possible to infer back
to the individuality of the witness. No other example can be used
here, because on the rocky problem of the occurrence of images are
shattered even the regulative arts of most modern psychophysics.
The second problem is of greater significance. Whether any
practical use of its solution can be made, I can not say, but it urges
consideration. Exner has observed that the uniform vividness of
an image lasts hardly a second. The image as a whole does not
disappear in this time, but its content endures unchanged for so
long at most. Then it fades in waves. The correctness of this
description may be tested by anybody. But I should like to add
that my observations of my own images indicate that in the course
of a progressive repetition of the recall of an image its content is
not equally capable of reproduction. I believe, further, that no
essential leaps occur in this alteration of the content of an idea, but
that the alteration moves in some definite direction. If, then, I
recall the idea of some object successively, I will imagine it not at
one time bigger, then smaller, then again bigger, etc.; on the contrary,
the series of images will be such that each new image will be
either progressively bigger or progressively smaller.
If this observation of mine is correct and the phenomenon is not
purely personal, Exner's description becomes of great value in
examination, which because of its length, requires the repeated recall
of standardizing images, and this in its turn causes an alteration in
the ideational content. We frequently observe that a witness persuades
himself into the belief of some definite idea in the course of
his examination, inasmuch as with regard to some matter he says
more and more definite things at the end than at the beginning.
This may possibly be contingent on the alteration of frequently
recalled ideas. One could make use of the process which is involved
in the reproduction of the idea, by implying it, and so not being
compelled to return endlessly to something already explained.
How other people construct their ideas, we do not, as we have
seen, know, and the difficulty of apprehending the ideas or images
of other people, many authorities clearly
indicate.[7]
[[ id="n45.1"]]
Cf. Windelband: "Präludien."
[[ id="n45.2"]]
H. Gross: Korregierte Vorstellungen. In H. Gross's Archiv X, 109.
[[ id="n45.3"]]
C. de Lagrave: L'Autosuggestion Naturelle. Rev. d'Hypnot. 1889, XIV,
257.
[[ id="n45.4"]]
Several sentences are here omitted.
[[ id="n45.5"]]
Cf. E. Storch: Über des räumliche Sehen, in Ztschrft. v.
Ebbinghaus u.
Nagel XXIX, 22.
[[ id="n45.6"]]
S. Stricker: Studien über die Bewegungsvorstellungen. Tübingen
1868.
[[ id="n45.7"]]
Cf. Näcke in Gross's Archiv VII, 340.