Section 46. (a) General Considerations.
Lichtenberg said somewhere, "I used to know people of great
scholarship, in whose head the most important propositions were
folded up in excellent order. But I don't know what occurred
there, whether the ideas were all mannikins or all little women—
there were no results. In one corner of the head, these gentlemen
put away saltpeter, in another sulphur, in a third charcoal, but these
did not combine into gunpowder. Then again, there are people
in whose heads everything seeks out and finds everything else,
everything pairs off with everything else, and arranges itself variously."
What Lichtenberg is trying to do is to indicate that the
cause of the happy condition of the last-named friends is imagination.
That imagination is influential, is certain, but it is equally certain
that the human understanding is so different with different people
as to permit such phenomena as Lichtenberg describes. I do not
want to discuss the quantity of understanding. I shall deal, this
time, with its quality, by means of which the variety of its uses
may be explained. It would be a mistake to think of the understanding
as capable of assuming different forms. If it were it would
be possible to construct from the concept understanding a group
of different powers whose common quality would come to us off-hand.
But with regard to understanding we may speak only of more
or less and we must think of the difference in effect in terms only of
the difference of the forms of its application. We see the effects
of the understanding alone, not the understanding itself, and however
various a burning city, cast iron, a burn, and steaming water may
be, we recognize that in spite of the difference of effect, the same
fire has brought about all these results. The difference in the uses
of the understanding, therefore, lies in the manner of its application.
Hence these applications will help us, when we know them, to judge
the value of what they offer us. The first question that arises when
we are dealing with an important witness who has made observations
and inferences, is this: "How intelligent is he? and what use
does he make of his intelligence? That is, What are his processes
of reasoning?"
I heard, from an old diplomat, whose historic name is as significant
as his experience, that he made use of a specific means to discover
what kind of mind a person had. He used to tell his subjects the
following story: "A gentleman, carrying a small peculiarly-formed
casket, entered a steam car, where an obtrusive commercial traveler
asked him at once what was contained in the casket. `My Mungo
is inside!' `Mungo? What is that?' `Well, you know that I suffer
from delirium tremens, and when I see the frightful images and
figures, I let my Mungo out and he eats them up.' `But, sir, these
images and figures do not really exist.' `Of course they don't really
exist, but my Mungo doesn't really exist, either, so it's all right!' "
The old gentleman asserted that he could judge of the intelligence
of his interlocutor by the manner in which the latter received this
story.
Of course it is impossible to tell every important witness the story
of Mungo, but something similar may be made use of which could
be sought out of the material in the case. Whoever has anything
worthy the name of practice will then be able to judge the manner
of the witness's approach, and especially the degree of intelligence
he possesses. The mistake must not be made, however, that this
requires splendid deductions; it is best to stick to simple facts.
Goethe's golden word is still true: "The greatest thing is to understand
that all fact is theory . . . do not look behind phenomena;
they are themselves the doctrine." We start, therefore, with some
simple fact which has arisen in the case and try to discover what the
witness will do with it. It is not difficult; you may know a thing
badly in a hundred ways, but you know it well in only one way. If
the witness handles the fact properly, we may trust him. We learn,
moreover, from this handling how far the man may be objective.
His perception as witness means to him only an experience, and the
human mind may not collect experiences without, at the same time,
weaving its speculations into them. But though everyone does
this, he does it according to his nature and nurture. There is little
that is as significant as the manner, the intensity, and the direction
in and with which a witness introduces his speculation into the story
of his experience. Whole sweeps of human character may show themselves
up with one such little explanation. It is for this reason that
Kant called the human understanding architectonic; it aims to
bring together all its knowledge under one single system, and this
according to fixed rules and systems defined by the needs of ordinary
mortals. Only the genius has, like nature, his own unknown system.
And we do not need to count on this rarest of exceptions.
The people who constitute our most complicated problems are the
average, and insignificant members of the human race. Hume cited
the prophet Alexander quite justly. Alexander was a wise prophet,
who selected Paphlagonis as the first scene of his deception because
the people there were extraordinarily foolish and swallowed with
pleasure the coarsest of swindles. They had heard earlier of the
genuineness and power of the prophet, and the smart ones laughed
at him, the fools believed and spread his faith, his cause got adherents
even among educated people, and finally Marcus Aurelius himself
paid the matter so much attention as to rest the success of a military
enterprise on a prophecy of Alexander's. Tacitus narrates how
Vespasian cured a blind man by spitting on him, and the story is
repeated by Suetonius.
We must never forget that, however great a foolishness may be,
there is always somebody to commit it. It is Hume, again, I think,
who so excellently describes what happens when some inconceivable
story is told to uncritical auditors. Their credulity increases
the narrator's shamelessness; his shamelessness convinces their
credulity. Thinking for yourself is a rare thing, and the more one
is involved with other people in matters of importance, the more one
is convinced of the rarity. And yet, so little is demanded in thinking.
"To abstract the red of blood from the collective impression, to
discover the same concept in different things, to bring together
under the same notion blood and beer, milk and snow,—animals
do not do this; it is thinking."[1] I
might suggest that in the first
place, various animals are capable of something of the sort, and
in the second place, that many men are incapable of the same thing.
The lawyer's greatest of all mistakes is always the presupposition
that whoever has done anything has also thought about doing it
and while he was doing it. This is especially the case when we
observe that many people repeatedly speak of the same event and
drive us to the opinion that there must be some intelligent idea
behind it,—but however narrow a road may be, behind it there
may be any number of others in series.
We also are bound to be mistaken if we presuppose the lack
of reason as a peculiarity of the uneducated only, and accept as
well thought-out the statements of people who possess academic
training. But not everybody who damns God is a philosopher,
and neither do academic persons concern themselves unexceptionally
with thinking. Concerning the failure of our studies in the
high-schools and in the gymnasia, more than enough has been written,
but Helmholtz, in his famous dissertation, "Concerning the Relation
of the Natural Sciences to the Whole of Knowledge," has
revealed the reason for the inadequacy of the material served up
by gymnasia and high-schools. Helmholtz has not said that the
university improves the situation only in a very small degree, but
it may be understood from his words. "The pupils who pass from
our grammar-schools to exact studies have two defects; 1. A
certain laxity in the application of universally valid laws. The
grammatical rules with which they have been trained, are as a
matter of fact, buried under series of exceptions; the pupils hence
are unaccustomed to trust unconditionally to the certainty of a
legitimate consequence of some fixed universal law. 2. They are
altogether too much inclined to depend upon authority even where
they can judge for themselves."
Even if Helmholtz is right, it is important for the lawyer to recognize
the distinction between the witness who has the gymnasium
behind him and the educated man who has helped himself without
that institution. Our time, which has invented the Ph. D., which
wants to do everything for the public school and is eager to cripple
the classical training in the gymnasium, has wholly forgotten that
the incomparable value of the latter does not lie in the minimum of
Latin and Greek which the student has acquired, but in the disciplinary
intellectual drill contained in the grammar of the ancient
tongues. It is superfluous to make fun of the fact that the technician
writes on his visiting cards: Stud. Eng. or Stud. Mech. and can not
pronounce the words the abbreviations stand for, that he becomes
Ph. D. and can not translate his title,—these are side issues. But
it is forgotten that the total examination in which the public school
pupil presents his hastily crammed Latin and Greek, never implies
a careful training in his most impressionable period of life. Hence
the criminalist repeatedly discovers that the capacity for trained
thinking belongs mainly to the person who has been drilled for
eight years in Greek and Latin grammar. We criminalists have
much experience in this matter.
Helmholtz's first point would, for legal purposes, require very
broad interpretation of the term, "universally valid laws," extending
it also to laws in the judicial sense of the word. The assertion is
frequently made that laws are passed in the United States in order
that they might not be obeyed, and political regulations are obeyed
by the public for, at most, seven weeks. Of course, the United
States is no exception; it seems as if the respect for law is declining
everywhere, and if this decline occurs in one field no other is likely
to be free from it. A certain subjective or egoistic attitude is potent
in this regard, for people in the main conceive the law to be made
only for others; they themselves are exceptions. Narrow, unconditional
adherence to general norms is not modern, and this fact is
to be seen not only in the excuses offered, but also in the statements
of witnesses, who expect others to follow prescriptions approximately,
and themselves hardly at all. This fact has tremendous
influence on the conceptions and constructions of people, and a
failure to take it into consideration means considerable error.
Not less unimportant is the second point raised in the notion of
"authority." To judge for himself is everybody's business, and
should be required of everybody. Even if nobody should have
the happy thought of making use of the better insight, the dependent
person who always wants to go further will lead himself into doubtful
situations. The three important factors, school, newspaper, and
theater, have reached an extraordinary degree of power. People
apperceive, think, and feel as these three teach them, and finally
it becomes second nature to follow this line of least resistance, and to
seek intellectual conformity. We know well enough what consequences
this has in law, and each one of us can tell how witnesses
present us stories which we believe to rest on their own insight but
which show themselves finally to depend upon the opinion of some
other element. We frequently base our constructions upon the remarkable
and convincing unanimity of such witnesses when upon
closer examination we might discover that this unanimity has a single
source. If we make this discovery it is fortunate, for only time and
labor have then been lost and no mistake has been committed.
But if the discovery is not made, the unanimity remains an important,
but really an unreliable means of proof.
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L. Geiger: Der Ursprung der Sprache. Stuttgart 1869.