Section 49. (d) Subjective Conditions.
We have already seen that our ideation has the self for center
and point of reference. And we shall later see that the kind of
thinking which exclusively relates all events to itself, or the closest
relations of the self, is, according to Erdmann, the essence of stupidity.
There is, however, a series of intellectual processes in which
the thinker pushes his self into the foreground with more or less
justification, judging everything else and studying everything else
in the light of it, presupposing in others what he finds in himself,
and exhibiting a greater interest in himself than may be his proper
share. Such ideations are frequently to be found in high-minded
natures. I know a genial high-school teacher, the first in his profession,
who is so deeply absorbed in his thinking, that he never
carries money, watch, or keys because he forgets and loses them.
When in the examination of some critical case he needs a coin he turns
to his auditors with the question: "Perhaps one of you gentlemen
may
by some chance have a quarter with you?" He
judges from his
habit of not carrying money with him, that to carry it is to be presupposed
as a "perhaps," and the appearance of a quarter in this
crowded auditorium must be "by chance."
The same thing is true with some of the most habitual processes
of some of the most ordinary people. If a man sees a directory in
which his name must be mentioned, he looks it up and studies it.
If he sees a group photograph in which he also occurs he looks up
his own picture, and when the most miserable cheater who is traveling
under a false name picks that out, he will seek it out of
his own
relationships, will either alter his real name or slightly vary the
maiden name of his mother, or deduce it from his place of birth,
or simply make use of his christian name. But he will not be likely
to move far from his precious self.
That similar things are true for readers, Goethe told us when
he showed us that everything that anybody reads interests him
only when he finds himself or his activities therein. So Goethe
explains that business men and men of the world apprehend a scientific
dissertation better than the really learned, "who habitually hear
no more of it than what they have learned or taught and with which
they meet their equals."
It is properly indicated that every language has the largest number
of terms for those things which are most important to those who
speak it. Thus we are told that the Arabians have as many as 6000
words for camel, 2000 for horse, and 50 for lion. Richness of form
and use always belong together, as is shown in the fact that the
auxiliaries and those verbs most often used are everywhere the most
irregular This fact may be very important in examinations, for
definite inferences concerning the nature and affairs of the witness
may be drawn from the manner and frequency with which he uses
words, and whether he possesses an especially large number of forms
in any particular direction.
The fact is that we make our conceptions in accordance with the
things as we have seen them, and so completely
persuade ourselves
of the truth of one definite, partial definition, that sometimes we
wonder at a phenomenon without judging that it might have been
expected to be otherwise. When I first became a student at Strassbourg,
I wondered, subconsciously, when I heard the ragged gamins
talk French fluently. I knew, indeed, that it was their mother-tongue,
but I was so accustomed to viewing all French as a sign of
higher education that this knowledge in the gamins made me marvel.
When I was a child I once had to bid my grandfather adieu very
early, while he was still in bed. I still recall the vivid astonishment
of my perception that grandfather awoke without his habitual
spectacles upon his nose. I must have known that spectacles are
as superfluous as uncomfortable and dangerous when one is sleeping,
and I should not even with most cursory thinking have supposed
that he would have worn his spectacles during the night. But as
I was accustomed always to see my grandfather with spectacles,
when he did not have them I wondered at it.
Such instances are of especial importance when the judge is himself
making observations, i. e., examining the premises of the crime,
studying corpora delicti, etc., because we often suppose ourselves
to see extraordinary and illegal things simply because we have
been habituated to seeing things otherwise. We even construct and
name according to this habit. Taine narrates the instructive story
of a little girl who wore a medal around her throat, of which she
was told, "C'est le bon Dieu." When the child once saw her uncle
with a lorgnon around his neck she said, "C'est le bon Dieu de
mon oncle." And since I heard the story, I have repeatedly had the
opportunity to think, "C'est aussi le bon Dieu de cet homme."
A single word which indicates how a man denotes a thing defines
for us his nature, his character, and his circumstances.
For the same reason that everything interests us more according
to the degree it involves us personally, we do not examine
facts and completely overlook them though they are later shown
to be unshakable, without our being able to explain their causal
nexus. If, however, we know causes and relationships, these
facts become portions of our habitual mental equipment. Any
practitioner knows how true this is, and how especially visible
during the examination of witnesses, who ignore facts which to us
seem, in the nature of the case, important and definitive. In such
cases we must first of all not assume that these facts have not occurred
because the witness has not explained them or has overlooked
them; we must proceed as suggested in order to validate the relevant
circumstances by means of the witness—i. e., we must teach him
the conditions and relationships until they become portions of his
habitual mental machinery. I do not assert that this is easy—
on the contrary, I say that whoever is able to do this is the most
effective of examiners, and shows again that the witness is no more
than an instrument which is valueless in the hands of the bounder,
but which can accomplish all sorts of things in the hands of the
master.
One must beware, however, of too free use of the most comfortable
means,—that of examples. When Newton said, "In addiscendis
scientiis exempla plus prosunt, quam praecepta," he was not addressing
criminalists, but he might have been. As might, also,
Kant, when he proved that thinking in examples is dangerous
because it allows the use of real thinking, for which it is not a substitute,
to lapse. That this fact is one reason for the danger of
examples is certain, but the chief reason, at least for the lawyer,
is the fact that an example requires not equality, but mere similarity.
The degree of similarity is not expressed and the auditor
has no standard for the degree of similarity in the mind of the
speaker. "Omnis analogia claudicat" is correct, and it may happen
that the example might be falsely conceived, that similarity may
be mistaken for equality, or at least, that there should be ignorance
of the inequality. Examples, therefore, are to be used only in the
most extreme cases, and only in such wise, that the nature of the
example is made very clearly obvious and its incorrectness warned
against.
There are several special conditions, not to be overlooked. One
of these is the influence of expectation. Whoever expects anything,
sees, hears, and constructs, only in the suspense of this expectation,
and neglects all competing events most astoundingly. Whoever
keenly expects any person is sensible only of the creaking of the
garden door, he is interested in all sounds which resemble it, and
which he can immediately distinguish with quite abnormal acuteness;
everything else so disappears that even powerful sounds, at
any event more powerful than that of the creaking gate, are overlooked.
This may afford some explanation for the very different
statements we often receive from numerous observers of the same
event; each one had expected a different thing, and hence, had
perceived and had ignored different things.
Again, the opposition of the I and You in the person himself is
a noteworthy thing. According to Noel, this is done particularly
when one perceives one's own foolish management: "How could
you have behaved so foolishly!" Generalized it might be restated
as the fact that people say You to themselves whenever the dual
nature of the ego becomes visible, i. e., whenever one no longer
entertains a former opinion, or when one is undecided and carries
about contradictory intentions, or whenever one wants to compel
himself to some achievement. Hence "How could you have done
this?"—"Should you do this or should you not?"—"You simply
shall tell the truth."—More naïve people often report such inner
dialogues faithfully and without considering that they give themselves
away thereby, inasmuch as the judge learns at least that
when this occurred the practical ego was a stranger to the considering
ego, through whom the subjective conditions of the circumstances
involved may be explained.
What people call excellent characterizes them. Excellences
are for each man those qualities from which others get the most
advantage. Charity, self-sacrifice, mercy, honesty, integrity,
courage, prudence, assiduity, and however else anything that is
good and brave may be called, are always of use to the other fellow
but barely and only indirectly the possessor of the virtues. Hence
we praise the latter and spur others on to identical qualities (to
our advantage). This is very barren and prosaic, but true. Naturally,
not everybody has advantage in the identical virtues of other
people, only in those which are of use to their individual situation—
charity is of no use to the rich, and courage of no use to the protected.
Hence, people give themselves away more frequently than
they seem to, and even when no revelation of their inner lives can
be attained from witnesses and accused, they always express enough
to show what they consider to be virtue and what not.
Hartenstein characterizes Hegel as a person who made his opponents
out of straw and rags in order to be able to beat them down
the more easily. This characterizes not only Hegel but a large
group of individuals whose daily life consists of it. Just as there
is nowhere any particularly definite boundary between sanity and
foolishness, and everything flows into everything else, so it is with
men and their testimonies, normal and abnormal. From the sober,
clear, and true testimony of the former, to the fanciful and impossible
assertions of the latter, there is a straight, slowly rising road on
which testimony appears progressively less true, and more impossible.
No man can say where the quality of foolishness begins—nervousness,
excitement, hysteria, over-strain, illusion, fantasy, and pathoformic
lies, are the shadings which may be distinguished, and the
quantity of untruth in such testimonies may be demonstrated,
from one to one hundred per cent., without needing to skip a single
degree. We must not, however, ignore and simply set aside even
the testimony of the outlaws and doubtful persons, because also
they may contain some truth, and we must pay still more attention
to such as contain a larger percentage of truth. But with this regard
we have our so-called smart lawyers who are over-strained, and it
is they who build the real men of straw which cost us so much
effort and labor. The form is indeed correct, but the content is
straw, and the figure appears subjectively dangerous only to its
creator. And he has created it because he likes to fight but desires
also to conquer easily. The desire to construct such figures and
to present them to the authorities is widespread and dangerous
through our habit of seeking some particular motive, hatred, jealousy,
a long-drawn quarrel, revenge, etc. If we do not find it we
assume that such a motive is absent and take the accusation, at
least for the time, to be true. We must not forget that frequently
there can be no other defining motive than the desire to construct
a man of straw and to conquer him. If this explanation does not
serve we may make use finally of a curious phenomenon, called by
Lazarus
heroification, which repeats itself at various levels of life
in rather younger people. If we take this concept in its widest
application we will classify under it all forms that contain the almost
invincible demand for attention, for talking about oneself, for growing
famous, on the part of people who have neither the capacity
nor the perseverance to accomplish any extraordinary thing, and
who, hence, make use of forbidden and even criminal means to shove
their personalities into the foreground and so to attain their end.
To this class belong all those half-grown girls who accuse men of
seduction and rape. They aim by this means to make themselves
interesting. So do the women who announce all kinds of persecutions
which make them talked about and condoled with; and the
numerous people who want to do something remarkable and commit
arson; then again certain political criminals of all times who became
"immortal" with one single stab, and hence devoted their otherwise
worthless lives thereto; and finally, even all those who, when having
suffered from some theft, arson, or bodily harm, defined their damage
as considerably greater than it actually was, not for the purpose
of recovering their losses, but for the purpose of being discussed and
condoled with.
As a rule it is not difficult to recognize this "heroification,"
inasmuch as it betrays itself through the lack of other motives, and
appears definitely when the intent is examined and exaggerations
are discovered which otherwise would not appear.