University of Virginia Library

Section 51.

In direct connection with the association of ideas is our recollection and memory, which are only next to perception in legal importance in the knowledge of the witness. Whether the witness wants to tell the truth is, of course, a question which depends upon other matters; but whether he can tell the truth depends upon perception and memory. Now the latter is a highly complicated and variously organized function which is difficult to understand, even in the daily life, and much more so when everything depends upon whether the witness has noticed anything, how, how long, what part of the impression has sunk more deeply into his mind, and in what direction his defects of memory are to be sought. It would be inexcusable in the lawyer not to think about this and to make equivalent use of all the phenomena that are presented to him. To overlook the rich literature and enormous work that has been devoted to this subject is to raise involuntarily the question, for whom was it all done? Nobody needs a thorough-going knowledge of the essence of memory more than the lawyer.

---

259

I advise every criminalist to study the literature of memory and recommend the works of Münsterberg, Ribot, Ebbinghaus, Cattell, Kräpelin, Lasson, Nicolai Lange, Arreat, Richet, Forel, Galton, Biervliet, Paneth, Fauth, Sander, Koch, Lehmann, Féré, Jodl,[1] etc.