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.
Topic 5. ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS.