The ancient classification of individuals according to temperaments is
of little use. There were four of them, called humors, and a series of
characteristics was assigned to each, but not one of them had all of its
characteristics at once. Hence temperaments determined according to
these four categories do not really exist, and the categorical
distinction can have no practical value. If, however, we make use of the
significant general meaning of temperament, the apparatus of
circumstance which is connected with this distinction becomes
superfluous. If you call every active person choleric, every truculent
one sanguine, every thoughtful one phlegmatic, and every sad one
melancholy, you simply add a technical expression to a few of the
thousands of adjectives that describe these things. These four forms are
not the only ones there are. Apart from countless medial and
transitional forms, there are still large numbers that do not fit in any
one of these categories. Moreover, temperament alters with age, health,
experience, and other accidents, so that the differentiation is not even
justified by the constancy of the phenomenon. Nevertheless, it is to
some degree significant because any form of it indicates a certain
authority, and because each one of these four categories serves to
connect a series of phenomena and assumes this connection to be
indubitable, although there is absolutely no necessity for it. When
Machiavelli says that the world belongs to the phlegmatic, he certainly
did not have in mind that complex of phenomena which are habitually
understood as the characteristics of the phlegmatic humor. He wanted
simply to say that extremes of conduct lead to as little in the daily
life as in politics; that everything must be reflected upon and
repeatedly tested before its realization is attempted; that only then
can progress, even if slow, be made. If he had said, the world belongs
to the cautious or reflective person, we should not have found his
meaning to be different.
When we seek clearly to understand the nature and culture of an
individual, an investigation into his temperament does not help us in
the least. Let us consider then, some other characteristic on which is
based the judgment of individuals. The proverb says that laughter
betrays a man. If in the theater, you know the subject of laughter, the
manner of laughter, and the point at which laughter first occurred, you
know where the most educated and the least educated people are.
Schopenhauer says that the intelligent man finds everything funny, the
logical man nothing; and according to Erdmann (in Über die Dummheit),
the distressing or laughable characteristics of an object, shows not its
nature, but the nature of the observer. It would seem that the
criminalist might save himself much work by observing the laughter of
his subjects. The embarrassed, foolish snickering of the badly observing
witness; the painful smile of the innocent prisoner, or the convicted
penitent; the cruel laughter of the witness glad of the damage he has
done; the evil laughter of the condemning accomplice; the happy, weak
laughter of the innocent who has adduced evidence of his innocence, and
the countless other forms of laughter, all these vary so much with the
character of the laugher, and are so significant, that hardly anything
compares with them in value. When you remember, moreover, that
concealment during laughter is not easy, at least at the moment when the
laughter ceases, you see how very important laughter may be in
determining a case.
Of equal importance with laughter are certain changes which may occur in
people during a very short time. If we observe in the course of the
daily life, that people, without any apparent reason, so change that we
can hardly recognize them, the change becomes ten times more intense
under the influence of guilt or even of imprisonment. Somebody said that
isolation has revealed the greatest men, the greatest fools, and the
greatest criminals. What, then, might be the influence of compulsory
isolation, i.e., of imprisonment! We fortunately do not live in a time
which permits imprisonment for months and years in even the simplest
cases, but under certain circumstances even a few days’ imprisonment may
completely alter a person. Embitterment or wildness may exhibit itself,
just as sorrow and softness, during the stay under arrest. And hence,
the criminalist who does not frequently see and deal with his subjects
does not perform his duty. I do not mean, of course, that he should see
them for the purpose of getting a confession out of an attack of
morbidity; I mean only, that this is the one way of getting a just and
correct notion of the case. Every criminalist of experience will grant
that he sees the event, particularly the motives of the criminal,
otherwise after the first examination than after the later ones, and
that his later notions are mainly the more correct ones. If we set aside
the unfortunate cases in which the individual held for examination is
instructed by his prison-mates and becomes still more spoiled, I might
permit myself the assertion that imprisonment tends to show the
individual more correctly as he is; that the strange surroundings, the
change from his former position, the opportunity to think over his
situation may, if there are no opposing influences, help the criminalist
a great deal, and this fact is confirmed in the superior results of
later to earlier examinations.
In addition, the bodily condition and the health of the prisoner change
almost always. The new mode of life, the different food and
surroundings, the lack of movement, the moral effect, work directly on
the body, and we must confess, unfortunately, on health. There are,
however, cases in which health has been improved by imprisonment,
especially the health of people who have led a wild, irregular, drunken
life, or such who have had to worry and care too much. But these are
exceptions, and as a rule the prisoner’s physique suffers a great deal,
but fortunately for a short time only. The influence of such effects on
the mind is familiar. The bodily misfortune gives a wide opening for
complete change in moral nature; health sustains the atheist in
darkness. This fact, as mentioned by Bain, may serve to explain the
origin of many a confession which has saved an innocent person at the
last moment.
Nor must we forget that time--and for the prisoner, imprisonment is time
endowed with power--effects many an adjustment of extremes. We know that
utter evil is as rare as perfect virtue. We have nothing to do with the
latter, but we almost as infrequently meet the former. The longer we
deal with “bad men,” the more inclined are we to see the very summit of
devilment as the result of need and friendlessness, weakness,
foolishness, flightiness, and just simple, real, human poorness of
spirit. Now, what we find so redistributed in the course of years, we
often find crushed together and fallen apart in a short time. Today the
prisoner seems to us the most dreadful criminal; in a few days, we have
calmed down, have learned to know the case from another side, the
criminal has shown his real nature more clearly, and our whole notion of
him has changed.
I frequently think of the simple story of Charles XII’s sudden entry
into Dresden. The city fathers immediately called an extraordinary
session for the next day in order to discuss, as the Swedish king
supposed, what they should have done the day before. Every examined
prisoner does the same thing. When he leaves the court he is already
thinking of what he should have said differently, and he repeats his
reflections until the next examination. Hence, his frequently almost
inexplicable variety of statements, and hence, also, the need of
frequent examination.
Finally, there is the fact Mittermaier has pointed to--the importance of
the criminalist’s own culture and character. “If a girl testifies for
her lover and against her brother, the question in judgment arises,
which voice is the more powerful? The judge will not easily be able to
divorce this standard of judgment from himself and his own view of
life.” This is a frequent occurrence. You consider a difficult
psychological case in all its aspects, and suddenly, without knowing how
or why, you have found its solution: “It must have been so and not
otherwise; he has acted so and so for this reason, etc.” A close
examination of such a definite inference will convince you that it is
due to the pathetic fallacy, i.e., you have so inferred because you
would have done so, thought and desired so, under similar circumstances.
The commission of the pathetic fallacy is the judge’s greatest danger.