The three enemies of the criminalist are evil nature, untruth, and
stupidity or foolishness. The last is not the least difficult. Nobody is
safe from its attacks; it appears as the characteristic of mankind in
general, in their prejudices, their preconceptions, their selfishness,
and their high-riding nature. The criminalist has to fight it in
witnesses, in jurymen, and frequently in the obstinacy,
dunder-headedness, and amusing self-conceit of his superiors. It hinders
him in the heads of his colleagues and of the defendant, and it is his
enemy not least frequently in his own head. The greatest foolishness is
to believe that you are not yourself guilty of foolishness. The
cleverest people do the most idiotic things. He makes the most progress
who keeps in mind the great series of his own stupidities, and tries to
learn from them. One can only console oneself with the belief that
nobody else is better off, and that every stupidity is a basis for
knowledge. The world is such that every foolishness gets somebody to
commit it.
Foolishness is an isolated property. It is not related to intelligence
as cold to warmth. Cold is the absence of heat, but foolishness is not
the absence of intelligence. Both are properties that look in the same
direction. Hence, it is never possible to speak of intelligence or
stupidity by itself. Whoever deals with one deals with the other, but it
would be a mistake to conceive them as a developing series at one end of
which is intelligence, and at the other, stupidity. The transition is
not only frequent, but there are many remarkable cases in which one
passes into the other, gets mixed up with it, and covers it. Hence, a
thing may often be at one and the same time intelligent and stupid,
intelligent in one direction and stupid in another; and it is not
incorrect, therefore, to speak of clever stupidities, and of clever
deeds that are heartily foolish.
The importance of stupidity is due not only to the fact that it may lead
to important consequences, but also to the difficulty of discovering it
in certain cases. It is before all things correct, that foolish people
often seem to be very wise, and that as a rule, much intercourse alone
is able to reveal the complete profundity of a man’s foolishness. But in
our work we can have little intercourse with the people whom we are to
know, and there are, indeed, persons whom we take to be foolish at the
first encounter, and who really are so when we know them better. And
even when we have learned the kind and degree of a man’s foolishness, we
have not learned his way of expressing it, and that discovery requires
much wisdom. Moreover, an incredible amount of effort, persistence, and
slyness is often made use of for the purpose of committing an immense
act of foolishness. Every one of us knows of a number of criminal cases
that remained unexplained for a long time simply because some one
related event could be explained by a stupidity so great as to be
unbelievable. Yet the knowledge that such stupidity actually exists
could explain many a similar matter, simply and easily. This is
especially true with regard to the much discussed “one great stupidity,”
which the criminal commits in almost every crime. Assume that such a
stupidity is impossible, and the explanation of the case is also
impossible. We must never forget that it is exactly the wise who refuse
to think of the possibility of foolishness. Just as everything is clean
to the cleanly, and everything is philosophic to the philosopher,
everything is wise to the wise. Hence, he finds it unintelligible that a
thing may be explained from the point of view of pure unreason. His duty
therefore, is, to learn as much and as accurately as possible about the
nature of foolishness.
There are, perhaps, few books on earth that contain so many clever
things as Erdmann’s little text “Concerning Foolishness” (Über die
Dummheit). Erdmann starts with small experiences. For example, he once
came early to the Hamburg Railway Station and found in the waiting-room
one family with many children, from whose conversation he learned that
they were going to visit a grandfather in Kyritz. The station filled up,
to the increasing fear of the smallest member of the family, a boy. When
the station grew quite full he suddenly broke out: “Look here, what do
all these people want of grandfather in Kyritz.” The child supposed that
because he himself was travelling to Kyritz all other people in the same
place could have had no different intention. This narrowness of the
point of view, the generalization of one’s own petty standpoint into a
rule of conduct for mankind is, according to Erdmann, the essence of
foolishness. How far one may go in this process without appearing
foolish may be seen from another example. When, in the sixties, a
stranger in Paris spoke admiringly of the old trees on a certain avenue,
it was the habit of the Parisians to answer, “Then you also do not agree
with Haussmann?” because everybody knew about the attempt by the
Parisian prefect, Baron Haussmann, to beautify Paris by killing trees.
If, however, the trees in the churchyard of the little village are
praised, and the native peasant replies, “So you know also that our
Smith wants to have the trees chopped down,” the remark is foolish,
because the peasant had no right to assume that the world knows of the
intentions of the village mayor.
Now, if you decrease the number of view-points, and narrow the horizon,
you reach a point where the circumference of ideas is identical with
their center, and this point is the kernel of stupidity, the idiot.
Stupidity is the state of mind in which a man judges everything by
himself. This again may be best illustrated by a figure of speech. If
you go about a room and observe its contents you soon notice how the
objects change place and appearance with the change in your point of
view. If you look _only_ through the key-hole, you do not, however,
recognize that fact; everything seems equal. The idiot is he whose
egoistic eye is the only key-hole through which he looks into the
decorated parlor we call the world. Hence, the defective individual,
l’homme borné, who has real narrowness of mind, possesses only a small
number of ideas and points of view, and hence, his outlook is restricted
and narrow. The narrower his outlook, the more foolish the man.
Foolishness and egoism are privileges of the child; we are all born
foolish and raw. Only light sharpens our wits, but as the process is
very slow, there is not one of us who has not some blunt edges. To
distinguish objects is to be clever; to confound them, to be foolish.
What one first notices in defective minds is the unconditional
universality of their remarks. The generalizations of stupid people are
then unjustly called exaggerations. Where they say “always,” the clever
will say, “two or three times.” The foolish man interrupts his fellow
because he presses to the front as the only justified speaker. What is
most characteristic of him is his attempt to set his ego in the
foreground, “_I_ do this always,” “This is one of my traits,” “_I_ do
this thing in quite another way.” Indeed, every high grade of
foolishness exhibits a certain amount of force which the fool in
question uses to bring his personality forward. If he speaks about
reaching the North Pole, he says, “Of course, I have never been at the
North Pole, but I have been at Annotook,” and when the subject of
conversation is some great invention, he assures us that he has not
invented anything, but that he is able to make brooms, and incidentally,
he finds fault with the invention, and the more foolish he is, the more
fault he finds.
These characteristics must, of course, be kept apart, and foolishness
must not be confused with related qualities, although its extent or
boundaries must not be fixed too absolutely. Kraus, e.g., distinguishes
between the idiot, the fool, the weak-minded, the idea-less, etc., and
assigns to each distinguishing character-marks. But as the notions for
which these expressions stand vary very much, this classification is
hardly justified. A fool in one country is different from a fool in
another, an idiot in the South from an idiot in the North, and even when
various individuals have to be classified at the same place and at the
same time, each appears to be somewhat unique. If, for example, we take
Kraus’s definitions of the idiot as one who is least concerned with
causal relations, who understands them least, and who can not even grasp
the concept of causation, we may say the same thing about the
weak-minded, the untalented, etc. Kant says, rightly, that inasmuch as
fools are commonly puffed-up and deserve to be degraded, the word
foolishness must be applied to a “swell-headed” simpleton, and not to a
good and honest simpleton. But Kant is not here distinguishing between
foolishness and simplicity, but between pretentiousness and kindly
honesty, thus indicating the former as the necessary attribute of
foolishness. Another mode of distinction is to observe that
forgetfulness is a quality of the simpleton who is defective in
attention, but not of the fool who has only a narrow outlook. Whether or
not this is true, is hard to say. There is still another differentiation
in which foolishness and simplicity are distinguished by the lack of
extent, or the intensity of attention.
It is just as difficult to determine what we mean by naïveté, and how to
distinguish that from foolishness. That the concepts nowhere coincide is
indubitable. The contact appears only where one is uncertain whether a
thing is foolish or naïve. The real fool is never naïve, for foolishness
has a certain laziness of thought which is never a characteristic of
naïveté. The great difficulty of getting at the difference is most
evident in the cases of real and artificial naïveté. Many people make
use of the latter with great success. To do so requires the appearance
of sufficient foolishness to make the real simpleton believe that he is
the cleverer of the pair. If the simpleton believes, the mummer has won
the game, but he has not simulated real foolishness; he has simulated
naïveté. Kant defines naïveté as conduct which pays no attention to the
possible judgment of other people. This is not the modern notion of
naïveté, for nowadays we call naïveté an uncritical attitude toward
one’s environment, and its importance in our profession is, perhaps, due
to the fact that--pardon me--many of us practise it. Naturalness,
openness of heart, lovable simplicity, openness of mind, and whatever
else the efflorescence of naïveté may be called, are fascinating
qualities in children and girls, but they do not become the criminal
judge. It is naïve honestly to accept the most obvious denials of
defendant and witness; it is naïve not to know how the examinees
correspond with each other; it is naïve to permit a criminal to talk
thieves’ patter with another in your own hearing; it is still more naïve
to speak cordially with a criminal in this patter; it is naïve not to
know the simplest expressions of this patter; and it is most naïve to
believe that the criminal can discover his duty by means of the
statutes, their exposition, and explanation; it is naïve to attempt to
impose on a criminal by a bald exhibition of slyness; and it is most
naïve of all not to recognize the naïveté of the criminal. A criminalist
who studies himself will recognize how frequently he was naïve through
ignorance of the importance of apparently insignificant circumstances.
“The greatest wisdom,” says La Rochefoucauld, “consists in knowing the
values of things.” But it would be a mistake to attempt always to bring
out directly that alone which appears to be hidden behind the naïve
moment. The will does not think, but it must turn the attention of the
mind to knowledge. It can not will any particular result of knowledge.
It can only will that the mind shall investigate without prejudice.
The proper use of this good will will consist in trying to find out the
quantity of intelligence and stupidity which may be taken for granted in
the interlocutor. I have once shown that it is a great mistake to
suppose the criminal more foolish than oneself, but that one is not
compelled to suppose him to be more intelligent than oneself. Until one
can gain more definite knowledge of his nature, it is best to believe
him to be just as intelligent as oneself. This will involve a mistake,
but rarely a damaging one. Otherwise, one may hit on the correct
solution by accident in some cases, and make great mistakes in all
others.
Intelligence in the sense of wisdom is the important quality in our
interlocutor. The witness helps us with it, and the defendant deceives
and eludes us by its means. According to Kant, a man is wise when he has
the power of practical judgment. According to Dörner, certain
individuals have especial intuitive talents, others have capacity for
empirical investigations, and still others for speculative synthesis. In
the former, their capacity serves to render the object clearly, to
observe it sharply, to analyze it into its elements. In the latter,
there is the capacity for the synthesis, for the discovery of
far-reaching relationships. Again, we hear that the wise head invents,
the acute mind discovers, the deep mind seeks out. The first combines,
the second analyzes, the third founds. Wit blends, sharpness clarifies,
deepness illuminates. Wit persuades, sharpness instructs, deepness
convinces.
In individual cases, a man is completely and suddenly understood,
perhaps, in terms of the following proverb: “There are two kinds of
silence, the silence of the fool and the silence of the wise man--both
are clever.” Kant says, somewhere, that the witty person is free and
pert, the judicious person reflective, and unwilling to draw
conclusions. In a certain direction we may be helped, also, by
particular evidences. So, when, e.g., Hering[302] says, “One-sidedness
is the mother of virtuosity. The work of the spider is wonderful, but
the spider can do nothing else. Man makes a bow and arrow when he can
get no prey in his net, the spider goes hungry.” This distinguishes
mechanical cleverness from conscious wisdom completely. Of the same
illuminating, character are such salse dicta as: “The fool never does
what he says, the wise man never says what he does.” “You can fool one
man, but you can not fool all men.” “Stupidity is natural, wisdom is a
product of art.” “To depend on accident is foolishness, to use accident
is wisdom.” “There are stupidities which can be committed only by the
wise.” “Wisdom is as different from foolishness, as man from monkey.”
“Fools speak what wise men think.” “Understanding is deficient, but
stupidity never is.” etc. These and countless other help us considerably
in individual cases, but give us no general characterization of the
function of wisdom. We may, therefore, get some sort of pragmatic
insight into the wisdom or unwisdom, of an action in the assertion: “To
be wise is to be able to sacrifice an immediate petty advantage to a
later and greater advantage.” This proposition seems not to have
sufficient scope, but on closer examination seems to fit all cases. The
wise man lives according to law, and sacrifices the petty advantage of
immediate sensual pleasure for the greater advantage of sustained
health. He is prudent and sacrifices the immediate petty delights to the
advantage of a carefree age. He is cautious in his speculation, and
sacrifices momentary doubtful, and hence, petty successes, to the
greater later success of certain earning. He is silent, and sacrifices
the petty advantage of appearing for the moment well-informed about all
possible matters, to the greater advantage of not getting into trouble
on account of this. He commits no punishable deeds, and sacrifices
advantages that might be gained for the moment to the later greater
advantage of not being punished. So the analysis might be continued, and
in each case we should find that there was no wisdom which could not be
explained in this way.
The use of our explanatory proposition is possible in all cases which
require determining the real or apparent participation of some
individual in a crime. If the degree of wisdom a man may be credited
with can be determined by means of this analysis, it is not difficult
afterwards to test by its use the probability of his having a share in
the crime in question.
Finally, cases are again and again observed in which very foolish
people--idiots and lunatics--either because of anxiety, terror, wounds
in the head, or shortly before death, become intelligent for a brief
period. It is conceivable that the improvement of mental activity in
these cases arises when the defect has depended on the pathological
dominance of an inhibitory center, the abnormally intensified activity
of which has as its result an inhibition of other important centers
(acute, curable dementia, paranoia). A light, transitory, actual
increase of mental activity, might, possibly, be explained by the
familiar fact that cerebral anemia, in its early stages, is exciting
rather than dulling. Theoretically this might be connected, perhaps,
with the molecular cell-changes which are involved in the disintegration
of the brain. The difference between the effects of these two causes
will hardly be great, but testimony dependent on this altered character
of mental activity will have little reliability. Hallucinations, false
memories, melancholic accusations of self, particularly, may also be
explained in terms of such excitement. We criminalists have frequently
to deal with people in above-named conditions, and when we receive
intelligent answers from them we must never set them aside, but must
carefully make note of them and estimate them in the light of expert
advice.
To this class belongs the interesting phenomenon that we very frequently
meet fools who never do anything foolish. It is not true that these are
simply misjudged and only appear to be foolish. They are really foolish
but they are helped by certain conditions in every instance of their
conduct. To begin with, they are not so foolish as to deceive
themselves; they are, therefore, in possession of a certain notion of
their own weakness, and do not attempt things which are too much for
them. Then, they must have a certain degree of luck in their
undertakings. The proverb says that conceit is the force behind the
fool, and if these fools apply their conceit to appropriate situations,
they succeed. Then again, they sometimes fail to see dangers, and are
therefore free from swindles which are dangerous, even to the cleverest
persons. “The fool stumbles across the abyss into which the wise man
regularly tumbles,” says the proverb again. And if routine may properly
be called the surrogate of talent, we must suppose that custom and
practice may carry the biggest fool so far as to help him in many cases
to success.
According to Esser, the fool thinks in terms of the following
proposition: “Things that are alike in a few points are identical, and
things that are unlike in a few points are altogether diverse.” If this
is true, the fool can fail only when he is drawing inferences of this
kind; if, however, none of the important events in his life involve such
inferences, he has no opportunity to exhibit his essential foolishness.
The same thing is true of his interests. No fool has a real eagerness
for knowledge. He has, instead, curiosity, and this can never be
distinguished with certainty from knowledge. Now, if the fool is lucky,
he seems to be moving forward, shows himself possessed of interests, and
nobody proves that this possession is only idiotic curiosity. The fool
must protect himself against one thing--action. Foolishness in action is
rawness--true rawness is always foolish and can not be mistaken.
Here, again, we draw the extraordinary conclusion that we criminalists,
as in all other cases, must not take man to be what he seems most of the
time, but what he shows himself as, in exceptional cases. The worst man
may have done something absolutely good, the greatest liar may today
tell the truth, and the simpleton may today act wisely. We are not
concerned with man as such; what is important for us is his immediate
self-expression. The rest of his nature is a matter of judgment.
Topic 2. ISOLATED INFLUENCES.