Criminal Psychology; a manual for judges, practitioners, and students Part 29

[1] G. Tarde: La Philosophie Pnale. Lyon 1590 La Criminalit Compare 1886. Les Lois de l'Imitation. 1890. Psych. Economique. 1902

[2] Kosmodicee. Leipzig and Vienna 1897.

[3] A. Wagner: Statistisch-anthropologische Untersuchung. Hamburg 1864.

But if a man has once swindled or killed anybody, he has lost his honor, and, as a rule, remains a scoundrel for the rest of his life. If for criminals of the first kind we subst.i.tute the latter type we get a very bad outlook.

Individuals yield similar experiences. The most important characteristic of a somewhat cultivated man who not only is able to read and to write, but makes some use of his knowledge, is a loudly- expressed discontent with his existence. If he once has acquired the desire to read, the little time he has is not sufficient to satisfy it, and when he has more time he is always compelled to lay aside his volume of poetry to feed the pigs or to clean the stables. He learns, moreover, of a number of needs which he can not satisfy but which books have instilled in him, and finally, he seeks illegal means, as we criminalists know, for their satisfaction.

In many countries the law of such cases considers extenuating circ.u.mstances and defective bringing-up, but it has never yet occurred to a single criminalist that people might be likely to commit crime because they could not read or write. Nevertheless, we are frequently in touch with an old peasant as witness who gives the impression of absolute integrity, reliability, and wisdom, so much so that it is gain for anybody to talk to him. But though the black art of reading and writing has been foreign to him through the whole of his life, n.o.body will have any accusation to make against him about defective bringing-up.

The exhibition of unattainable goods to the ma.s.s of mankind is a question of conscience. We must, of course, a.s.sume that deficiency in education is not in itself a reason for doubting the witness, or for holding an individual inclined to crime. The mistakes in bringing-up like spoiling, rigor, neglect, and their consequences, laziness, deceit, and larceny, have a sufficiently evil outcome. And how far these are at fault, and how far the nature of the individual himself, can be determined only in each concrete case by itself. It will not occur to anybody to wish for a return to savagery and anarchy because of the low value we set on the training of the mind. There is still the business of moral training, and its importance can not be overestimated. Considering the subject generally, we may say that the aim of education is the capacity of sympathizing with the feeling, understanding, and willing of other minds. This might be supplemented, perhaps, also with the limitation that the sympathy must be correct, profound, and implicative, for external, approximate, or inverted sympathy will obviously not do. The servant girl knows

concerning her master only his manner of quarreling and his manner of spitting but is absolutely unaffected by, and strange to his inner life. The darker aspects of culture and civilization are most obvious in the external contacts of mankind.

When we begin to count an intelligent sympathy, it must follow that the sympathy is possible only with regard to commonly conceivable matters; that we must fundamentally exclude the essential inward construction of the mind and the field of scientific morality. Hence we have left only religion, which is the working morality of the populace.

According to Goethe, the great fundamental conflict of history is the conflict of belief with doubt. A discussion of this conflict is unnecessary here. It is mentioned only by way of indicating that the sole training on which the criminalist may rely is that of real religion. A really religious person is a reliable witness, and when he is behind the bar he permits at least the a.s.sumption that he is innocent. Of course it is difficult to determine whether he is genuinely religious or not, but if genuine religion can be established we have a safe starting point. Various authors have discussed the influence of education, pro and con. Statistically, it is shown that in Russia, only 10% of the population can read and write, and still of 36,868 condemned persons, no fewer than 26,944 were literate. In the seventies the percentage of criminals in Scotland was divided as follows, 21% absolutely illiterate, 52.7 half educated; 26.3% well educated.

The religious statistics are altogether worthless. A part of them have nothing to do with religion, e. g., the criminality of Jews. One part is worthless because it deals only with the criminality of baptized Protestants or Catholics, and the final section, which might be of great interest, i. e., the criminality of believers and unbelievers, is indeterminable. Statistics say that in the country A in the year n there were punished x% Protestants, y% Catholics, etc. Of what use is the statement? Both among the x and the y percentages there were many absolute unbelievers, and it is indifferent whether they were Protestant or Catholic unbelievers. It would be interesting to know what percentage of the Catholics and of the Protestants are really faithful, for if we rightly a.s.sume that a true believer rarely commits a crime, we should be able to say which religion from the view point of the criminalist should be encouraged. The one which counts the greater percentage of believers, of course, but we shall never know which one that is. The numbers of the

"Protestant" criminals, and those of the "Catholics," can not help us in the least in this matter.

Section 86. (2) The View, of the Uneducated.

"To discourse is nature, to a.s.similate discourse as it is given, is culture." With this statement, Goethe has shown where the deficiencies in culture begin, and observation verifies the fact that the uncultured person is unable to accept what is told him as it is told him. This does not mean that uncultured people are unable to remember statements as they are made, but that they are unable to a.s.similate any perception in its integrity and to reproduce it in its natural simplicity. This is the alpha and the omega of every thing observable in the examination of simple people. Various thinkers in different fields have noted this fact. Mill, e. g., observes that the inability to distinguish between perception and inference is most obvious in the attempt of some ignorant person to describe a natural phenomenon. Douglas Stewart notices that the village apothecary will rarely describe the simplest case without immediately making use of a terminology in which every word is a theory. The simple and true presentation of the phenomenon will reveal at once whether the mind is able to give an accurate interpretation of nature. This suggests why we are frequently engaged in some much-involved process of description of a fact, in itself simple. It has been presented to us in this complicated fas.h.i.+on because our informants did not know how to speak simply. So Kant: "The testimony of common people may frequently be intended honestly, but it is not often reliable because the witnesses have not the habit of prolonged attention, and so they mistake what they think themselves for what they hear from others. Hence, even though they take oaths, they can hardly be believed." Hume, again, says somewhere in the Essay, that most men are naturally inclined to differentiate their discourse, inasmuch as they see their object from one side only, do not think of the objections, and conceive its corroborative principles with such liveliness that they pay no attention to those which look another way. Now, whoever sees an object from one side only does not see it as it comes to him, and whoever refuses to think of objections, has already subjectively colored his objects and no longer sees them as they are.

In this regard it is interesting to note the tendency of uneducated people to define things. They are not interested in the immediate

perception, but in its abstract form. The best example of this is the famous barrack-room definition of honor: Honor is that thing belonging to the man who has it. The same fault is committed by anybody who fails to apprehend the *whole as it comes, but perceives only what is most obvious and nearest. Mittermaier has pointed out that the light-minded, accidental witness sees only the nearest characteristics. Again, he says, "It is a well-known fact that uneducated people attend only to the question that was asked them last."[1] This fact is important. If a witness is unskilfully asked in one breath whether he murdered A, robbed B, and stole a pear from C, he will probably answer with calmness, "No, I have not stolen a pear," but he pays no attention to the other two portions of the question. This characteristic is frequently made use of by the defense. The lawyers ask some important witness for the prosecution: "Can you say that you have seen how the accused entered the room, looked around, approached the closet, and then drew the watch toward himself?" The uneducated witness then says dryly, "No, I can not say that," although he has seen everything except the concealment of the watch. He denies the whole thing solely because he has been able to attend to the last portion of the question only. It is very easy to look out for these characteristics, by simply not permitting a number of questions in one, by having questions put in the simplest and clearest possible form. Simple questions are thankfully received, and get better answers than long, or tricky ones.

For the same reason that prevents uneducated people from ever seeing a thing as it comes to them, their love of justice depends on their eagerness to avoid becoming themselves subjects of injustice. Hence, weak people can never be honest, and most uneducated people understand by duty that which *others are to do. Duty is presented as required of all men, but it is more comfortable to require it of others, so that it is understood as only so required. It may be due to the fact that education develops quiet imperturbability, and that this is conducive to correcter vision and more adequate objectivity in both events and obligations.

There is another series of processes which are characteristic of the point of view of the uneducated. There is, e. g., a peculiar recurring mental process with regard to the careful use of life preservers, fire extinguishers, and other means of escape, which are to be used *hastily in case of need. They are found always carefully

[1] Die Lehre vom Beweise. Darmstadt 1843.

chained up, or hidden in closets by the ignorant. This is possible only if the idea of protecting oneself against sudden need does not make itself effective as such, but is forced out of the mind by the desire to protect oneself against theft.

Why must the uneducated carefully feel everything that is shown them, or that they otherwise find to be new? Children even smell such things, while educated people are satisfied with looking at them. The request in public places, "Do not touch," has very good reason. I believe that the level of culture of an individual may be determined without much mistake, by his inclination to touch or not to touch some new object presented him. The reason for this desire can hardly be established but it is certainly the wish of the uneducated to study the object more fundamentally and hence, to bring into play other senses than that of sight. It may be that the educated man sees more because he is better trained in careful observation, so that the uneducated man is really compelled to do more than merely to look. On the other hand, it may be that the uneducated man here again fails to perceive the object as it is, and when it appears to him as object A, or is indicated as that object, he is inclined to disbelieve, and must convince himself by careful feeling that it is really an A.[1] It may be, again, that "trains of a.s.sociation" can help to explain the matter.

That an understanding of the character of an object is dependent on training and educated observation has been verified many times, incidentally, also by the fact that the uneducated find it difficult to get on with representations. Now this can not be accounted for by only their defective practice. The old, but instructive story of the peasant-woman who asked her son what he was reading, the black or the white, repeats itself whenever uneducated people are shown images, photographs, etc. For a long time I had not noticed that they see the background as the thing to be attended to. When, for example, you show an uneducated man a bust photograph, it may happen that he perceives the upper surroundings of shoulder and head as the lower contours of the background which is to indicate some fact, and if these contours happen to be, e. g., those of a dog, the man sees "a white dog." This is more frequent than we think, and hence, we must pay little attention to failures to recognize people in photographs.[2] One more story by way of example- that of a photographer who snapped a dozen parading young drag-

[1] Cf H. Gross's Archiv, II, 140, III, 350; VII, 155.

[2] Cf H. Gross's Archiv, VII, 160.

oons, and had gotten the addresses, but not the street numbers of their parents. He sent for that reason to the twelve parents, for inspection, a photograph each with the notice that if some mistake had occurred he would rectify it. But not a parent complained of the photographer's failure to have sent them the pictures of their own children. Each had received a soldier, and appeared to be quite satisfied with the correctness of his image. Hence it follows again, that denials of photographic ident.i.ty by the uneducated are altogether without value.

In another direction images have a peculiar significance for children and ignorant people, because they show ineradicable ideas, particularly with regard to size. n.o.body recalls any book so vividly as his first picture book and its contents. We remember it even though we are convinced that the people who made our picture book were quite mistaken. Now, as it frequently happens that the sizes are incorrectly reproduced, as when, e. g., a horse and a reindeer occur in the same picture, and the latter seems bigger than the former, the reindeer appears in imagination always bigger. It does not matter if we learn later how big a reindeer is, or how many times we have seen one, we still find the animal "altogether too small, it must be bigger than a horse." Educated adults do not make this mistake, but the uneducated do, and many false statements depend on ideas derived from pictures. If their derivation is known we may discover the source of the mistake, but if the mistake occurred unconsciously, then we have to combine the circ.u.mstances and study further to find the reason.

Finally, the general influence of the failure of ignorant people to see things as they are, upon their feeling-tone is shown in two characteristic stories. Bulwer tells of a servant whose master beat him and who was instigated to seek protection in court. He refused indignantly inasmuch as his master was too n.o.ble a person to be subject to law. And Gutberlet tells the story of the director of police, Serafini, in Ravenna, who had heard that a notorious murderer had threatened to shoot him. Serafini had the a.s.sa.s.sin brought to him, gave him a loaded pistol and invited him to shoot. The murderer grew pale and Serafini boxed his ears and kicked him out.

Section 87. (3) One-Sided Education.

Just a few words about the considerable danger in the testimony presented by persons of one-sided education. Altogether uneducated

people warn us in their own way, but people who have a certain amount of training, in at least one direction, impress us to such a degree that we a.s.sume them to be otherwise also educated and thus get involved in mistakes.

It is hard to say correctly what const.i.tutes an educated man. We demand, of course, a certain amount of knowledge, but we do not know the magnitude of that amount of knowledge, and still less its subject matter. It is remarkable that our time, which has devoted itself more than all others to natural science, does not include knowledge of such science in its concept of the educated man. Some ignorance of history, or of the cla.s.sics, or even of some modern novels, failure to visit the theaters and the picture exhibitions, neglect of French and English, etc., cla.s.sifies a man at once as lacking essential "culture." But if he knows these things, and at the same time exhibits in the most nave way an incredible ignorance of zology, botany, physics, chemistry, astronomy, etc., he still remains "an educated man." The contradiction is inexplicable, but it exists, and because of it, n.o.body can definitely say what is meant by a one-sided education. The extent of one-sidedness is, however, ill.u.s.trated by many examples. We mention only two. Linnaeus' own drawings with remarks by Afzelius show that in spite of his extraordinary knowledge of botany and his wonderful memory, he did not know a foreign language. He was in Holland for three years, and failed to understand even the Dutch language, so very similar to his own. It is told of Sir Humphrey Davy, that during the visit to the Louvre, in Paris, he admired the extraordinary carving of the frames of the pictures, and the splendid material of which the most famous of the Greek sculptures were made.

Now, how are we to meet people of this kind when they are on the witness stand? They offer no difficulty when they tell us that they know nothing about the subject in question. Suppose we have to interrogate a philologist on a subject which requires only that amount of knowledge of natural science which may be presupposed in any generally educated individual. If he declares honestly that he has forgotten everything he had learned about the matter in college, he is easily dealt with in the same way as "uneducated people." If, however, he is not honest enough immediately to confess his ignorance, nothing else will do except to make him see his position by means of questions, and even then to proceed carefully. It would be conscienceless to try to spare this man while another is shown up.

The same att.i.tude must be taken toward autodidacts and dilettantes who always measure the value of their knowledge by the amount of effort they had to use in getting it, and hence, always overestimate their acquirements. It is to be observed that they a.s.sert no more than their information permits them to, and their personality is easily discoverable by the manner in which they present their knowledge. The self-taught man is in the end only the parvenu of knowledge, and just as the parvenu, as such, rarely conceals his character, so the autodidact rarely conceals his character.

There is an additional quality of which we must beware-that is the tendency of experts to take pride in some different, incidental, and less important little thing than their own subject. Frederick the Great with his miserable flute-playing is an example. Such people may easily cause mistakes. The knowledge of their attainment in one field causes us involuntarily to respect their a.s.sertions. Now, if their a.s.sertions deal with their hobbies many a silly thing is taken at its face value, and that value is counterfeit.

Section 88. (4) Inclination.

Whether a scientific characterization of inclination is possible, whether the limits of this concept can be determined, and whether it is the result of nature, culture, or both together, are questions which can receive no certain answer. We shall not here speak of individual forms of inclination, i. e., to drink, to gamble, to steal, etc., for these are comparatively the most difficult of our modern problems. We shall consider them generally and briefly. Trees and men, says the old proverb, fall as they are inclined. Now, if we examine the inclination of the countless fallen ones we meet in our calling we shall have fewer difficulties in qualifying and judging their crimes. As a rule, it is difficult to separate inclination, on the one hand, from opportunity, need, desire, on the other. The capacity for evil is a seduction to its performance, as Alfieri says somewhere, and this idea clarifies the status of inclination. The ability may often be the opportune cause of the development of an evil tendency, and frequent success may lead to the a.s.sumption of the presence of an inclination.

Maudsley points out that feelings that have once been present leave their unconscious residue which modify the total character and even reconstruct the moral sense as a resultant of particular experiences. That an inclination or something similar thereto might

develop in this way is certain, for we may even inherit an inclination, -but only under certain conditions. This fact is substantiated by the characteristics of vagabonds. It may, perhaps, be said that the enforcement of the laws of vagabondage belongs to the most interesting of the pyschological researches of the criminal judge. Even the difference between the real bona fide tramp, and the poor devil who, in spite of all his effort can get no work, requires the consideration of a good deal of psychological fact. There is no need of description in such cases; the difference must be determined by the study of thousands of details. Just as interesting are the results of procedure, especially certain statistical results. The course of long practice will show that among real tramps there is hardly ever an individual whose calling requires very hard or difficult work. Peasants, smiths, well-diggers, mountaineers, are rarely tramps. The largest numbers have trades which demand no real hard work and whose business is not uniform. Bakers, millers, waiters are hence more numerous. The first have comparatively even distribution of work and rest; the latter sometimes have much, sometimes little to do, without any possible evenness of distribution. Now, we should make a mistake if we inferred that because the former had hard work, and an equivalent distribution of work and rest, they do not become tramps, while the latter, lacking these, do become tramps. In truth, the former have naturally a need and inclination for hard work and uniform living, have, therefore, no inclination to tramping, and have for that reason chosen their difficult calling. The latter, on the other hand, felt an inclination for lighter, more irregular work, i. e., were already possessed of an inclination for vagabondage, and had, hence, chosen the business of baking, grinding, or waiting. The real tramp, therefore, is not a criminal. Vagabondage is no doubt the kindergarten of criminals, because there are many criminals among tramps, but the true vagabond is one only because of his inclination for tramping. He is a degenerate.

Possibly a similar account of other types may be rendered. If it is attained by means of a statistic developed on fundamental psychological principles, it would give us ground for a number of important a.s.sumptions. It would help us to make parallel inferences, inasmuch as it would permit us to determine the fundamental inclination of the person by considering his calling, his way of approaching his work, his environment, his choice of a wife, his preferred pleasures, etc. And then we should be able to connect this inclination with the deed in question. It is difficult to fix upon the

relation between inclination and character, and the agreement will be only general when a man's character is called all those things to which he is naturally, or by education, inclined. But it is certain that a good or bad character exists only then when its maxims of desire and action express themselves in fact. The emphasis must be on the fact; what is factual may be discovered, and these discoveries may be of use.

Section 89. (5) Other Differences.

The ancient cla.s.sification of individuals according to temperaments is of little use. There were four of them, called humors, and a series of characteristics was a.s.signed 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 circ.u.mstance 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 a.s.sumes 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 ber 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 embarra.s.sed, 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 circ.u.mstances 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 a.s.sertion 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 ex-

traordinary 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 circ.u.mstances. The commission of the pathetic fallacy is the judge's greatest danger.

Section 90. (6) Intelligence and Stupidity.

The three enemies of the criminalist are evil nature, untruth, and stupidity or foolishness. The last is not the least difficult. n.o.body 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 n.o.body 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 pa.s.ses 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. a.s.sume 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 "

(ber 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 a.s.sume 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 circ.u.mference 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 ill.u.s.trated 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 born, 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 a.s.sures 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 a.s.signs to each distinguis.h.i.+ng character-marks. But as the notions for which these expressions stand vary very much, this cla.s.sification 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 cla.s.sified 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 distinguis.h.i.+ng 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 foolish-

ness and simplicity are distinguished by the lack of extent, or the intensity of attention.