Criminal Psychology by Hans Gross (best book club books for discussion TXT) 📖

made no statistical difference on the curve of crime. This is one of the conclusions arrived at by Adolf Wagner[298] which corroborates the experience of practising lawyers and we who have had, during the growth of popular education, the opportunity to make observations from the criminalistic standpoint, know nothing favorable to its influence. If the general assertion is true that increased national education has reduced brawling, damages to property, etc., and has increased swindling, misappropriations, etc., we have made a great mistake. For the psychological estimation of a criminal, the crime itself is not definitive; there is always the question as to the damage this individual has done his own nature with his deed. If, then, a peasant lad hits his neighbor with the leg of a chair or destroys fences, or perhaps a whole village, he may still be the most honorable of youths, and later grow up into a universally respected man. Many of the best and most useful village mayors have been guilty in their youth of brawls, damages to property, resistance to authority, and similar things. 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 substitute 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 circumstances 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, nobody will have any accusation to make against him about defective bringing-up.

The exhibition of unattainable goods to the mass of mankind is a question of conscience. We must, of course, assume 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 assumption 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 assume 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 Views of the Uneducated.

“To discourse is nature, to assimilate 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 assimilate 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 fashion 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.”[299] 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 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