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

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.[300] It may be, again, that “trains of association” 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.[301] One more story by way of example—that of a photographer who snapped a dozen parading young dragoons, 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 identity 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. Nobody 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 circumstances 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 noble 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 assassin 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 assume them to be otherwise also educated and thus get involved in mistakes.

It is hard to say correctly what constitutes 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 classics, or even of some modern novels, failure to visit the theaters and the picture exhibitions, neglect of French and English, etc., classifies a man at once as lacking essential “culture.” But if he knows these things, and at the same time exhibits in the most naïve way an incredible ignorance of zoölogy, botany, physics, chemistry, astronomy, etc., he still remains “an educated man.” The contradiction is inexplicable, but it exists, and because of it, nobody can definitely say what is meant by a one-sided education. The extent of one-sidedness is, however, illustrated 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 attitude 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 assert 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 assertions. Now, if their assertions 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 assumption of the presence of an inclination.

Maudsley points out that feelings that have once been present leave their unconscious residua 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 psychological 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