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

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