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

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. Section 91. (a) Habit.

Habit may be of considerable importance in criminal law. We have, first of all, to know how far we ourselves are influenced in our thinking and acting by habit; then it is important, in judging the testimony of witnesses, to know whether and how far the witness behaved according to his habits. For by means of this knowledge we may be able to see the likelihood of many a thing that might have otherwise seemed improbable. Finally, we may be able properly to estimate many an excuse offered by a defendant through considering his habits, especially when we are dealing with events that are supposed to have occurred under stupefaction, absolute intoxication, distraction, etc.[303] Hume, indeed, has assigned to habit the maximum of significance; his whole system depends upon the use of habit as a principle of explanation. He shows that the essence of all our inferences with regard to facts relates to the principle of causation, and the foundation of all our beliefs in causation is experience, while the foundation of inference from experience is habit. As a matter of fact, it is strange how often an obscure event becomes suddenly clear by an inquiry into the possibility of habit as its cause. Even everything we call fashion, custom, presumption, is at bottom nothing more than habit, or explicable by habit. All new fashions in clothes, in usages, etc., are disliked until one becomes habituated to them, and custom and morality must attach themselves to the iron law of habit. What would my grandmother have said of a woman whom she might have seen happily bicycling through the streets! How every German citizen crosses himself when he sees French sea-bathing! And if we had no idea of a ball among the four hundred what should we say if we heard that in the evening men meet half-naked women, embrace them vigorously, pull them round, and bob and stamp through the hall with disgusting noise until they must stop, pouring perspiration, gasping for breath? But because we are accustomed to it, we are satisfied with it. To see what influence habit has on our views of this subject, just close your ears tightly at some ball and watch the dancers. As soon as you stop hearing the music you think you are in a lunatic asylum. Indeed, you do not need to select such a really foolish case. Helmholtz suggests looking at a man walking in the distance, through the large end of a telescope. What extraordinary humping and rocking of the body the passer-by exhibits! There are any number of such examples, and if we inquire concerning the permissibility of certain events we simply carry the question of habit into the field of conduct. Hunting harmless animals, vivisection, the execution of back-breaking tricks, ballets, and numerous other things, will seem to us shocking, inconceivable, disgusting, if we are not habituated to them. What here requires thought is the fact that we criminalists often judge situations we do not know. When the peasant, the unskilled laborer, or the craftsman, does anything, we know only superficially the deed’s nature and real status. We have, as a rule, no knowledge of the perpetrator’s habits, and when we regard some one of his actions as most reprehensible,—quarrel or insult or maltreatment of his wife or children—he responds to us with a most astounded expression. He is not habituated to anything else, and we do not teach him a better way by punishing him.

Questions of this sort, however, deal with the generality of human nature, and do not directly concern us. But directly we are required to make a correct judgment of testimony concerning habit, they will help us to more just interpretations and will reduce the number of crass contradictions. This is so because many an assertion will seem probable when the witness shows that the thing described was habitual. No definite boundary can be drawn between skill and habit, and we may, perhaps, say rightly, that skill is possible only where habit exists, and habit is present where a certain amount of skill has been attained. Skill, generally, is the capacity of speedy habituation. But a distinction must be drawn. Habit makes actions easy. Habituation makes them necessary. This is most obvious in cases of bodily skill,—riding, swimming, skating, cycling,—everything in which habit and skill can not be separated, and with regard to which we can not see why we and other untrained people can not immediately do the same thing. And when we can do it, we do it without thinking, as if half asleep. Such action is not skilled, but habitual, i.e., a part of it is determined by the body itself without the especial guidance of the mind.

We find the hunter’s power to see so many animals, tracks, etc., inconceivable. When, e.g., we have once properly mastered the principle of a quite complicated crystal, we cannot understand why we had not done so before. We feel in the same way with regard to an unclear drawing, a new road, some bodily activity, etc. Anybody who has not acquired the habit might have to take all day to learn the business of dressing and undressing himself. And how difficult it