Criminal Psychology by Hans Gross (10 best books of all time .txt) 📕

spite of acute sensations of hunger, into their ears and noses, but not into their mouths. We must therefore say that there is always a demand for a minimum quantity of intelligence in order to know that the feeling of hunger may be vanquished by putting food into the mouth.

One step further: In the description of the conduct of anthropoid apes which are kept in menageries, etc., especial intelligence is assigned to those who know how to draw a blanket over themselves as protection against cold. The same action is held to be a sign of intelligence in very young children.

Still more thoroughly graded is the attitude toward pain, inasmuch as barely a trace of intelligence is required, in order to know that it is necessary to wipe away a hot liquid drop that has fallen on the body. Every physiological text-book mentions the fact that a decapitated frog makes such wiping movements when it is wet with acid. From this unconscious activity of the understanding to the technically highest-developed treatment of a burn, a whole series of progressively higher expressions of intelligence may be interpolated, a series so great as to defy counting.

Now take another, still animal, but more highly-developed feeling, for example, the feeling of comfort. We lay a cat on a soft bolster—she stretches herself, spreads and thins herself out, in order to bring as many nerve termini as possible into contact with the pleasant stimuli of the bolster. This behavior of the cat may be construed as instinctive, also as the aboriginal source of the sense of comfort and as leading to luxury in comfort, the stage of comfort which Roscher calls highest. (I. Luxury in eating and drinking. II. Luxury in dress. III. Luxury in comfort.)

Therefore we may say that the reaction of the understanding to the physiological stimulus aims to set it aside when it is unpleasant, and to increase and exhaust it when it is pleasant, and that in a certain sense both coincide (the ousting of unpleasant darkness is equivalent to the introduction of pleasant light). We may therefore say generally, that feeling is a physiological stimulus indivisibly connected with the understanding’s sensitive attitude thereto. Of course there is a far cry from instinctive exclusion and inclusion to the most refined defensive preparation or interpretation, but the differences which lie next to each, on either side, are only differences in degree.

Now let us think of some so-called higher feeling and consider a special case of it. I meet for the first time a man who is unpleasantly marked, e.g., with badly colored hair. This stimulates my eyes disagreeably, and I seek either by looking away or by wishing the man away to protect myself from this physiologically-inimical influence, which already eliminates all feeling of friendship for this harmless individual. Now I see that the man is torturing an animal,—I do not like to see this, it affects me painfully; hence I wish him out of the way still more energetically. If he goes on so, adding one disagreeable characteristic to another, I might break his bones to stop him, bind him in chains to hinder him; I even might kill him, to save myself the unpleasant excitation he causes me. I strain my intelligence to think of some means of opposing him, and clearly, in this case, also, physiological stimulus and activity of the understanding are invincibly united.

The emotion of anger is rather more difficult to explain. But it is not like suddenly-exploding hatred, for it is acute, while hatred is chronic. I might be angry with my beloved child. But though at the moment of anger, the expression is identical with that of hatred, it is also transitive. In the extremest cases the negating action aims to destroy the stimulus. This is the most radical means of avoiding physiological excitation, and hence I tear in pieces a disagreeable letter, or stamp to powder the object on which I have hurt myself. Where persons are involved, I proceed either directly or symbolically when I can not, or may not, get my hands on the responsible one.

The case is the same with feeling of attraction. I own a dog, he has beautiful lines which are pleasant to my eye, he has a bell-like bark that stimulates my ear pleasantly, he has a soft coat which is pleasant to my stroking hand, I know that in case of need the dog will protect me (and that is a calming consideration), I know that he may be otherwise of use to me—in short my understanding tells me all kinds of pleasant things about the beast. Hence I like to have him near me; i.e., I like him. The same explanation may be applied to all emotions of inclination or repulsion. Everywhere we find the emotion as physiological stimulus in indivisible union with a number of partly known, partly unknown functions of the understanding. The unknown play an important rôle. They are serial understandings, i.e., inherited from remote ancestors, and are characterized by the fact that they lead us to do the things we do when we recognize intelligently any event and its requirements.

When one gets thirsty, he drinks. Cattle do the same. And they drink even when nobody has told them to, because this is an inherited action of countless years. If a man is, however, to proceed intelligently about his drinking, he will say, “By drying, or other forms of segregation, the water will be drawn from the cells of my body, they will become arid, and will no longer be sufficiently elastic to do their work. If, now, by way of my stomach, through endosmosis and exosmosis, I get them more water, the proper conditions will return.” The consequences of this form of consideration will not be different from the instinctive action of the most elementary of animals—the wise man and the animal drink. So the whole content of every emotion is physiological stimulation and function of the understanding.

And what good is all this to the criminal lawyer? Nobody doubts that both prisoners and witnesses are subject to the powerful influence of emotional expression. Nobody doubts that the determination, interpretation, and judgment of these expressions are as difficult as they are important to the judge. And when we consider these emotions as especial conditions of the mind it is indubitable that they are able to cause still greater difficulty because of their elusiveness, their very various intensity, and their confused effect. Once, however, we think of them as functions of the understanding, we have, in its activities, something better known, something rather more disciplined, which offers very many fewer difficulties in the judgment concerning the fixed form in which it acts. Hence, every judgment of an emotional state must be preceded by a reconstruction in terms of the implied functions of the understanding. Once this is done, further treatment is no longer difficult.

Topic 9. THE FORMS OF GIVING TESTIMONY. Section 59.

Wherever we turn we face the absolute importance of language for our work. Whatever we hear or read concerning a crime is expressed in words, and everything perceived with the eye, or any other sense, must be clothed in words before it can be put to use. That the criminalist must know this first and most important means of understanding, completely and in all its refinements, is self-evident. But still more is required of him. He must first of all undertake a careful investigation of the essence of language itself. A glance over literature shows how the earliest scholars have aimed to study language with regard to its origins and character. Yet, who needs this knowledge? The lawyer. Other disciplines can find in it only a scientific interest, but it is practically and absolutely valuable only for us lawyers, who must, by means of language, take evidence, remember it, and variously interpret it. A failure in a proper understanding of language may give rise to false conceptions and the most serious of mistakes. Hence, nobody is so bound as the criminal lawyer to study the general character of language, and to familiarize himself with its force, nature, and development. Without this knowledge the lawyer may be able to make use of language, but failing to understand it, will slip up before the slightest difficulty. There is an exceedingly rich literature open to everybody.[240]

Section 60. (a) General Study of Variety in Forms of Expression.

Men being different in nature and bringing-up on the one hand, and language, being on the other, a living organism which varies with its soil, i.e., with the human individual who makes use of it, it is inevitable that each man should have especial and private forms of expression. These forms, if the man comes before us as witness or prisoner, we must study, each by itself. Fortunately, this study must be combined with another that it implies, i.e., the character and nature of the individual. The one without the other is unthinkable. Whoever aims to study a man’s character must first of all attend to his ways of expression, inasmuch as these are most significant of a man’s qualities, and most illuminating. A man is as he speaks. It is not possible, on the other hand, to study modes of expression in themselves. Their observation requires the study of a group of other conditions, if the form of speech is to be explained, or its analysis made even possible. Thus, one is involved in the other, and once you know clearly the tricks of speech belonging to an individual, you also have a clear conception of his character and conversely. This study requires, no doubt, considerable skill. But that is at the command of anybody who is devoted to the lawyer’s task.

Tylor is correct in his assertion, that a man’s speech indicates his origin much less than his bringing-up, his education, and his power. Much of this fact is due to the nature of language as a living growth and moving organism which acquires new and especial forms to express new and especial events in human life. Geiger[241] cites the following example of such changes in the meaning of words. “Mriga” means in Sanscrit, “wild beast;” in Zend it means merely “bird,” and the equivalent Persian term “mrug” continues to mean only “bird,” so that the barnyard fowls, song-birds, etc., are now called “mrug.” Thus the first meaning, “wild animal” has been transmuted into its opposite, “tame animal.” In other cases we may incorrectly suppose certain expressions to stand for certain things. We say, “to bake bread, to bake cake, to bake certain meats,” and then again, “to roast apples, to roast potatoes, to roast certain meats.” We should laugh if some foreigner told us that he had “roasted” bread.

These forms of expression have, as yet, no relation to character, but they are the starting-point of quite characteristic modes which establish themselves in all corporations, groups, classes, such as students, soldiers, hunters, etc., as well as among the middle classes in large cities. Forms of this kind may become so significant that the use of a single one of them might put the user in question into jeopardy. I once saw two old gentlemen on a train who did not know each other. They fell into conversation and one told the other that he had seen an officer, while jumping from his horse, trip over his sword and fall. But instead of the word sword he made use of the old couleur-student slang word “speer,” and the other old boy looked at him with shining eyes and cried out “Well, brother, what color?”

Still more remarkable is the mutation and addition of new words of especially definite meaning among certain classes. The words become more modern, like so much slang.

The especial use of certain forms is individual as well as social. Every person has his private