Criminal Psychology by Hans Gross (best book recommendations .TXT) 📕

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 <p 392>

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 na<i:>ve way an incredible ignorance of zo<o:>logy, 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.

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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 residue 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 <p 394>

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 pyschological 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 one only because of his inclination for tramping. He is a degenerate.

Possibly a similar account of other types may be rendered. If it is attained by means of a statistic developed on fundamental psychological principles, it would give us ground for a number of important assumptions. It would help us to make parallel inferences, inasmuch as it would permit us to determine the fundamental inclination of the person by considering his calling, his way of approaching his work, his environment, his choice of a wife, his preferred pleasures, etc. And then we should be able to connect this inclination with the deed in question. It is difficult to fix upon the <p 395>

relation between inclination and character, and the agreement will be only general when a man’s character is called all those things to which he is naturally, or by education, inclined. But it is certain that a good or bad character exists only then when its maxims of desire and action express themselves in fact. The emphasis must be on the fact; what is factual may be discovered, and these discoveries may be of use.

Section 89. (5) Other Differences.

The ancient classification of individuals according to temperaments is of little use. There were four of them, called humors, and a series of characteristics was assigned to each, but not one of them had all of its characteristics at once. Hence temperaments determined according to these four categories do not really exist, and the categorical distinction can have no practical value. If, however, we make use of the significant general meaning of temperament, the apparatus of circumstance which is connected with this distinction becomes superfluous. If you call every active person choleric, every truculent one sanguine, every thoughtful one phlegmatic, and every sad one melancholy, you simply add a technical expression to a few of the thousands of adjectives that describe these things. These four forms are not the only ones there are. Apart from countless medial and transitional forms, there are still large numbers that do not fit in any one of these categories. Moreover, temperament alters with age, health, experience, and other accidents, so that the differentiation is not even justified by the constancy of the phenomenon.

Nevertheless, it is to some degree significant because any form of it indicates a certain authority, and because each one of these four categories serves to connect a series of phenomena and assumes this connection to be indubitable, although there is absolutely no necessity for it. When Machiavelli says that the world belongs to the phlegmatic, he certainly did not have in mind that complex of phenomena which are habitually understood as the characteristics of the phlegmatic humor. He wanted simply to say that extremes of conduct lead to as little in the daily life as in politics; that everything must be reflected upon and repeatedly tested before its realization is attempted; that only then can progress, even if slow, be made.

If he had said, the world belongs to the cautious or reflective person, we should not have found his meaning to be different.

When we seek clearly to understand the nature and culture of <p 396>

an individual, an investigation into his temperament does not help us in the least. Let us consider then, some other characteristic on which is based the judgment of individuals. The proverb says that laughter betrays a man. If in the theater, you know the subject of laughter, the manner of laughter, and the point at which laughter first occurred, you know where the most educated and the least educated people are. Schopenhauer says that the intelligent man finds everything funny, the logical man nothing; and according to Erdmann (in <U:>ber die Dummheit), the distressing or laughable characteristics of an object, shows not