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

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 born<e’>, 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.

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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 foolish-

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ness 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 na<i:>vet<e’>, 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 na<i:>ve. The real fool is never na<i:>ve, for foolishness has a certain laziness of thought which is never a characteristic of na<i:>vet<e’>. The great difficulty of getting at the difference is most evident in the cases of real and artificial na<i:>vet<e’>.

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 na<i:>vet<e’>. Kant defines na<i:>vet<e’>

as conduct which pays no attention to the possible judgment of other people. This is not the modern notion of na<i:>vet<e’>, for nowadays we call na<i:>vet<e’> 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 practice it. Naturalness, openness of heart, lovable simplicity, openness of mind, and whatever else the efflorescence of na<i:>vet<e’> may be called, are fascinating qualities in children and girls, but they do not become the criminal judge. It is na<i:>ve honestly to accept the most obvious denials of defendant and witness; it is na<i:>ve not to know how the examinees correspond with each other; it is na<i:>ve to permit a criminal to talk thieves’ patter with another in your own hearing; it is still more na<i:>ve to speak cordially with a criminal in this patter; it is na<i:>ve not to know the simplest expressions of this patter; and it is most na<i:>ve to believe that the criminal can discover his duty by means of the statutes, their exposition, and explanation; it is na<i:>ve to attempt to impose on a criminal by a bald exhibition of slyness; and it is most na<i:>ve of all not to recognize the na<i:>vet<e’> of the criminal. A criminalist who studies himself will recognize how frequently he was na<i:>ve 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 na<i:>ve 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.

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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 D<o:>rner, 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 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[1] says, “Onesidedness 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.”

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“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 maxims 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 care-free 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.

[1] <U:>ber das Ged<a:>chtnis etc. Vienna 1876.

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 <p 405>

be connected, perhaps,