A similar motive belongs to subordinate forms of egoism—the obstinacy of a man who may be so vexed by contradiction as to drive one into despair, and who under proper treatment becomes valuable. This I learned mainly from my old butler, a magnificent honest soldier, a figure out of a comedy, but endowed with inexorable obstinacy against which my skill for a long time availed nothing. As often as I proposed something with regard to some intended piece of work or alteration, I got the identical reply—“It won’t do, sir.” Finally I got hold of a list and worked my plan—“Simon, this will now be done as Simon recently said it should be done,—namely.” At this he looked at me, tried to think when he had said this thing, and went and did it. And in spite of frequent application this list has not failed once for some years. What is best about it is that it will serve, mutatis mutandis, with criminals. As soon as ever real balkiness is noted, it becomes necessary to avoid the least appearance of contradictoriness, since that increases difficulties. It is not necessary to lie or to make use of trickery. Only, avoid direct contradiction, drop the subject in question, and return to it indirectly when you perceive that the obstinate individual recognizes his error. Then you may succeed in building him a golden bridge, or at least a barely visible sidedoor where he can make his retreat unnoticed. In that case even the most difficult of obstinates will no longer repeat the old story. He will repeat only if he is pressed, and this although he is repeatedly brought back to the point. If, however, the matter is once decided, beware of returning to it without any other reason, save to confirm the settled matter quite completely,—that would be only to wake the sleeper to give him a sleeping powder.
Speaking generally, the significant rule is this: Egoism, laziness and conceit are the only human motives on which one may unconditionally depend. Love, loyalty, honesty, religion and patriotism, though firm as a rock, may lapse and fall. A man might have been counted on for one of these qualities ten times with safety, and on the eleventh, he might collapse like a house of cards. Count on egoism and laziness a hundred or a thousand times and they are as firm as ever. More simply, count on egoism—for laziness and conceit are only modifications of egoism. The latter alone then should be the one human motive to keep in mind when dealing with men. There are cases enough when all the wheels are set in motion after a clue to the truth, i.e., when there is danger that the person under suspicion is innocent; appeals to honor, conscience, humanity and religion fail;—but run the complete gamut of self-love and the whole truth rings clear. Egoism is the best criterion of the presence of veracity. Suppose a coherent explanation has been painfully constructed. It is obvious that the correctness of the construction is studied with reference to the given motive. Now, if the links in the chain reach easily back to the motive, there is at least the possibility that the chain is free of error. What then of the motive? If it is noble—friendship, love, humaneness, loyalty, mercy—the constructed chain may be correct, and happily is so oftener than is thought; but it need not be correct. If, however, the structure rests on egoism, in any of its innumerable forms, and if it is logically sound, then the whole case is explained utterly and reliably. The construction is indubitably correct.
Section 8. (f) Secrets.
The determination of the truth at law would succeed much less frequently than it does if it were not for the fact that men find it very difficult to keep secrets. This essentially notable and not clearly understood circumstance is popularly familiar. Proverbs of all people deal with it and point mainly to the fact that keeping secrets is especially difficult for women. The Italians say a woman who may not speak is in danger of bursting; the Germans, that the burden of secrecy affects her health and ages her prematurely; the English say similar things still more coarsely. Classical proverbs have dealt with the issue; numberless fairy tales, narratives, novels and poems have portrayed the difficulty of silence, and one very fine modern novel (Die Last des Schweigens, by Ferdinand Kürnberger) has chosen this fact for its principal motive. The universal difficulty of keeping silence is expressed by Lotze[56] in the dictum that we learn expression very young and silence very late. The fact is of use to the criminalist not only in regard to criminals, but also with regard to witnesses, who, for one reason or another, want to keep something back. The latter is the source of a good deal of danger, inasmuch as the witness is compelled to speak and circles around the secret in question without touching it, until he points it out and half reveals it. If he stops there, the matter requires consideration, for “a half truth is worse than a whole lie.” The latter reveals its subject and intent and permits of defence, while the half truth may, by association and circumscriptive limitations, cause vexatious errors both as regards the identity of the semi-accused and as regards the circumstances with which he is thus involved. For this reason the criminalist must consider the question of secrets carefully.
As for his own silence, this must be considered in both directions. That he is not to blab official secrets is so obvious that it need not be spoken of. Such blabbing is so negligent and dishonorable that we must consider it intrinsically impossible. But it not infrequently happens that some indications are dropped or persuaded out of a criminal judge, generally out of one of the younger and more eager men. They mention only the event itself, and not a name, nor a place, nor a particular time, nor some even more intimate matter—there seems no harm done. And yet the most important points have often been blabbed of in just such a way. And what is worst of all, just because the speaker has not known the name nor anything else concrete, the issue may be diverted and enmesh some guiltless person. It is worth considering that the effort above mentioned is made only in the most interesting cases, that crimes especially move people to disgusting interest, due to the fact that there is a more varied approach to synthesis of a case when the same story is repeated several times or by various witnesses. For by such means extrapolations and combinations of the material are made possible. By way of warning, let me remind you of an ancient and much quoted anecdote, first brought to light by Boccaccio: A young and much loved abbé was teased by a bevy of ladies to narrate what had happened in the first confession he had experienced. After long hesitation the young fellow decided that it was no sin to relate the confessed sin if he suppressed the name of the confessor, and so he told the ladies that his first confession was of infidelity. A few minutes later a couple of tardy guests appeared,—a marquis and his charming wife. Both reproached the young priest for his infrequent visits at their home. The marquise exclaimed so that everybody heard, “It is not nice of you to neglect me, your first confessée.” This squib is very significant for our profession, for it is well known how, in the same way, “bare facts,” as “completely safe,” are carried further. The listener does not have to combine them; the facts combine themselves by means of others otherwise acquired, and finally the most important official matters, on the concealment of which much may perhaps have depended, become universally known. Official secrets have a general significance, and must therefore be guarded at all points and not merely in detail.
The second direction in which the criminal justice must maintain silence looks toward witnesses and accused. If, in the first instance, the cause of too much communicativeness was an over-proneness to talk; its cause in this case is a certain conceit that teases one into talking. Whether the justice wants to show the accused how much he already knows or how correctly he has drawn his conclusions; whether he wishes to impress the witness by his confidences, he may do equally as much harm in one case as in the other. Any success is made especially impossible if the judge has been in too much of a hurry and tried to show himself fully informed at the very beginning, but has brought out instead some error. The accused naturally leaves him with his false suppositions, they suggest things to the witness—and what follows may be easily considered. Correct procedure in such circumstances is difficult. Never to reveal what is already known, is to deprive oneself of one of the most important means of examination; use of it therefore ought not to be belated. But it is much worse to be premature or garrulous. In my own experience, I have never been sorry for keeping silence, especially if I had already said something. The only rule in the matter is comparatively self-evident. Never move toward any incorrectness and never present the appearance of knowing more than you actually do. Setting aside the dishonesty of such a procedure, the danger of a painful exposure in such matters is great.
There is still another great danger which one may beware of, optima fide,—the danger of knowing something untrue. This danger also is greatest for the greatest talent and the greatest courage among us, because they are the readiest hands at synthesis, inference, and definition of possibilities, and see as indubitable and shut to contradiction things that at best are mere possibilities. It is indifferent to the outcome whether a lie has been told purposely or whether it has been the mere honest explosion of an over-sanguine temperament. It is therefore unnecessary to point out the occasion for caution. One need only suggest that something may be learned from people who talk too much. The over-communicativeness of a neighbor is quickly noticeable, and if the why and how much of it are carefully studied out, it is not difficult to draw a significant analogy for one’s own case. In the matter of secrets of other people, obviously the thing to be established first is what is actually a secret; what is to be suppressed, if one is to avoid damage to self or another. When an actual secret is recognized it is necessary to consider whether the damage is greater through keeping or through revealing the secret. If it is still possible, it is well to let the secret be—there is always damage, and generally, not insignificant damage, when it is tortured out of a witness. If, however, one is honestly convinced that the secret must be revealed—as when a guiltless person is endangered—every effort and all skill is to be applied in the revelation. Inasmuch as the least echo of bad faith is here impossible, the job is never easy.
The chief rule is not to be overeager in getting at the desired secret. The more important it is, the less ought to be made of it. It is best not directly to lead for it. It will appear of itself, especially if it is important. Many a fact which the possessor had set no great store by, has been turned into a carefully guarded secret by means of the eagerness with which it was sought. In cases of need, when every other means has failed, it may not be too much to tell the witness, cautiously of course, rather more of the crime than might otherwise have seemed good. Then those episodes must be carefully hit on, which cluster about the desired secret and from which its importance arises. If the witness understands that he presents something really important by giving up his secret, surprising consequences ensue.
The relatively most important secret is that of one’s own guilt, and the associated most suggestive establishment of it, the confession, is a very extraordinary psychological problem.[57] In many cases the reasons for confession are very obvious. The criminal sees that the evidence is so complete that he is soon to be convicted and seeks a mitigation of the sentence by confession, or he hopes through a more honest narration of the crime to throw a great degree of the guilt on another. In addition there is a thread of vanity in confession—as among young peasants who confess to a greater share in a burglary than they actually had (easily discoverable by the magniloquent manner of describing their actual crime). Then there are confessions made for the sake of care and winter lodgings: the confession arising from “firm conviction” (as among political criminals and others). There are even confessions arising from nobility, from the wish to save an intimate, and confessions intended to deceive, and such as occur especially in conspiracy and are made to gain time (either for the flight of the real criminal or for the destruction of compromising objects). Generally, in the latter case, guilt is admitted only until the plan for which it was made has succeeded; then the judge is surprised with well-founded, regular and successful establishment of an alibi. Not infrequently confession of small crimes is made to establish an alibi for a greater one. And finally there are the confessions Catholics[58] are required to make in confessional, and the death bed confessions. The first are distinguished by the fact that they are made freely and that the confessee does not try to mitigate his crime, but is aiming to make amends, even when he finds it hard; and desires even a definite penance. Death bed confessions may indeed have religious grounds, or the desire to prevent the punishment or the further punishment of an innocent person.
Although this list of explicable confession-types is long, it is in no way exhaustive. It is only a small portion of all the confessions that we receive; of these the greater part remain more or less unexplained. Mittermaier[59] has already dealt with these acutely and cites examples as well as the relatively well-studied older literature of the subject. A number of cases may perhaps be explained through pressure of conscience, especially where there are involved hysterical or nervous persons who are plagued with vengeful images in which the ghost of their victim would appear, or in whose ear the unendurable clang of the stolen money never ceases, etc. If the confessor only intends to free himself from these disturbing images and the consequent punishment by means of confession, we are not dealing with what is properly called conscience, but more or less with disease, with an abnormally excited imagination.[60] But where such hallucinations are lacking, and religious influences are absent, and the confession is made freely in response to mere pressure, we have a case of conscience,[61]—another of those terms which need explanation. I know of no analogy in the inner nature of man, in which anybody with open eyes does himself exclusive harm without any contingent use being apparent, as is the case in this class of confession. There is always considerable difficulty in explaining these cases. One way of explaining them is to say that their source is mere stupidity and impulsiveness, or simply to deny their occurrence. But the theory of stupidity does not appeal to the practitioner, for even if we agree that a man foolishly makes a confession and later, when he perceives his mistake, bitterly regrets telling it, we still find many confessions that are not regretted and the makers of which can in no wise be accused of defective intelligence. To deny that there are such is comfortable but wrong, because we each know collections of cases in which no effort could bring to light a motive for the confession. The confession was made because the confessor wanted to make it, and that’s the whole story.