There is still another thing to be observed. A good many people who are especially efficient in their trades desire to be known as especially efficient in some other and remote circle. It is historic that a certain regent was happy when his very modest flute-playing was praised; a poet was pleased when his miserable drawings were admired; a marshal wanted to hear no praise of his victories but much of his very doubtful declamation. The case is the same among lesser men. A craftsman wants to shine with some foolishness in another craft, and “the philistine is happiest when he is considered a devil of a fellow.” The importance of this fact lies in the possibility of error in conclusions drawn from what the subject himself tries to present about his knowledge and power. With regard to the past it leads even fundamentally honest persons to deception and lying.
So for example a student who might have been the most solid and harmless in his class later makes suggestions that he was the wildest sport; the artist who tried to make his way during his cubhood most bravely with the hard-earned money of his mother is glad to have it known that he was guilty as a young man of unmitigated nonsense; and the ancient dame who was once the most modest of girls is tickled with the flattery of a story concerning her magnificent flirtations. When such a matter is important for us it must be received with great caution.
To this class of people who want to appear rather more interesting than they are, either in their past or present, belong also those who declare that everything is possible and who have led many a judge into vexatious mistakes. This happens especially when an accused person tries to explain away the suspicions against him by daring statements concerning his great achievements (e.g.: in going back to a certain place, or his feats of strength, etc.), and when witnesses are asked if these are conceivable. One gets the impression in these cases that the witnesses under consideration suppose that they belittle themselves and their point of view if they think anything to be impossible. They are easily recognized. They belong to the worst class of promoters and inventors or their relations. If a man is studying how to pay the national debt or to solve the social question or to irrigate Sahara, or is inclined to discover a dirigible air-ship, a perpetual-motion machine, or a panacea, or if he shows sympathy for people so inclined, he is likely to consider everything possible—and men of this sort are surprisingly numerous. They do not, as a rule, carry their plans about in public, and hence have the status of prudent persons, but they betray themselves by their propensity for the impossible in all conceivable directions. If a man is suspected to be one of them, and the matter is important enough, he may be brought during the conversation to talk about some project or invention. He will then show how his class begins to deal with it, with what I might call a suspicious warmth. By that token you know the class. They belong to that large group of people who, without being abnormal, still have passed the line which divides the perfectly trustworthy from those unreliable persons who, with the best inclination to tell the truth, can render it only as it is distorted by their clouded minds.
These people are not to be confused with those specific men of power who, in the attempt to show what they can do, go further than in truth they should. There are indeed persons of talent who are efficient, and know it, whether for good or evil, and they happen to belong both to the class of the accused and of the witness. The former show this quality in confessing to more than they are guilty of, or tell their story in such a way as to more clearly demonstrate both their power and their conceit. So that it may happen that a man takes upon himself a crime that he shares with three accomplices or that he describes a simple larceny as one in which force had to be used with regard to its object and even with regard to the object’s owner; or perhaps he describes his flight or his opponents’ as much more troublesome than these actually were or need have been. The witness behaves in a similar fashion and shows his defense against an attack for example, or his skill in discovery of his goods, or his detection of the criminal in a much brighter light than really belongs to it; he even may describe situations that were superfluous in order to show what he can do. In this way the simplest fact is often distorted. As suspects such people are particularly difficult to deal with. Aside from the fact that they do more and actually have done more than was necessary, they become unmanageable and hard-mouthed through unjust accusations. Concerning these people the statement made a hundred years ago by Ben David[87] still holds: “Persecution turns wise people raw and foolish, and kindly and well disposed ones cruel and evil-intentioned.” There are often well disposed natures who, after troubles, express themselves in the manner described. It very frequently happens that suspects, especially those under arrest, alter completely in the course of time, become sullen, coarse, passionate, ill-natured, show themselves defiant and resentful to even the best-willed approach, and exhibit even a kind of courage in not offering any defense and in keeping silent. Such phenomena require the most obvious caution, for one is now dealing apparently with powerful fellows who have received injustice. Whether they are quite guiltless, whether they are being improperly dealt with, or for whatever reason the proper approach has not been made, we must go back, to proceed in another fashion, and absolutely keep in mind the possibility of their being innocent in spite of serious evidence against them.
These people are mainly recognizable by their mode of life, their habitual appearance, and its expression. Once that is known their conduct in court is known. In the matter of individual features of character, the form of life, the way of doing things is especially to be observed. Many an effort, many a quality can be explained in no other way. The simple declaration of Volkmar, “There are some things that we want only because we had them once,” explains to the criminalist long series of phenomena that might otherwise have remained unintelligible. Many a larceny, robbery, possibly murder, many a crime springing from jealousy, many sexual offenses become intelligible when one learns that the criminal had at one time possessed the object for the sake of which he committed the crime, and having lost it had tried with irresistible vigor to regain it. What is extraordinary in the matter is the fact that considerable time passes between the loss and the desire for recovery. It seems as if the isolated moments of desire sum themselves up in the course of time and then break out as the crime. In such cases the explaining motive of the deed is never to be found except in the criminal’s past.
The same relationship exists in the cases of countless criminals whose crimes seem at bottom due to apparently inconceivable brutality. In all such cases, especially when the facts do not otherwise make apparent the possible guilt of the suspect, the story of the crime’s development has to be studied. Gustav Struve asserts that it is demonstrable that young men become surgeons out of pure cruelty, out of desire to see people suffer pain and to cause pain. A student of pharmacy became a hangman for the same reason and a rich Dutchman paid the butchers for allowing him to kill oxen. If, then, one is dealing with a crime which points to extraordinary cruelty, how can one be certain about its motive and history without knowing the history of the criminal?
This is the more necessary inasmuch as we may be easily deceived through apparent motives. “Inasmuch as in most capital crimes two or more motives work together, an ostensible and a concealed one,” says Kraus,[88] “each criminal has at his command apparent motives which encourage the crime.” We know well enough how frequently the thief excuses himself on the ground of his need, how the criminal wants to appear as merely acting in self-defense during robberies, and how often the sensualist, even when he has misbehaved with a little child, still asserts that the child had seduced him. In murder cases even, when the murderer has confessed, we frequently find that he tries to excuse himself. The woman who poisons her husband, really because she wants to marry another, tells her story in such a way as to make it appear that she killed him because he was extraordinarily bad and that her deed simply freed the world of a disgusting object. As a rule the psychological aspect of such cases is made more difficult, by the reason that the subject has in a greater or lesser degree convinced himself of the truth of his statements and finally believes his reasons for excuse altogether or in part. And if a man believes what he says, the proof that the story is false is much harder to make, because psychological arguments that might be used to prove falsehood are then of no use. This is an important fact which compels us to draw a sharp line between a person who is obviously lying and one who does believe what he says. We have to discover the difference, inasmuch as the self-developed conviction of the truth of a story is never so deep rooted as the real conviction of truth. For that reason, the person who has convinced himself of his truth artificially, watches all doubts and objections with much greater care than a man who has no doubt whatever in what he says. The former, moreover, does not have a good conscience, and the proverb says truly, “a bad conscience has a fine ear.” The man knows that he is not dealing correctly with the thing and hence he observes all objections, and the fact that he does so observe, can not be easily overlooked by the examining officer.
Once this fine hearing distinguishes the individual who really believes in the motive he plausibly offers the court, there is another indication (obviously quite apart from the general signs of deceit) that marks him further, and this comes to light when one has him speak about similar crimes of others in which the ostensible motive actually was present. It is said rightly, that not he is old who no longer commits youthful follies but he that no longer forgives them, and so not merely he is bad who himself commits evil but also he who excuses them in others. Of course, that an accused person should defend the naked deed as it is described in the criminal law is not likely for conceivable reasons—since certainly no robbery-suspect will sing a paean about robbers, but certainly almost anybody who has a better or a better-appearing motive for his crime, will protect those who have been guided by a similar motive in other cases. Every experiment shows this to be the case and then apparent motives are easily enough recognized as such.