Philosophic Nights in Paris / Being selections from Promenades Philosophiques

by Remy de Gourmont

"If Froude had lived several centuries earlier," adds M. Le Bon, "all his affirmations would have been held as precious documents, since they came from an eye-witness whose good faith there was no reason for suspecting. How many very serious histories are written with details as little trustworthy as this!"

Jules Simon was astounded "that so many honest persons contradict each other when giving accounts of events that they have witnessed. At every step I encounter this frightful spectacle. Man is least sure of his own spirit. He is not sure of his eyes: the fact is that his eyes and his memory are in strife with his imagination. He believes that he is seeing; he believes that he is remembering, and he is really inventing."

This is what explains those ancient and modern, and even contemporary tales of miracles, apparitions and wonderful happenings that are often attested by a large number of witnesses. The number of witnesses signifies nothing, nor does their honesty or their good faith. On the contrary, good faith, in the matter of testimony, is an element to be on guard against. It is far better to deal with bad faith, which betrays itself always by some blunder. Saint Paul attests that Christ resurrected was beheld by more than five hundred persons; well, it is a matter of doubt now as to whether there ever existed a person named Jesus and surnamed the Christ. Thousands upon thousands of persons in the Middle Ages, and even later, saw the Devil, and, adds M. Le Bon, if unanimous testimony may be considered as proving anything, one might say that the Devil is the personage whose existence has been best demonstrated. Gregory of Tours, an historian of evident good faith, was present during his life at hundreds of miracles, which he describes most complaisantly. He saw them, controlled them: yet the majority of them are pure extravagances, inadmissible in our day even by the most obtuse of pietists. Contemporary history and Judicial reports prove to us constantly the worthlessness of evidence. At the time of the Liban catastrophe, when the vessel went down in broad daylight as the result of a collision, it was impossible to learn from the surviving members of the crew whether the captain was or was not on the bridge at the time of the accident. Some had seen him there, while others swore that he was not on the bridge. In a certain criminal trial it becomes necessary to identify a person who has been but glimpsed; they succeed in identifying him, but only by influencing the witnesses, placing them on the possible track or upon that which justice desires them to follow. According to M. Claparède's experiments, a person of whom only a glimpse has been got, if the witnesses are not influenced, is hardly recognized by one person in four, and at that hesitantly.

Really good observers are very rare. Napoleon pretended to recall every face he had looked upon once. This has become legendary, but it is not quite so. He confused all the names. One day, he sees a certain face in a deputation and thinks that he recognizes it. It was a scholar who was well known in that day, named Ameilhon. The following dialogue takes place: "Aren't you Ancillon?"—"Yes, sire, Ameilhon."—"Librarian of Sainte-Geneviève?"—"Yes, sire, of the Arsenal."—"Continuator of the History of the Ottoman Empire"—"Yes, sire, of the History of the Low Empire." After which Ameilhon, enchanted with the honor, went off, declaring everywhere most emphatically: "The emperor is amazing. He knows everything." And we, in our turn, might say: men are amazing; they imagine that it is enough to have witnessed an event to be sure of that event! The matter is far more complicated. Certainty is difficult to acquire.

Nothing is more difficult than that which is too easy. Nobody would imagine that he could play the violin without having learned how; and if he did, the least attempt would at once extinguish his pretense. But to see? What more simple than that? All one has to do is open one's eyes. "I saw it," is the reply of a witness whose story is contested; "Do you take me for a fellow suffering from hallucination?" Precisely, or else for a purblind person, as the case may be. As a matter of fact, when it comes to seeing, men display two tendencies: they see what they wish to see, what is useful to them, what is agreeable. The second is the tendency toward inhibition; they do not see what they do not wish to see, what is useless to them, or disagreeable.

The great rule by which almost everything may be explained, is the rule of utility. Certain artisans were visiting the Universal Exposition. They looked about, walked along, and had seen nothing. Farther on they continued to look about, and this time they stopped; they had caught sight of a machine that could be of use to them in their particular work. We do not see that to which we are indifferent. The image glides by, fades and dies out before having had time to become fixed, and we make no effort to retain it.

I knew a colonial functionary who had travelled around the globe, and who spent years in our various colonies in Africa, Asia and America. Once in a while I am tempted to question him. But he is at a loss for reply. Occupied only with his advancement and with his family affairs, he really saw nothing. Of Singapore, the strange city whence a young writer, M. Cassel, has brought us such dazzling, magic impressions, this fine fellow said to me: "Pretty place; a few houses in the European style." I have asked many a question in my life, but never have I received so stupid an answer. But I understand that questions are always indiscreet. To ask anybody what he has seen is to subject him to torture. He sinks a fishing-line into his memory and brings up nothing. Then he tries to invent, and the result is wretched. Hence, for tourists, the great usefulness of the guide-books. Without these books they would have seen nothing, and without them they would recall nothing. "What did I see at Rome?" They open to the marked page. "Rome, Rome?" said a hosier whom his wife had dragged off to Italy. "Ah! I remember! That's the place where I purchased this miserable flannel waistcoat."

In company of those who see nothing or almost nothing are those who see crooked or inversely altogether,—those who allow themselves to be guided far less by their eyes than by their sensibility, who believe that a thing exists because it seems to them that they have received such an impression. Whoever has a department under him, said a telegraph inspector, has been able to prove how inexact the reports he receives often are, and how necessary it is to verify the assertions of agents as to events in which they have been actors or spectators. The account of an event that has just taken place is founded upon the impressions received rather than upon direct observation. At the end of several days the imagination has come into play and it adds the finishing touch to the crystallization of one's conviction. At this moment, if there was an initial error, it has become ineradicable. This explains all those disputes between the public and administrative agents. Each one is actuated by good faith, but each has beheld the event in a different light,—that of his own particular interest,—the one intent upon upholding respect for law or rule, the other eager only to violate it or circumvent it. If the case is taken to court, the judge, whose authoritarian tendency is very marked, almost always finds the agent of the law in the right. It is nevertheless quite certain that the agent is not to be believed more than once out of two times on the average. Even this proportion is perhaps highly exaggerated.

It so happens that according to special plans there is, at the University of Geneva, a large window opening upon an interior corridor, which is to the left as the students enter opposite the janitor's lodge. One day, M. Claparède questioned fifty-four students as to the existence of this window, which they passed by every day. Do you know how many asserted categorically that the window did not exist? Forty-four! Astounded, M. Claparède declares that such a collective testimony is disconcerting and discouraging. And who would not agree with him? Who does not think with horror, after this experiment, of all those criminal trials where a verdict is rendered on the strength of witnesses? testimony? M. Claparède comes to the conclusion that a single witness may be right despite many opposing witnesses whose stories agree. Unanimity itself should be severely controlled, and he adds, quite in accord with my own notions upon the matter: "One is led to ask whether it is not the rule to disregard those objects about us which are without interest to us, and if it is not only by accident, and exceptionally, that such objects leave an imprint upon the sensitive plate of our memory?" Accident, of a surety, or else a particularly sensitive plate. If indeed our eye functions mechanically somewhat in the manner of a photograph lens, we are compelled, in order not to clutter the storehouse of our memory, to make a choice of the images which we classify therein. In this an instinct guides us, though not always infallibly, and calls to our attention those images useful to the conservation or the defense of our life.

Without education, without civilized habits, which constantly increase the number of our requirements of every kind, we should, like animals, have need to retain but a small number of images.