Logic, Inductive and Deductive

by William Minto

2. Liability to confuse and transpose the sequence of events.

3. Liability to substitute inference for fact.

It is upon the first of these weaknesses in man as an observing machine that jugglers chiefly depend on working their marvels. Sleight of hand counts for much, but diverting the spectator's eyes for a good deal more. That is why they have music played and patter incessantly as they operate. Their patter is not purposeless: it is calculated to turn our eyes away from the movements of their nimble hands.

It must be borne in mind that in any field of vision there are many objects, and that in any rapid succession of incidents much more passes before the eyes than the memory can retain in its exact order. It is of course in moments of excitement and hurry, when our observation is distracted, that we are most subject to fallacious illusions of memory. Unconsciously we make a coherent picture of what we have seen, and very often it happens that the sequence of events is not what actually passed, but what we were prejudiced in favour of seeing. Hence the unlikelihood of finding exact agreement among the witnesses of any exciting occurrence, a quarrel, a railway accident, a collision at sea, the incidents of a battle.

"It commonly happens," says Mr. Kinglake,[¹] "that incidents occurring in a battle are told by the most truthful bystanders with differences more or less wide." In the attack on the Great Redoubt in the Battle of the Alma, a young officer, Anstruther, rushed forward and planted the colours of the Royal Welsh—but where? Some distinctly remembered seeing him dig the butt-end of the flagstaff into the parapet: others as distinctly remembered seeing him fall several paces before he reached it. Similarly with the incidents of the death of the Prince Imperial near the Italezi Hills in the Zulu War. He was out as a volunteer with a reconnoitring party. They had off-saddled at a kraal and were resting, when a band of Zulus crept up through the long grass, and suddenly opened fire and made a rush forward. Our scouts at once took horse, as a reconnoitring party was bound to do, and scampered off, but the Prince was overtaken and killed. At the Court-Martial which ensued, the five troopers gave the most conflicting accounts of particulars which an unskilled investigator would think could not possibly have been mistaken by eye-witnesses of the same event. One said that the Prince had given the order to mount before the Zulus fired: another that he gave the order directly after: a third was positive that he never gave the order at all, but that it was given after the surprise by the officer in command. One said that he saw the Prince vault into the saddle as he gave the order: another that his horse bolted as he laid hold of the saddle, and that he ran alongside trying to get up.

The evidence before any Court of Inquiry into an exciting occurrence is almost certain to reveal similar discrepancies. But what we find it hard to realise is that we ourselves can possibly be mistaken in what we have a distinct and positive recollection of having seen. It once happened to myself in a London street to see a drunken woman thrown under a cab by her husband. Two cabs were running along, a four-wheeler and a hansom: the woman staggered almost under the first, and was thrown under the second. As it happened the case never got beyond the police station to which the parties were conveyed after fierce opposition from some neighbours, who sympathised entirely with the man. The woman herself, when her wounds were dressed, acknowledged the justice of her punishment, and refused to charge her husband. I was all the more willing to acquiesce in this because I found that while I had the most distinct impression of having seen the four-wheeler run over the woman's body, and should have been obliged to swear accordingly, there could be no doubt that it was really the hansom that had done so. This was not only the evidence of the neighbours, which I suspected at the time of being a trick, but of the cabdriver, who had stopped at the moment to abide the results of the accident. I afterwards had the curiosity to ask an eminent police magistrate, Sir John Bridge, whether this illusion of memory on my part—which I can only account for by supposing that my eyes had been fixed on the sufferer and that I had unconsciously referred her injuries to the heavier vehicle—would have entirely discredited my testimony in his Court. His answer was that it would not; that he was constantly meeting with such errors, and that if he found a number of witnesses of the same occurrence exactly agreed in every particular, he would suspect that they had talked the matter over and agreed upon what they were to say. This was the opinion of an experienced judge, a skilled critic of the defects of personal observation. An Old Bailey counsel for the defence, who is equally acquainted with the weakness of human memory, takes advantage of the fact that it is not generally understood by a Jury, and makes the fallacious assumption that glaring discrepancies are irreconcilable with the good faith of the witnesses who differ.[²]

II.—Tradition.—Hearsay Evidence.

Next in value to personal observation, we must place the report, oral or written, of an eye-witness. This is the best evidence we can get if we have not witnessed an occurrence ourselves. Yet Courts of Law, which in consideration of the defects of personal observation require more than one witness to establish the truth, exclude hearsay evidence altogether in certain cases, and not without reason.