SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF HUMAN TESTIMONY. 18 1 



paired, as all lawyers learn by experience, through the emotions acting 

 upon the reason, slowly, it may be, and unconsciously, so as to produce 

 in time sincere but utterly untrue convictions in regard to facts of ob- 

 servation. The wish is so far the father to the thought that men, and 

 especially women and children, reason themselves into an honest con- 

 viction that they have seen, or heard, or experienced, something direct- 

 ly opposite to that which they actually saw, or heard, or experienced, 

 and this conviction becomes so organized in the brain that neither by 

 their own efforts nor by the arguments of others can the deception ever 

 be disclosed to them. How true this is of speculative beliefs all know ; 

 it is not so well known that it is true also of facts of observation and 

 personal experience, thus vitiating most of human testimony. The wish 

 secretly usurps the throne of the will, and, unknown to the subject, 

 guides with a silent and resistless energy the course of thought in the 

 brain. Every day our courts are forced to attend to the testimony of 

 witnesses who are sure they are telling the truth in regard to what 

 happened, although really they are telling what they wanted to happen. 

 Even in science microscopists who are not yet full experts oftentimes 

 see what they are looking for, and afterward believe they have seen 

 what at the time they did not even profess to see. Herein is the psy- 

 chology of gossip, which usually consists of a mountain of untruth, of 

 fear, and hope, and jealousy, and anger, and love, and expectation, with 

 a few grains of fact the offerings of falsehood being oftentimes as 

 honest as the offerings of truth. 



*&' 



Need of a Reconstruction op the Principles of Evidence. 

 The acceptance of the above facts and reasonings involves the necessity 

 of reconstruction of the principles of evidence, as thus far taught by 

 all our highest authorities in that department. Disagreeing widely on 

 other and far less important departments, all schools, and languages, 

 and ages writers on law, on logic, on science agree in accepting what 

 is called the evidence of the senses, although, as we have seen, the 

 senses of themselves can give us no evidence of anything whatsoever ; 

 and in this, likewise, there is passive if not active agreement that the 

 first qualification of a witness is honesty, and that the concurrence of 

 testimony of large numbers is a solid basis for belief. Sir William 

 Hamilton, with no suspicion of the nature or phenomena of trance as 

 here described, quotes with earnest approval the following statement 

 of Esser : 



" When the trustworthiness of a witness or witnesses is unimpeachable, the 

 very circumstance that the object is one in itself unusual and marvelous adds 

 greater weight to the testimony ; for this very circumstance would itself induce 

 men of veracity and intelligence to accord a more attentive scrutiny to the fact, 

 and secure from them a more accurate report of their observation." 



In this single sentence all the errors of the world in regard to 

 human testimony seem to be condensed the placing of honesty in the 



