There need only have been a presupposition, accepted at the beginning of the examination, when the examination of the premises took place, as to the visible condition of things; and this might have given apparent justification to doubtful material and have rendered it intelligible, only to be shown later as false. The so-called “local examination” however, is generally supposed to be “objective.” It is supposed to deal only with circumstantial events, and it does not occur to anybody to modify and alter it when it is certainly known that at another point the situation has taken an altogether different form. The objectivity of the local examination is simply non-existent, and if it were really objective, i.e., contained merely dry description with so and so many notations of distances and other figures, it would be of no use. Every local examination, to be of use, must give an accurate picture of the mental process of him who made it. On the one hand it must bring vividly to the mind of the reader, even of the sentencing judge, what the situation was; on the other, it must demonstrate what the examiner thought and represented to himself in order that the reader, who may have different opinions, may have a chance to make corrections. If I, for example, get the impression that a fire was made through carelessness, and that somebody lost his life on account of it, and if I made my local examination with this presupposition in mind, the description will certainly seem different from that made under the knowledge that the fire was intentional and made to kill. At trial the description of local conditions will be read and entered as important testimony. It satisfies the law if it is taken according to form, has the correct content, and is read as prescribed. But for our conscience and in truth this manuscript can be correct only when it is logically and psychologically presented revised according to the viewpoint its writer would have had if he had been in possession of all the facts in possession of the reader. This work of reconstruction belongs to the most difficult of our psychological tasks--but it must be performed unless we want to go on superficially and without conscience.