Just as the sense of sight is the most dignified of all our senses, it is also the most important in the criminal court, for most witnesses testify as to what they have seen. If we compare sight with the hearing, which is next in the order of importance, we discover the well-known fact that what is seen is much more certain and trustworthy than what is heard. “It is better to see once than to hear ten times,” says the universally-valid old maxim. No exposition, no description, no complication which the data of other senses offer, can present half as much as even a fleeting glance. Hence too, no sense can offer us such surprises as the sense of sight. If I imagine the thunder of Niagara, the voice of Lucca, the explosion of a thousand cartridges, etc., or anything else that I have not heard, my imagination is certainly incorrect, but it will differ from reality only in degree. It is quite different with visual imagination. We need not adduce examples of magnificence like the appearance of the pyramids, a tropical light; of a famous work of art, a storm at sea, etc. The most insignificant thing ever seen but variously pictured in imagination will be greeted at first sight with the words: “But I imagined it quite different!” Hence the tremendous importance of every local and material characteristic which the criminal court deals with. Every one of us knows how differently he has, as a rule, imagined the place of the crime to be; how difficult it is to arrive at an understanding with the witness concerning some unseen, local characteristic, and how many mistakes false images of the unseen have caused. Whenever I ciceroned anybody through the Graz Criminal Museum, I was continually assailed with “Does this or that look so? But I thought it looked quite different!” And the things which evoke these exclamations are such as the astonished visitors have spoken and written about hundreds of times and often passed judgments upon. The same situation occurs when witnesses narrate some observation. When the question involves the sense of hearing some misunderstanding may be popularly assumed. But the people know little of optical illusions and false visual perceptions, though they are aware that incorrect auditions are frequent matters of fact. Moreover, to the heard object a large number of more or less certain precautionary judgments are attached. If anybody, e.g., has _heard_ a shot, stealthy footsteps, crackling flames, we take his experience always to be _approximate_. We do not do so when he assures us he has _seen_ these things or their causes. Then we take them--barring certain mistakes in observation,--to be indubitable perceptions in which misunderstanding is impossible.