There is still the additional difficulty that we frequently do not know
the circumstance with the help of which the witness has made his
association. Thomas Hobbes tells the story of an association which
involved a leap from the British Civil War to the value of a denarius
under the Emperor Tiberius. The process was as follows: King Charles I
was given up by the Scotch for $200,000, Christ was sold for 30 denarii,
what then was a denarius worth? In order to pursue the thread of such an
association, one needs, anyway, only a definite quantity of historical
knowledge, but this quantity must be possessed. But such knowledge is a
knowledge of universal things that anybody may have, while the personal
relations and purely subjective experiences which are at the command of
an individual are quite unknown to any other person, and it is often
exceedingly difficult to discover them.[212] The case is simplest when
one tries to aid the memory of a witness in order to make him place
single dates, e.g., when the attempt is made to determine some time and
the witness is reminded of certain events that occurred during the time
in question in order to assist him in fixing the calendar time. Or
again, when the witness is brought to the place of the crime and the
individual conditions are associated with the local situation. But when
not merely single dates are to be associated, when complete events are
to be associated, a profound knowledge of the situation must precede,
otherwise no association is successful, or merely topsy-turvy results
are attained. The difficulties which here ensue depend actually upon the
really enormous quantity of knowledge every human being must possess in
making use of his senses. Anything that a man has learned at school, in
the newspapers, etc., we know approximately, but we have no knowledge of
what a man has thought out for himself and what he has felt in his
localized conditions, e.g., his home, his town, his travels, his
relations and their experiences, etc.--However important this may be, we
have no means of getting hold of it.
Those associations which have physical expression are of importance only
in particular cases. For example, the feeling of ants all over the body
when you think that you have been near an anthill, or the feeling of
physical pain on hearing the description of wounds. It is exceedingly
funny to see how, during the lectures of dermatologists, the whole
audience scratches that part of the body which is troubling the patient
who is being described.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account