This necessary preliminary is not so difficult if the second of the above-mentioned rules is observed and the “funded thought” of the witness is studied out. It may be said, indeed, that so long as two people converse, unaware of each other’s “funded thought,” they speak different languages. Some of the most striking misunderstandings come from just this reason. It is not alone a matter of varying verbal values, leading to incompatible inferences; actually the whole of a man’s mind is involved. It is generally supposed to be enough to know the meaning of the words necessary for telling a story. But such knowledge leads only to external and very superficial comprehension; real clearness can be attained only by knowing the witness’s habits of thought in regard to all the circumstances of the case. I remember vividly a case of jealous murder in which the most important witness was the victim’s brother, an honest, simple, woodsman, brought up in the wilderness, and in every sense far-removed from idiocy. His testimony was brief, decided and intelligent. When the motive for the murder, in this case most important, came under discussion, he shrugged his shoulders and answered my question--whether it was not committed on account of a girl--with, “Yes, so they say.” On further examination I reached the astonishing discovery that not only the word “jealousy,” but the very notion and comprehension of it were totally foreign to the man. The single girl he at one time thought of was won away from him without making him quarrelsome, nobody had ever told him of the pangs and passions of other people, he had had no occasion to consider the theoretic possibility of such a thing, and so “jealousy” remained utterly foreign to him. It is clear that his hearing now took quite another turn. All I thought I heard from him was essentially wrong; his “funded thought” concerning a very important, in this case a regulative concept, had been too poor. The discovery of the “funded thought” is indubitably not easy. But its objective possibility with witness and accused is at least a fact. It is excluded only where it is most obviously necessary--in the case of the jury, and the impossibility in this case turns the institution of trial by jury into a Utopian dream. The presiding officer of a jury court is in the best instances acquainted with a few of the jurymen, but never so far as to have been entrusted with their “funded thought.” Now and then, when a juryman asks a question, one gets a glimpse of it, and when the public prosecutor and the attorney for the defence make their speeches one catches something from the jury’s expressions; and then it is generally too late. Even if it be discovered earlier nothing can be done with it. Some success is likely in the case of single individuals, but it is simply impossible to define the mental habits of twelve men with whom one has no particular relations.