The relatively most important secret is that of one’s own guilt, and the associated most suggestive establishment of it, the confession, is a very extraordinary psychological problem.[57] In many cases the reasons for confession are very obvious. The criminal sees that the evidence is so complete that he is soon to be convicted and seeks a mitigation of the sentence by confession, or he hopes through a more honest narration of the crime to throw a great degree of the guilt on another. In addition there is a thread of vanity in confession--as among young peasants who confess to a greater share in a burglary than they actually had (easily discoverable by the magniloquent manner of describing their actual crime). Then there are confessions made for the sake of care and winter lodgings: the confession arising from “firm conviction” (as among political criminals and others). There are even confessions arising from nobility, from the wish to save an intimate, and confessions intended to deceive, and such as occur especially in conspiracy and are made to gain time (either for the flight of the real criminal or for the destruction of compromising objects). Generally, in the latter case, guilt is admitted only until the plan for which it was made has succeeded; then the judge is surprised with well-founded, regular and successful establishment of an alibi. Not infrequently confession of small crimes is made to establish an alibi for a greater one. And finally there are the confessions Catholics[58] are required to make in confessional, and the death bed confessions. The first are distinguished by the fact that they are made freely and that the confessee does not try to mitigate his crime, but is aiming to make amends, even when he finds it hard; and desires even a definite penance. Death bed confessions may indeed have religious grounds, or the desire to prevent the punishment or the further punishment of an innocent person.