Very intelligent witnesses (they are not confined to the educated classes) may be dealt with constructively and be told after their depositions that the case is to be considered as if there were no confession whatever. There is an astonishing number of people--especially among the peasants--who are amenable to such considerations and willingly follow if they are led on with confidence. In such a case it is necessary to analyze the testimony into its elements. This analysis is most difficult and important since it must be determined what, taken in itself, is an element, materially, not formally, and what merely appears to be a unit. Suppose that during a great brawl a man was stabbed and that A confesses to the stabbing. Now a witness testified that A had first uttered a threat, then had jumped into the brawl, felt in his bag, and left the crowd, and that in the interval between A’s entering and leaving, the stabbing occurred. In this simple case the various incidents must be evaluated, and each must be considered by itself. So we consider--Suppose A had not confessed, what would the threat have counted for? Might it not have been meant for the assailants of the injured man? May his feeling in the bag not be interpreted in another fashion? Must he have felt for a knife only? Was there time enough to open it and to stab? Might the man not have been already wounded by that time? We might then conclude that all the evidence about A contained nothing against him--but if we relate it to the confession, then this evidence is almost equal to direct evidence of A’s crime. But if individual sense-perceptions are mingled with conclusions, and if other equivalent perceptions have to be considered, which occurred perhaps to other people, then the analysis is hardly so simple, yet it must be made.