branch in which he thinks he has the best prospects. It is a bitter truth and a general rule--that those who want to study law and the science of law are the exceptions, and that hence we have to acquire a real interest in our subject from laymen, from our experts. But the interest can be acquired, and with the growth of interest, there is growth of knowledge, and therewith increase of pleasure in the work itself and hence success. The most difficult problem in interest, is arousing the interest of witnesses--because this is purely a matter of training. Receiving the attention is what should be aimed at in rousing interest, inasmuch as full attention leads to correct testimony--i.e., to the thing most important to our tasks. “No interest, no attention,” says Volkmar.[64] “The absolutely new does not stimulate; what narrows appreciation, narrows attention also.” The significant thing for us is that “the absolutely new does not stimulate”--a matter often overlooked. If I tell an uneducated man, with all signs of astonishment, that the missing books of Tacitus’ “Annals” have been discovered in Verona, or that a completely preserved Dinotherium has been cut out of the ice, or that the final explanation of the Martian canals has been made at Manora observatory,--all this very interesting news will leave him quite cold; it is absolutely new to him, he does not know what it means or how to get hold of it, it offers him no matter of interest.[65] I should have a similar experience if, in the course of a big case, I told a man, educated, but uninterested in the case, with joy, that I had finally discovered the important note on which the explanation of the events depended. I could not possibly expect interest, attention, and comprehension of a matter if my interlocutor knows nothing about the issue or the reason of the note’s importance. And in spite of the fact that everything is natural and can be explained we have the same story every day. We put the witness a definite question that is of immense importance to us, who are fully acquainted with the problem, but is for the witness detached, incoherent, and therefore barren of interest. Then who can require of an uninterested witness, attention, and effective and well-considered replies?[66] I myself heard a witness answer a judge who asked him about the weather on a certain day, “Look here, to drag me so many miles to this place in order to discuss the weather with me,--that’s--.” The old man was quite right because the detached question had no particular purpose. But when it was circumstantially explained to him that the weather was of uttermost significance in this case, how it was related thereto, and how important his answer would be, he went at the question eagerly, and did everything thinkable in trying to recall the weather in question by bringing to bear various associated events, and did finally make a decidedly valuable addition to the evidence.