If we grant the correctness of what we have said we gain the conviction that we can proceed with approximate certainty and conscientiousness only if we speak with the criminal, not alone concerning the deed immediately in question, but also searchingly concerning the important conditions of his inner life. So we may as far as possible see clearly what he is according to general notions and his particular relationships. The same thing must also be done with regard to an important witness, especially when much depends upon his way of judging, of experiencing, of feeling, and of thinking, and when it is impossible to discover these things otherwise. Of course such analyses are often tiring and without result, but that, on the other hand, they lay open with few words whole broadsides of physical conditions, so that we need no longer doubt, is also a matter of course. Who wants to leave unused a formula of Schopenhauer’s: “We discover what we are through what we do?” Nothing is easier than to discover from some person important to us what he does, even though the discovery develops merely as a simple conversation about what he has done until now and what he did lately. And up to date we have gotten at such courses of life only in the great cases; in cases of murder or important political criminals, and then only at externals; we have cared little about the essential deeds, the smaller forms of activity which are always the significant ones. Suppose we allow some man to speak about others, no matter whom, on condition that he must know them well. He judges their deeds, praises and condemns them, and thinks that he is talking about them but is really talking about himself alone, for in each judgment of the others he aims to justify and enhance himself; the things he praises he does, what he finds fault with, he does not; or at least he wishes people to believe that he does the former and avoids the latter. And when he speaks unpleasantly about his friends he has simply abandoned what he formerly had in common with them. Then again he scolds at those who have gotten on and blames their evil nature for it; but whoever looks more closely may perceive that he had no gain in the same evil and therefore dislikes it. At the same time, he cannot possibly suppress what he wishes and what he needs. Now, whoever knows this fact, knows his motives, and to decide in view of these with regard to a crime is seldom difficult. “Nos besoins sont nos forces”--but superficial needs do not really excite us while what is an actual need does. Once we are compelled, our power to achieve what we want grows astoundingly. How we wonder at the great amount of power used up, in the case of many criminals! If we know that a real need was behind the crime, we need no longer wonder at the magnitude of the power. The relation between the crime and the criminal is defined because we have discovered his needs. To these needs a man’s pleasures