Reflex actions are also of greater significance than as a rule they are
supposed to be. According to Lotze,[103] “reflex actions are not
limited to habitual and insignificant affairs of the daily life. Even
compounded series of actions which enclose the content even of a crime
may come to actuality in this way ... in a single moment in which the
sufficient opposition of some other emotional condition, the enduring
intensity of emotion directed against an obstacle, or the clearness of a
moving series of ideas is lacking. The deed may emerge from the image of
itself without being caused or accompanied by any resolve of the doer.
Hearings of criminals are full of statements which point to such a
realization of their crimes, and these are often considered
self-exculpating inventions, inasmuch as people fear from their truth a
disturbance or upsetting of the notions concerning adjudication and
actionability. The mere recognition of that psychological fact alters
the conventional judgment but little; the failure in these cases
consists in not having prevented that automatic transition of images
into actions, a transition essentially natural to our organism which
ought, however, like so many other things, to be subjected to power of
the will.” Reflex movements require closer study.[104] The most numerous
and generally known are: dropping the eyelids, coughing, sneezing,
swallowing, all involuntary actions against approaching or falling
bodies; then again the patellar reflex and the kremaster reflex, etc.
Other movements of the same kind were once known and so often practised
that they became involuntary.[105] Hence, for example, the foolish
question how a person believed to be disguised can be recognized as man
or woman. The well known answer is: let some small object fall on his
lap; the woman will spread her limbs apart because she is accustomed to
wear a dress in which she catches the object; the man will bring his
limbs together because he wears trousers and is able to catch the object
only in this way. There are so many such habitual actions that it is
difficult to say where actual reflexes end and habits begin. They will
be properly distinguished when the first are understood as single
detached movements and the last as a continuous, perhaps even
unconscious and long-enduring action. When I, for example, while
working, take a cigar, cut off the end, light it, smoke, and later am
absolutely unaware that I have done this, what has occurred is certainly
not a reflex but a habitual action. The latter does not belong to this
class in which are to be grouped only such as practically bear a
defensive character. As examples of how such movements may have
criminological significance only one’s own experience may be cited
because it is so difficult to put oneself at the point of view of
another. I want to consider two such examples. One evening I passed
through an unfrequented street and came upon an inn just at the moment
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