astonishment at the deluge of minute facts which pour from the witnesses' mouths in regard to the happenings of some particular day a year or so before. He knows that it is humanly impossible actually to remember any such facts, even had they occurred the day before yesterday. ask himself what he did that very morning and be unable to give any satisfactory reply. And yet the jury believe this testimony, and because the witness swears to it it goes upon the record as evidence of actual knowledge. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, counsel's only recourse is to argue to the jury that such a memory is impossible. But in the same proportion of cases the jury will take the oath of the witness against the lawyer's reasoning and their own common sense. This is because of the fictitious value given to the witness's oath by talesmen who attach little significance to their own. "He swears to it," says the juryman, rubbing his forehead. "Well, he must remember it or he wouldn't swear to it !" And the witness probably thinks he does remember it. . . SUBTITLE C: NARRATION 244. JOHN H. WIGMORE. Principles of Judicial Proof. (1913.)1 The third element forming an essential part of all testimony (ante, No. 163) is the process of laying before the tribunal the witness's results of his Observation or Perception, and his Recollection, i.e. the process of Narration or Communication. In this element, as in the other two, there are many opportunities for defects fatal to testimonial trustworthiness. As with the elements of Perception and of Recollection, so here also, experience has shown that certain dangers are to be looked for, and that certain restrictions should be imposed in order to prevent them. What these dangers and defects are depends upon the specific virtue which this element of Narration or Communication ought to possess. Its office is to make intelligible to the tribunal the knowledge and recollection of the witness, whatever that may amount to, affirmative or negative, useful or trivial. Its prime and essential virtue, then, consists in accurately reproducing and expressing the actual and sincere Recollection. Assuming that the witness's Recollection fairly represents and corresponds to his Perception; then, if his Narration or Communication fairly represents and corresponds to his Recollection, and is intelligible by the tribunal, the elements of testimonial value are complete; but not otherwise. So far as the statement is found plainly or probably lacking in either of these respects, namely, in correspondence to recollected knowledge or in intelligibility, then its value diminishes accordingly. Most of the usual defects occur in the former respect, i.e. an absence, actual or probable, of this correspondence between the witness's uttered statement and his conscious recollection which he ought to be stating. In the other respect, i.e. intelligibility to the tribunal of the witness's utterance, comparatively few questions arise. The simplest form of testimonial statement (from which others may be conceived of as deviations) is an (1) uninterrupted narrative (2) expressed in words (3) uttered orally (4) and intelligible directly by the tribunal. In [Adapted from the same author's Treatise on Evidence. (1905. Vol. I, § 766.)] any one of these features, there may be a variation from this simple and natural type; the inquiry therefore concerns not only the inherent dangers of this simplest form, but also the added ones introduced by a variance in one or another of the four respects. That is to say, testimony may be (1) furnished upon systematic interrogations, and not as a spontaneous utterance; or (2) it may be non-verbal, i.e. expressed dramatically, in conduct or gestures; or (3) it may be furnished in writing, not orally; or, finally, (4) its language may require interpretation, before it becomes intelligible to the tribunal. Topic 1. Language and Demeanor as a Means of Expression 245. WILLIAM JAMES. The Principles of Psychology. (1889. Vol. I, pp. 37, 53.)... One of the most instructive proofs of motor localization in the cortex is that furnished by the disease now called aphemia, or motor aphasia. Motor aphasia is neither loss of voice nor paralysis of the tongue or lips. The patient's voice is as strong as ever, and all the innervations of his hypoglossal and facial nerves, except those necessary for speaking, may go on perfectly well. He can laugh and cry, and even sing; but he either is unable to utter any words at all; or a few meaningless stock phrases form his only speech; or else he speaks incoherently and confusedly, mispronouncing, misplacing, and misusing his words in various degrees. Sometimes his speech is a mere broth of unintelligible syllables. In cases of pure motor aphasia the patient recognizes his mistakes and suffers acutely from them. Now whenever a patient dies in such a condition as this, and an examination of his brain is permitted, it is found that the lowest frontal gyrus is the seat of injury. Broca first noticed this fact in 1861 and since then the gyrus has gone by the name of Broca's convolution. The injury in right-handed people is found on the left hemisphere, and in left-handed people on the right hemisphere. Most people, in fact, are left-brained, that is, all their delicate and specialized movements are handed over to the charge of the left hemisphere. The ordinary right-handedness for such movements is only a consequence of that fact, a consequence which shows outwardly on account of that extensive decussation of the fibers whereby most of those from the left hemisphere pass to the right half of the body only. But the left-brainedness might exist in equal measure and not show outwardly. This would happen wherever organs on both sides of the body could be governed by the left hemisphere; and just such a case seems offered by the vocal organs, in that highly delicate and special motor service which we call speech. Either hemisphere can innervate them bilaterally, just as either seems able to innervate bilaterally the muscles of the trunk, ribs, and diaphragm. Of the special movements of speech, however, it would appear (from the facts of aphasia) that the left hemisphere in most persons habitually takes exclusive charge. With that hemisphere thrown out of gear, speech is undone; even though the opposite hemisphere still be there for the performance of less specialized acts, such as the various movements required in eating. ... In man the temporal lobe is unquestionably the seat of the hearing function, and the superior convolution adjacent to the sylvian fissure is its most important part. The phenomena of aphasia show this. We studied motor aphasia a few pages back; we must now consider sensory aphasia. Our knowledge of this disease has had three stages: we may talk of the period of Broca, the period of Wernicke, and the period of Charcot. What Broca's discovery was we have seen. Wernicke was the first to discriminate those cases in which the patient cannot even understand speech from those in which he can understand, only not talk; and to ascribe the former condition to lesion of the temporal lobe. The condition in question is word deafness, and the disease is auditory aphasia. The latest statistical survey of the subject is that by Dr. Allen Starr. In the seven cases of pure word deafness which he has collected, cases in which the patient could read, talk, and write, but not understand what was said to him, the lesion was limited to the first and second temporal convolutions in their posterior two thirds. The lesion (in right-handed, i.e. left-brained, persons) is always on the left side, like the lesion in motor aphasia. Crude hearing would not be abolished, even were the left center for it utterly destroyed; the right center would still provide for that. But the linguistic use of hearing appears bound up with the integrity of the left center more or less exclusively. Here it must be that words heard enter into association with the things which they represent, on the one hand, and with the movements necessary for pronouncing them, on the other. In a large majority of Dr. Starr's fifty cases, the power either to name objects or to talk coherently was impaired. This shows that in most of us (as Wernicke said) speech must go on from auditory cues; that is, it must be that our ideas do not innervate our motor centers directly, but only after first arousing the mental sound of the words. This is the immediate stimulus to articulation; and where the possibility of this is abolished by the destruction of its usual channel in the left temporal lobe, the articulation must suffer. . . . ... It is the minuter analysis of the facts in the light of such individual differences as these which consitute Charcot's contribution towards clearing up the subject. Every namable thing, act, or relation has numerous properties, qualities, or aspects. In our minds the properties of each thing, together with its name, form an associated group. If different parts of the brain are severally concerned with the several properties, and a farther part with the hearing, and still another with the uttering, of the name, there must inevitably be brought about (through the law of association. which we shall later study) such a dynamic connection amongst all these brain parts that the activity of any one of them will be likely to awaken the activity of all the rest. When we are talking as we think, the ultimate process is that of utterance. If the brain part for that be injured, speech is impossible or disorderly, even though all the other brain parts be intact: and this is just the condition of things which we found to be brought about by limited lesion of the left inferior frontal convolution. But back of that last act various orders of succession are possible in the associations of a talking man's ideas. The more usual order seems to be from the tactile, visual, or other properties of the things thought about to the sound of their names, and then to the latter's utterance. But if in a certain individual the thought of the look of an object or of the look of its printed name be the process which habitually precedes articulation, then the loss of the hearing center will pro tanto not affect that individual's speech. He will be mentally deaf, i.e. his understanding of speech will suffer, but he will not be aphasic. In this way it is possible to explain the seven cases of pure word deafness which figure in Dr. Starr's table. . . Thus, there is no "center of Speech" in the brain any more than there is a faculty of Speech in the mind. The entire brain, more or less, is at work in a man who uses language. 246. WM. D. WHITNEY. Oriental and Linguistic Studies (1873. p. 353); and Language and the Study of Language (1869. pp. 405, 102). . . . That men have willed language, as language, into existence, or, in its production, have labored consciously for the enrichment of their mental working, we do not believe. The first man who, on being attacked by a wolf, seized a club or a stone and with it crushed his adversary's head, was not conscious that he was commencing a series of acts which would lead finally to rifles and engine, would make man the master (comparatively speaking) instead of the slave of nature, would call out and train some of his noblest powers, and be an essential element in his advancement to culture. He knew nothing either of the laws of association and the creative forces in his own mind that prompted the act, or of the laws of matter which made the weapon accomplish what his fist alone could not. The psychologist and the physicist, between them, can trace out now and state with exactness those laws and forces; can formulate the perceptions and apperceptions and reflex actions on the one hand; can put in terms of a and b and x and y the additional power conferred, on the other hand; and can even maintain, as we infer, that those laws and forces and formulas produced the man's act; while all that he himself knew was that he was defending himself in a sudden emergency. Our view of the history of origination and development of language is closely akin with what we have just laid down respecting that of mechanical invention. Men have not, in truth, produced language reflectively, or even with consciousness of what they were doing; they do not, in general, even so use it after it is produced. The great majority of the human race have no more idea that they are in the habit of "using language" than M. Jourdain had that he "spoke prose"; all they know is that they can and do talk. That is to say, language exists to them for the purpose of communication simply; of its value to the operations of their own minds, of its importance as an element in human culture, of its wonderful intricacy and regularity of structure, nay, even of the distinction of the parts of speech, they have not so much as a faint conception, and would stare in stupid astonishment if you set it forth to them. And we claim that all the other uses and values of language come as unforeseen consequences of its use as a means of communication. The desire of communication is a real living force, to the impelling action of which every human being, in every stage of culture, is accessible; and, so far as we can see, it is the only force that was equal to initiating the process of language making, as it is also the one that has kept up the process to the present time. It works both consciously and unconsciously; consciously, as regards the immediate end to be attained; unconsciously, as regards the further consequences of the act. When two men of different speech meet, they fall to trying simply to understand one another; so far as this goes, they know well enough what they are about; that they are thus making language they do not know; that is to say, they do not think of it in that light. The man who beckons to his friend across a crowded room, or coughs, or hems to attract his attention, commits, consciously and yet unconsciously, a rude and rudimentary act of language making - one analogous doubtless with innumerable acts that preceded the successful initiation of the spoken speech which we have. No one consciously makes language, save he who uses it most reflectively. . . . And so men have gone on from the beginning, always. finding a sign for the next idea, stereotyping the conception by a word, and working with it till the call for another came; and the result, at any stage of the process, is the language of that stage. Language, then, is the spoken means whereby thought is communicated, and it is only that. Language is not thought, nor is thought language; nor is there a mysterious and indissoluble connection between the two, as there is between soul and body, so that the one cannot exist and manifest itself without the other. There can hardly be a greater and more pernicious error, in linguistics or in metaphysics, than the doctrine that language and thought are identical. It is, unfortunately, an error often committed, both by linguists and by metaphysicians. "Man speaks because he thinks" is the dictum out of which more than one scholar has proceeded to develop his system of linguistic philosophy. . . . That thought and speech are not the same is a direct and necessary inference, I believe, from more than one of the truths respecting language which our discussions have already established; but the high importance attaching to a right understanding of the point will justify us in a brief review of those truths in their application to it. In the first place, we have often had our attention directed to the imperfection of language as a full representation of thought. Words and phrases are but the skeleton of expression, hints of meaning, light touches of a skillful sketcher's pencil, to which the appreciative sense and sympathetic mind must supply the filling up and coloring. Our own mental acts and states we can review in our consciousness in minute detail, but we can never perfectly disclose them to another by speech; nor will words alone, with whatever sincerity and candor they may be uttered, put us in possession of another's consciousness. In anything but the most objective scientific description, or the driest reasoning on subjects the most plain and obvious, we want more or less knowledge of the individuality of the speaker or writer, ere we can understand him intimately; his style of thought and sentiment must be gathered from the totality of our intercourse with him, to make us sure that we penetrate to the central meaning of any word he utters; and such study may enable us to find deeper and deeper significance in expressions that once seemed trivial or commonplace. A look or tone often sheds more light upon character or intent than a flood of words could do. Humor, banter, irony are illustrations of what tone, or style, or perceived incongruity can accomplish in the way of impressing upon words a different meaning from that which they of themselves would wear. That language is impotent to express our feelings, though often, perhaps, pleaded as a form merely, is also a frequent genuine experience. Nor is it for our feelings alone that the ordinary conventional phrases, weakened in their force by insincere and hyperbolical use, are found insufficient: apprehensions, distinctions, opinions, of every kind, elude our efforts at description, definition, intimation. How often must we labor, by painful |