Analogous examples are innumerable.As I write these lines the papers are full of the story of two little girls found drowned in the Seine.These children, to begin with, were recognised in the most unmistakable manner by half a dozen witnesses.All the affirmations were in such entire concordance that no doubt remained in the mind of the juge d'instruction.He had the certificate of death drawn up, but just as the burial of the children was to have been proceeded with, a mere chance brought about the discovery that the supposed victims were alive, and had, moreover, but a remote resemblance to the drowned girls.As in several of the examples previously cited, the affirmation of the first witness, himself a victim of illusion, had sufficed to influence the other witnesses.
In parallel cases the starting-point of the suggestion is always the illusion produced in an individual by more or less vague reminiscences, contagion following as the result of the affirmation of this initial illusion.If the first observer be very impressionable, it will often be sufficient that the corpse he believes he recognises should present-- apart from all real resemblance--some peculiarity, a scar, or some detail of toilet which may evoke the idea of another person.The idea evoked may then become the nucleus of a sort of crystallisation which invades the understanding and paralyses all critical faculty.
What the observer then sees is no longer the object itself, but the image evoked in his mind.In this way are to be explained erroneous recognitions of the dead bodies of children by their own mother, as occurred in the following case, already old, but which has been recently recalled by the newspapers.In it are to be traced precisely the two kinds of suggestion of which I have just pointed out the mechanism.
"The child was recognised by another child, who was mistaken.
The series of unwarranted recognitions then began.
"An extraordinary thing occurred.The day after a schoolboy had recognised the corpse a woman exclaimed, `Good Heavens, it is my child!'
"She was taken up to the corpse; she examined the clothing, and noted a scar on the forehead.`It is certainly,' she said, `my son who disappeared last July.He has been stolen from me and murdered.'
"The woman was concierge in the Rue du Four; her name was Chavandret.Her brother-in-law was summoned, and when questioned he said, `That is the little Filibert.' Several persons living in the street recognised the child found at La Villette as Filibert Chavandret, among them being the boy's schoolmaster, who based his opinion on a medal worn by the lad.
"Nevertheless, the neighbours, the brother-in-law, the schoolmaster, and the mother were mistaken.Six weeks later the identity of the child was established.The boy, belonging to Bordeaux, had been murdered there and brought by a carrying company to Paris."[4]
[4] L'Eclair, April 21, 1895.
It will be remarked that these recognitions are most often made by women and children--that is to say, by precisely the most impressionable persons.They show us at the same time what is the worth in law courts of such witnesses.As far as children, more especially, are concerned, their statements ought never to be invoked.Magistrates are in the habit of repeating that children do not lie.Did they possess a psychological culture a little less rudimentary than is the case they would know that, on the contrary, children invariably lie; the lie is doubtless innocent, but it is none the less a lie.It would be better to decide the fate of an accused person by the toss of a coin than, as has been so often done, by the evidence of a child.
To return to the faculty of observation possessed by crowds, our conclusion is that their collective observations are as erroneous as possible, and that most often they merely represent the illusion of an individual who, by a process of contagion, has suggestioned his fellows.Facts proving that the most utter mistrust of the evidence of crowds is advisable might be multiplied to any extent.Thousands of men were present twenty-five years ago at the celebrated cavalry charge during the battle of Sedan, and yet it is impossible, in the face of the most contradictory ocular testimony, to decide by whom it was commanded.The English general, Lord Wolseley, has proved in a recent book that up to now the gravest errors of fact have been committed with regard to the most important incidents of the battle of Waterloo--facts that hundreds of witnesses had nevertheless attested.[5]
[5] Do we know in the case of one single battle exactly how it took place? I am very doubtful on the point.We know who were the conquerors and the conquered, but this is probably all.What M.D'Harcourt has said with respect to the battle of Solferino, which he witnessed and in which he was personally engaged, may be applied to all battles--"The generals (informed, of course, by the evidence of hundreds of witnesses) forward their official reports; the orderly officers modify these documents and draw up a definite narrative; the chief of the staff raises objections and re-writes the whole on a fresh basis.It is carried to the Marshal, who exclaims, `You are entirely in error,' and he substitutes a fresh edition.Scarcely anything remains of the original report." M.D'Harcourt relates this fact as proof of the impossibility of establishing the truth in connection with the most striking, the best observed events.
Such facts show us what is the value of the testimony of crowds.
