CAUSE AND EFFECT

Taranaki Daily News, 17 October 1931, Page 13 (Supplement)

CAUSE AND EFFECT

QUALITIES OF THE MIND

(®y

“Michael.”)

"When once you start reconstructing what was in the mind of a human being there is no quality, no sympathy, no motive that can be left out. All the instincts are there, mutilated and interwoven though they may be. It is the determination of their particular quantities and values in a particular case that are the only guides towards the thought which drives a man along a certain line of action.”

A court of law is undoubtedly the place where the most minds are bared; where motives are sought by all sorts of different methods; and where the driving thought which impels a man to overstep the law, is sifted and filed. From time to time even the dingy little country courthouses hear tales of passion and listen to words of remorse. But, to the casual observer, it seems that the true motives are nearly always hidden absolutely, and that the words one hears merely form an explanatory set of coincident facts on which those in authority must necessarily base their decisions. The “telegraph exchange” as one psychologist has dubbed the mind, catches impressions from the senses, but every human being is differently built, and such impressions register more forcibly on some minds than on others. Varying reactions under similar circumstances naturally follow, and the truth of the statement quoted is obvious.

The great majority of people, especially those of Anglo-Saxon origin, have an accepted code of behaviour and. no ■matter how they are affected by a situation or impressed by something they ■read, they cloak any wayward impulse and outwardly conform to the general parallel. There are moments of course when even the most stolid individual is torn from this by emotional stress. Crises of national importance and carrying a general appeal such as the receipt of casualty lists and news of the result of battles during are the most usual. Music, too, wrings emotional acknowledgment from the hearts of many people. But, in the ordinary round of daily existence, anyone who departs from the general line of conduct- at frequent intervals becomes known as an eccentric; if the frequency becomes continuous and the conduct accprdingly extreme, the person is accepted as insane—the term being merely relative. Over two years ago an Auckland daily newspaper with a large circulation included in 'the columns of an inside page of its supplement a short report cut from an overseas paper. "'The chan-' ces of its inclusion in that supplement must have been about a million to one; probably the man in charge required a few inches of “fill-up,” and this paragraph caught his eye: , A Terrible Suicide. Woman Burned to Death. Because she thought the police were pursuing her, Mrs. Elsie May Westwood, aged 33, of Soho, Birmingham, poured paraffin over herself and set fire to it. At the inQuest the husband explained that since the death of her child at birth, his wife had falsely believed that the police were shadowing her. A neighbour stated that, while still conscious, Mrs. Westwood told her, ‘‘l thought the police were after me. That s why I did it.” A verdict of “Suicide while of unsound mind,” was recorded. In their ramble through the pages of Saturday’s paper thousands of people .must have noticed and read thia, and most of them must have shuddered momentarily and felt a spasm of pity. On the next Tuesday a top-of-column story in the same paper must have caught their eyes and shaken them a great deal more because of its plain statement of facts, facte which bore a starting similarity W something they knew they had read just a few days before? Woman’s Tragic Fate. Disappearance From Home. Charred Body Discovered. Located on Vacant Section. With her body burned almost beyond recognition Mrs. , of . Birkenhead. was found dead in a section close to her home shortly after eight o’clock on Monday morning. Nearby there were found an empty quart bottle which had contained paraffin, and a match-box with a few burnt matches in it . . . ” At the inquest held on the day after discovery of the body, a verdict of suicide while of unsound mind was returned by the coroner. Mr. F. K. Hunt, •S.M. Evidence was given to the effect that the deteased. lady was a childless widow. A sister stated she had been in bad health and very depressed for a number of weeks, and was to have accompanied witness to the latter’s home in the north that week. On Sunday evening she had said she wished to sleep on the porch, and retired about 9.30. The fact that the deceased lady was one of the many thousands who read the paragraph in the supplement mentioned did not come out at the inquest, but was impressed by relatives on a newspaper man who visited the scene of the tragedy. Like all suicides, it would be impossible to state the thoughts which, drove this woman to such a terrible end. Her sister said at the inquest that she knew deceased “would have to be watched; she was taking sleeping draughts.” The constable in evidence stated he knew the woman, and that the latter had told him “she was going downhill.” Thera seems little doubt that she would have committed suicide anyway by some method, but the fact remains that it ■was probably the shocked impression she received on reading the paragraph concerning the Birmingham woman that led her, while depressed and slightly unhinged, to kill herself in the manner she did. A psychological explanation advanced by a Wellington man is that “such a phenomenon is not the result of the first delinquency exercising an overpowering attraction on a feeble minded ego, but rather as the desire which in certain subjects is powerful and is stimulated by the contemplation of what they wish to emulate, to inflict pain on themselves . . . Sadism as applied to self.” Any psychological explanation, however, is necessarily involved and not necessarily' lucid. Another Wellington man who is engaged in Supreme Court work read the psychological explanation and wrote: “I would just as soon attribute the facts to nothing more than curiosity. In order to give credence to the psychological explanation one must presuppose what seems a most unnatural and rare indisposition. But curiosity we know to be natural, common and partial to women. A hysterical or neurotic subject would read the first paragraph and wonder how and why and what it felt like. The Bible is full-of such, incidents. Even semi-immortal Pandora opened her accursed box. There is uo reason in and no measure of mans curiosity. Add to this destrucforce a gyrofed sad ageaL