“THE WHOLE TRUTH.”

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 19682, 27 December 1933, Page 2

“THE WHOLE TRUTH.”

WHO CAN TELL IT? A witness in a Sydney court case the other day was complimented by the judge on the straightforward manner ill Which he gave his evidence, says the “Sydney Daily Telegraph.” The judge then went on to enumerate the five precepts which an ideal witness should follow. They include “Speak loudly and clearly," and other commendagle items; but the psychologists will smile at the leading dictum, “Tell the truth.”

Quite apart from the well-worn allegory that truth, resembles a threedimensional object of which any one person can only see a portion at a time, there is the established (act that no one can relate any incident of an exciting nature exactly as it happened. There is a practical experiment proving this, which has been repeated over and over again with identical results.

Into a classroom of students listening to an unexciting lecture suddenly bursts a wild-eyed man flourishing a revolver. “I challenge what you have just said in the named of revealed religion!” he yells, rushing at the professor.

There is uproar and confusion, during which an attendant rushes in the door and seizes the madman. During the struggle the revolver is fired. The intruder is overpowered and led away. Then the professor informs the astonished class that the whole thing is a pre-arranged piece of acting, and asks them to each write down a plain account of what actually happened. Sometimes it is a pieviously-coached student in the class who interrupts the professor and fires the revolver.

The drama has been staged in many ways. But, whatever the variant, it is an astonishing fact that in none of these tests has a witness been able to relate all the events in exact order, with their correct details. Some add Imaginary incidents, others omit certain details, still others pervert the order in which the actions happened. In other words, not one of them is capable of telling the whole truth.

There is a still more remarkable experiment, which shows up mankind as a collective unconscious liar. In the above-mentioned test there “as the element of excitement, which would obviously interfere with calm judgment.

No doubt such a test would reproduce tins state of mind of a court witness who gave his version of an attempted murder. What of some incident where the emotional element is absent? Surely a level-minded witness can be trusted to relate afterward a true version of what exactly happens? Alas for human nature! A professor enters his classroom carrying several mechancii.l toys, each of which, when a handle is turned, goes through some amusing movement. Having put each in motion in turn he then tells his class he is going to make a test. He will work each model, after which the students are to write down what happened, and in the correct order. Simple enough, yet no one (unaware of the trick to be played) has yet succeeded.

The profeasor disconects some of the mechanism, so that the toys do not move when the handle is turned. With minds concentrated on the order of presentation, most students see a hallucination of motion, and those that realise the immovability of some toys get confused watching the motion of others, and ascribe the immovability to the wrong toys. Recently a psychologist shocked Sydney by pronouncing that, ns a result of recent experiment, it was shown that 90 per cent of young children are liars. Some of the resentment aroused by that statement may evaporate when it is realised that the adult is a similar prevaricator. No one can relate the “whole truth" of an accident; : t best, he or she < '„n only give a version of what happened. If all t' e persons who swore that they saw the missing “Southern Cloud” were telling the truth, that illfated neroplane must have been in several places at the same time, like Boyle Roche's bird.

The judge who advises witnesses to “tell the truth” advises an impossibility. We can relate only what we think we have seen. The ideal witness does not exist.