This is as true of the eminent insiders
who draft treaties, make laws, and issue orders, as it is of those who
have treaties framed for them, laws promulgated to them, orders given
at them. Inevitably our opinions cover a bigger space, a longer reach
of time, a greater number of things, than we can directly observe.
They have, therefore, to be pieced together out of what others have
reported and what we can imagine.
Yet even the eyewitness does not bring back a na?ve picture of the
scene. [Footnote: _E. g. cf._ Edmond Locard, _L'Enqu?te Criminelle
et les M?thodes Scientifiques._ A great deal of interesting material has
been gathered in late years on the credibility of the witness, which
shows, as an able reviewer of Dr. Locard's book says in _The
Times_ (London) Literary Supplement (August 18, 1921), that
credibility varies as to classes of witnesses and classes of events,
and also as to type of perception. Thus, perceptions of touch, odor,
and taste have low evidential value. Our hearing is defective and
arbitrary when it judges the source and direction of sound, and in
listening to the talk of other people "words which are not heard will
be supplied by the witness in all good faith. He will have a theory of
the purport of the conversation, and will arrange the sounds he heard
to fit it." Even visual perceptions are liable to great error, as in
identification, recognition, judgment of distance, estimates of
numbers, for example, the size of a crowd.
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