concerned, to keep him free of all alien suggestions and inferences,
and to compel him to see the case as if no influences, personal or
circumstantial, had been at work on him. This result does not
require merely the setting aside of special influences, nor the setting
aside of all that others have said to him on the matter under discussion,
nor the elucidation of the effect of fear,[1] of anger, of all
such states of mind as might here have been operative,--it requires
the establishment of his unbiased vision of the subject from
a period antecedent to these above-mentioned influences. Opinions,
valuations, prejudices, superstitions, etc., may here be to a high
degree factors of disturbance and confusion. Only when the whole
Augean stable is swept out may the man be supposed capable of
apperception, may the thing he is to tell us be brought to bear
upon him and he be permitted to reproduce it.

This necessary preliminary is not so difficult if the second of the
above-mentioned rules is observed and the ``funded thought''
of the witness is studied out. It may be said, indeed, that so long
as two people converse, unaware of each other's ``funded thought,''
they speak different languages. Some of the most striking misunderstandings
come from just this reason. It is not alone a matter
of varying verbal values, leading to incompatible inferences; actually
the whole of a man's mind is involved. It is generally supposed to
be enough to know the meaning of the words necessary for telling a
story. But such knowledge leads only to external and very superficial
comprehension; real clearness can be attained only by knowing
the witness's habits of thought in regard to all the circumstances of
the case. I remember vividly a case of jealous murder in which the
most important witness was the victim's brother, an honest, simple,
woodsman, brought up in the wilderness, and in every sense far-