Show THE QUESTION OF TRUTH professor expert experiments for we lie purpose of ascertaining liow ilow widely people dif lifter er in fit their judgment judg rient concertin con cernin the impressions they receive through gli their various senses a are re very interesting they piave piove the difficulty of steeling clear of all corois even when there is nn an I 1 hone honet t desire to h haae ne but the truth if people generally knew therus eles their limitations as well as their capabilities there would be greater circumspection and fewer araie graie 1 raie mistakes in life thele would also be more charity in the judgment of 0 others professor in the september number number cf that perfectly honest and truthful per persons lons may on tile the witness stand testify to directly contradictory state indents in regard to the same occur since lince he tells of an incident illustrating the fact that the same sound may strike different listeners very differently lie he asked a class of 0 students to describe a certain sound I 1 they would hear and to say from what source it came the sound which lie produced was the tone of a large tuning fork which he struck with a little hammer below the desk invisible to the students the professor says among tile the une me red students chose papers I 1 examined for this record recard were exactly two who recognized it as a tuning fork tone all the ilie other judgments tool took it for a i bell or an organ pipe or a ruffied gong or a brazen instrument or a biorn or a cello string or a violin and a nd so on or they compared it with as different noise as the growl grow of a lion a steam thistle Nh istle a foghorn fog horn a flywheel fly wheel a human song and what mot the description on the other hand called it soft mellow humming deep dull brating tra ting full rumbling clear low but then again rough sharp whistling and so on again I 1 insist that every one knew beforehand that it was to observe the tone which I 1 announced by a signal how much more would the judgments have differed if the tone had come in unexpectedly a tone which even now appeared so soft to some and so rough to others like a bell to one and like a whistle to his neighbor another experiment is hardly less striking prof Muen Aluen asked the class to compare tile the size of the full moon as seen in the sky to some csome object held beld in the hand at arms length he explained the question carefully and said that they were to describe an object just large enough when seen at arms length to cover the whole full moon the replies were very much at variance with each other the professor says 1 my I list of answers begins as follows loys quarter of a dollar tail fair sized cantaloupe canta loup at the horizon large dinner plate overhead desert plate my watch six inches in diameter silver dollar hundred times as large as my watch mans lead head fifty cent piece nine inches in diameter grapefruit grape fruit wheel butter plate orange ten feet two inches one cent piece school loom clock a pea soup plate fountain pen lemon pie palm paint of the land hand three feet in diameter enough to show again the overwhelming manifoldness of the impressions re cel calved ved to the surprise of my readers perhaps it may be added at once that the only mart man who was right was the one who compared it to a pea it Is roost most probable that the results would not have been different it I 1 had asked the question on a moonlight light night with tile the full moon overhead the substitution of the memory image for the immediate perception can hardly have impaired the correctness of the judgments if in any court the size of a distant object were to be given by witnesses tind and one man declared it as large as a n pea and the second as large as a lemon pie and the third ten feet in diameter it would hardly be fair to form an objective judgment till the lis ch had found out what kind of a mind was producing that estimate that it is difficult to secure an accurate account of any is clear front from the lie following testimony regarding an accident acel lent before the court one of the lie witnesses who alio had sworn to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth declared declared that the entire road was dry and dusty dust the other swore that it had rained and the road was muddy the one said that tile the automobile was running very slowly the other that lie he had never seen an automobile rushing more rapidly the first swore that there were only two or three people on the village road the other that a large number of men women and children were passing by and both witnesses were honorable and apparently trustworthy they only testified to what they thought was true the new york evening Ewen ling sun tells of a similar case before a police court the driver of an automobile was accused of having exceeded the speed limit it the policeman bore witness that lie he had timed the machine carefully and his estimate was that it was lunning at twenty miles an hour the others were then invited to testify one of them was the builder of the subway 1 I am used to speed lie he said and this machine was not going twenty miles an hour another was a former justice of the su I 1 dieme 1 I e in e court we were not going more that than eight miles an hour he said and lie he went on to explain that the machine was running behind a trolley car the magistrate observed that trolley cars sometimes went very fast but justice obrien stuck resol to his opinion adding my aly impression is that we were not no 1 t going aoi mole than tour miles an houy hour r the ex experiments and instances instance s illustrating lu asti biting this subject ire are iery instinctive they that correct observation alone Is 13 not sufficient ferit for the ascertaining of facts correct judgment Is equally necessary only when lie senses convey correct impressions in pres pre to the mind and the mind is trained to form a conert judgment based b ineil on the Is the hie judgment of any value some same minds through natural detects defects or training in th alie school of falsehood do not recognize aluth no matter what the testimony of their senses may be others perceive it as soon as it Is pointed out to them but all need the guidance of the divine spirit whose mission it is to lead into all truth without this there Is no protection against brior deseret news |