She has
never been taught to reason and has really never found it
necessary, having wandered through life by inference or, more
frankly, by guesswork, until she is no longer able to point
out the simplest stages of her most ordinary mental
processes.
As the reader is already aware, the value of all honestly
given testimony depends first upon the witness's original
capacity to observe the facts; second upon his ability to
remember what he has seen and not to confuse knowledge with
imagination, belief or custom, and lastly, upon his power
to express what he has, in fact, seen and remembers.
Women do not differ from men in their original capacity to
observe, which is a quality developed by the training and
environment of the individual. It is in the second class of
the witness's limitations that women as a whole are more
likely to trip than men, for they are prone to swear to
circumstances as facts, of their own knowledge, simply
because they confuse what they have really observed with what
they believe did occur or should have occurred, or with what
they are convinced did happen simply because it was
accustomed to happen in the past.
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