each has to act according to its own lights on the evidence before it. Reasonable to some juries means a fair compromise, notwith standing the warning of the court, and they do not trouble themselves for a more pro found agreement. To others it is the rule of some dominating men who overcome by ar gument their fellows and hold them van quished until the verdict. Occasionally every one sees the evidence in the same way sub stantially, and when all agree they can all imite in disposing of the reasonable doubts of any one or more. But always the substance of the court's proper instruction to the jury is that reasonable means according to their knowledge of life. Each man's knowledge of life differs from that of the other eleven. Hence they have to learn from each other what reasonable means. It is what is rea sonable to the members of each particular jury under all the circumstances of the one case before them that is the test of doubt. When this is understood in detail and clearly, the difficulty of reaching a verdict is lessened. The uncertain jurors learn to doubt their .own doubts and to trust their own conviction which the others share. Instead of dwelling upon every possible way in which the crime could have been committed, they gradually submit to the evidence, and to what it proves. They cease applying a merely controversial method to the effort to find facts. They real ize that they are not advocates, but judges of fact. They discover that the gravity of a ju dicial view of the evidence is deeper than an exclusively emotional impression. They feel that impartial justice is of more value than mere sympathy or revenge. And whether they relish these reflections or not, they have to acknowledge that it is their business to try to decide upon a verdict. They are per forming a function of the public life of so ciety as it tries to protect its safety, order and character. It may be hard for private citizens with the instincts of private life to be suddenly called upon to abandon the methods of conciliation and to stand up as
judges of the fact that a fellow man did or did not murder a fellow man. And yet when the awfulness of such a burden disturbs their imagination, their legal duty is to calm them selves with the plain truth that they are merely considering a question of fact. The fatal consequences to the prisoner which may follow a verdict of guilty, the danger to so ciety which may follow an acquittal, and the failure of the institution of the jury in this instance which would be caused by a disagreement, are, each, ideas which they cannot altogether dismiss from their minds, but they are each irrelevant to the question whether the prisoner is proved guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. It has appeared in these reflections that several considerations affect a verdict, which from a theoretical point of view are irrelevant to the finding of a fact by a jury. They consider numbers as a motive for agree ing upon others' opinions. They consider the terrors of death as a motive for stand ing out against others' opinions. They con sider time and the suffering of their pri vate business and the needs of the public courts as motives to dispatch the matter as soon as they can decently do so. All these things unite to help each man to distinguish between his possible doubts and his reason able doubts. They fix his attention upon essential things in evidence. When this process has worked awhile, it is not a long step to doubt the doubts which at first blush seemed to him to be reasonable. He more and more prefers what seems to him to be the most reasonable view of the evidence, he adopts that view, and he finally thinks that doubts which conflict with the most rea sonable view are not reasonable. At last the conscientious juror is relieved by finding that reason itself delivers him from reason able doubt. The more thorough his appre ciation of this practical truth the better judge of fact does he become. If the suggestions here made concerning human naturein the jury room are correct,
