They may fairly be said to be the best-studied programs now before the
country, and to represent the largest amount of professional consent,
simply because they are the result of the work, first, of ninety school
and college teachers, divided into nine different conferences by
subject, and secondly, of ten representative teachers combining and
revising the work of the conferences, with careful reference to the
present condition of American schools.
32. Indirect Evidence. The term "indirect evidence" may be used for
all evidence as to fact in which reasoning consciously plays a part.
Without it we should be helpless in large regions of our intellectual
life, notably in science and history, and constantly in everyday life.
Clearly the line between direct and indirect evidence is vague and
uncertain; it is one of the first things learned in psychology that our
perceptions and judgments of things about us are almost never based
exclusively on the testimony of our senses, and that we are all the time
jumping to conclusions from very partial observations.
Professor Muensterberg gives the following example from his own
experience of this unintentional substitution of indirect evidence for
direct:
Last summer I had to face a jury as witness in a trial.
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