taining that "delusion" is not an unerring and adequate test of mental insanity; others asserting that delusion is no test at all of insanity, and this class of minds have now reasoned out their theory to a denial that there is any test of insanity at all, its presence or absence in a given case being merely a question of fact to be decided only by the jury and the experts, which is surely a reductio ad absurdum, since no fact can be known, even to experts, except by means of its own specific criteria. That there is no insanity of the species referred to by Erskine without delusion is a certain fact; as to whether a morbid delusion is all that is required for exempting a criminal act from legal punishment is a very different question, about which there are two plausible opinions that are defended.

One school of authorities contend that there is no such thing as monomania, or a delusion that is entirely confined to one object or one class of objects; but the reasons advanced by some of them in defence of this opinion are not genuine, namely, when they affirm as proof that the mind does not consist of compartments or distinct divisions, but it is simple, and therefore when insane at all, the entire mind is insane. Of course the soul is simple; but one who would argue the question raised should first know the elementary truth that insanity is a disease of the brain, and that it is not seated in the soul, which is a spiritual substance; disease is only in a material organ, since matter alone is composed of parts joined to parts, physical agents and reagents acting chemically. It is easy to conceive that the mental action of a person who is under the control of a dominant delusion about one class of things is affected, and more or less impaired in respect to all things, since an ailment in one part of the brain may by sympathy interfere with healthy and normal action throughout that organ; but it is, perhaps, not possible to prove that, as a fact, this invariably happens in monomania.

Those who admit, with Erskine, that delusion is the inseparable companion of mental insanity, but deny that it is an adequate legal test, on the ground that one may have a particular delusion, and yet become guilty of crime that is punishable, labor to discover some one test that will apply to all cases coming before the courts; and some dispose of the difficulty by alleging that the test is "inability to distinguish right and wrong." But this is only shifting the difficulty to another point of view. Ability or inability to distinguish right and wrong is the test of rational knowledge; an infant cannot discern right and wrong, and neither can an insane mind do it. The question must again come back then, What is the test of that insanity which deprives the mind of its power to distinguish right and wrong? We should here keep different mat

ters in their right relation to each other; responsibility comes from power to distinguish right and wrong, and freely choose between them; power thus to distinguish right and wrong, and choose between them, presupposes the mind to be in its healthy normal state, and that the right and wrong are duly presented to it. The question always returns, What is the test of that mental insanity which deprives the mind of its normal state and its normal action ? In respect to the type of mental insanity now under consideration, Erskine assigned its specific and uniform symptom; it is delusion, which comes from inability in the mind, caused by disease of the brain, to distinguish mere fancies or images in the morbid imagination from reality.

In order that the courts might, if possible, settle down on some uniform rules and doctrine in respect to this disputed matter, the British Parliament, in 1843, proposed four questions to the judges, with the request that they would agree upon, and report answers. Those questions and their answers were as follows:

"Question I. What is the law respecting alleged crimes committed by persons afflicted with insane delusions in respect to one or more particular subjects or persons; as, for instance, when, at the time of the commission of the alleged crime, the accused knew he was acting contrary to law, but did the act complained of with a view, under the influence of insane delusion, of redressing or avenging some supposed grievance or injury, or of producing some supposed public benefit ?"

Answer of the judges:

"Assuming that your lordships' inquiries are confined to those persons who labor under such partial delusions only, and are not in other respects insane, we are of opinion that notwithstanding the accused did the act complained of with a view, under the influence of insane delusion, of redressing or avenging some supposed grievance or injury, or of producing some public benefit, he is nevertheless punishable according to the nature of the crime committed, if he knew, at the time of committing the crime, that he was acting contrary to law, by which expression we understand your lordships to mean the law of the land."

They limit this condition to "the law of the land," partly in order to cut off atheistical subterfuges, which, if holding the accused bound by the moral or natural law, might be resorted to by the accused.

"Question II. What are the questions to be submitted to the jury where a person alleged to be affected with insane delusion respecting one or more particular subjects or persons is charged with the commission of a crime (murder, for example), and insanity is set up as a defence?

"Question III. In what terms ought the question to be left to the jury as to the prisoner's state of mind at the time when the act was committed ?"

Answer to questions II and III:

"As these two questions appear to us to be more conveniently answered together, we submit our opinion to be, that the jury ought to be told in all cases that every man

is to be presumed sane, and to possess a sufficient degree of reason to be responsible for his crimes, till the contrary be proved to their satisfaction; and that to establish a defence on the ground of insanity, it must be clearly proved that at the time of committing the act the accused was laboring under such a defect of reason, from disease of the mind, as not to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing, or if he did know it, he did not know he was doing what was wrong."

"Question IV. If a person under an insane delusion as to existing facts, commits an offence in consequence thereof, is he therefore excused ?"

Answer:

"On the assumption that he labors under partial delusion only, and is not in other respects insane, he must be considered in the same situation, as to responsibility, as if the facts with respect to which the delusion exists were real. For example, if, under the influence of delusion, he supposes another man to be in the act of attempting to take away his life, and he kills that man, as he supposes, in self-defence, he would be exempt from punishment. If his delusion was that the deceased had inflicted a serious injury on his character and fortune, and he killed him in revenge for such supposed injury, he would be liable to punishment."

According to the doctrine laid down in these answers of the judges, which is still generally adhered to by the courts, both in England and in the United States, in order to judge the moral character of a person's act which is done when such person is under the control of insane delusion on one subject, we must assume that the facts are just what he imagines them to be, and then judge his act by those facts, as if they really existed. If one burns down his neighbor's house, because, as he insanely fancies, God commands him to do so, his act is not criminal; but if he burns the house out of revenge, because his delusion is that his neighbor robbed him of an imaginary fortune, in such case he is guilty, supposing that his mind was sane in all else and he then knew revenge to be unlawful. It is also contended by some authorities that this same rule should be applied in the same manner to the acts of the somnambulist, or of one dreaming and acting under the delusions of his dream; his illusions being regarded as real facts, his acts must be judged accordingly. But this opinion, concerning responsibility for acts done in sleep, does not accord with the facts, as will be seen further on in this article. There is no real consciousness in one dreaming, while there is, as supposed, perfect consciousness in partial insanity, as regards all objects of thought not within the range of the morbid delusion.

What is thus far said concerning the legal and judicial doctrine of insanity and insane action, though not herein developed or analyzed fully, for that would extend this article beyond due limits, will suffice for the object proposed. It is certain that the grave authorities who hold to those principles of medical jurisprudence in adjudging criminal charges against persons pleading insanity as exempting them from punishment, sincerely intend truth and jus

tice. Many leading members of the medical profession at the present day emphatically condemn the law as applied to partial insanity or monomania, asserting with Maudsley, "when a person is lunatic he is, as Dr. Bucknill has remarked, lunatic to his finger ends." Others of them only deny that delusion is a specific and certain test of such type of mental disease. But in order to determine the value of their theories and criteria of mental insanity, their account of its psychological nature and its relation to sound ethics, we must here consider the results which they profess to have reached and demonstrated. Pinel is credited with first saying that "there are many maniacs who betray no lesion whatever of the understanding, but are under the dominion of instinctive and abstract fury, as if the affective faculties alone had sustained injury." Prichard is said to be the first who maintained the theory of moral mania, or that the will, as the "moral sense," may be insane, even when the intellect is perfectly sane, alleging that persons "while laboring under this disorder of moral insanity-are capable of reasoning or supporting an argument on any subject within their sphere of knowledge that may be presented to them; and they often display great ingenuity in giving reasons for their eccentric conduct, and in accounting for and justifying the state of moral feeling under which they appear to exist." His followers maintain his theory still more explicitly, that moral insanity is a disease of the "moral sense;" that in many instances of it every other faculty of the patient may be in a perfectly healthy condition, and that oftentimes the only symptom which manifests this type of mental disease is depravity of unusual or exceptional species. Hence Maudsley's' reflection on the law laid down by the judges in 1843: "How grossly unjust, then, the judicial criterion of responsibility which dooms an insane person of this class to death if he knew what he was doing when he committed a murder!" In such case, this school of teachers hold, the reason is perfectly right, and is completely conscious; it is only the moral sense, the affective faculty, or the will, that is struck with insanity.

But in order to do justice to the doctrine of insanity, as taught in most schools of medicine at this day, it is but fair to let them state for themselves the first principles on which they found their teachings; and then the correctness of their reasoning becomes only a question of valid logic, which is easily disposed of. In

1 Body and Mind, lecture ii. In his work on Responsibility in Mental Diseases Maudsley tries to show the falsity of all the tests of insane mental action followed by the civil courts, including that of "delusion." His theory is that the will may be insane, even when there is no delusion in the reason, or when the reason is perfectly sane. His doctrine is not likely to be generally followed in practice by the courts, as they must fail to see how a man is not responsible for his acts done de'iberately and with perfectly sane judgment as to their moral character.

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deed, their first principles are more at fault than their reasoning upon them.

With the results reached by physiologists in accounting for the organic causes of insanity, their description of the lesions in the brain which distinguish the different types of mental disease, there is no question here to be argued; for this being exclusively and specially an object of their science, it may well be conceded, on general principles, that they have made the discoveries which they claim to have made, and that they correctly state the pathology of mental diseases, so far as they affect the brain and the nervous system. It also falls within the province of medical science to describe and explain the phenomena of disordered mental action as a distinctive symptom of this peculiar bodily disease; and it may also be granted that their best authorities do enumerate and describe these facts and manifestations of insanity with much thoroughness, as well as that the medical profession of this day greatly excel all their predecessors by their skill and success in treating disease of the mind. But many leading authorities in this profession go much further and attempt to explain the spiritual world, the nature of man's soul, and the moral order; and to account for them from the standpoint of mere living organism, or of mere organic and nerve function. It is with this part of the doctrine now taught that issue is here to be joined.

The majority of the medical profession holding peculiar views concerning body and mind as only different manifestations of one and the same living physical and homogeneous nature would, perhaps, be perfectly willing to allow Maudsley to speak for them, as he represents the "advanced doctrine," and is probably among the very ablest exponents of the new theories of mind, who have treated the subject ex professo; however there are others who push the principles defended by him to further consequences than he does, at least as regards some special questions.

After treating of the intellect or rational principle's healthy and normal action, which he explains to be nothing else than action of "nerve-centres," Maudsley thus introduces his views on the subject of diseased mental action: "I pointed out that the higher mental operations were functions of the supreme nerve-centres; but that, though of a higher and more complex nature than the functions of the lower nerve-centres, they obeyed the same physiological laws of evolution, and could best be approached through a knowledge of them. I now propose to show that the phenomena of the derangement of the mind bear out fully this view of its nature; that we have not to deal with disease of a metaphysical entity, which the method of inductive injury cannot reach, nor the re

1 Body and Mind, lecture ii.