? 175.

CHAPTER IX.

PARTIAL MORAL MANIA, OR MORAL MONOMAN...

General and Special Insanity considered.— [119] Although it is difficult to see how one set of mental operations-as, for instance, those which go to determine a difference between right and wrong-can be affected with disease while in all other respects the mind is sane, still it is a fact that a man's relations to external nature may be distorted in so far as one series or class of acts are concerned, while in other classes of acts or impressions those relations may be in a perfectly normal condition. A man may be blind without losing the use of his ears. But still it is not altogether correct to say that a man can be morally insane while at the same time he is intellectually normal. For, as what we know of mind is only thought, we cannot regard a mind which always thinks wrongly with respect to certain matters, although in other matters its process may be without error, as in its intellectual wholeness complete.

176. Moral Monomania.-I now propose to consider a class of cases in which even a more limited species of acts is affected by disease-a class of cases in which only one or two of the social relations of the individual are interrupted by the presence of the abnormal conditions of brain. Although it is difficult to separate a man's feelings from his thoughts, it is not difficult to make a distinction between various desires or passions in relation to their objects. Thus, if we found morbidity only manifested in relation to the appropriative tendency in human nature, it would be reasonable, for the sake of convenience, to distinguish such a manifestation of disease from that in which the tendency to destroy one's own life was found to be the most prominent mental

feature. It is really madness in relation to the same mind and thought, whether its symptom be stealing a handkerchief or cutting one's throat; but as there are different kinds of skill acquired by different parts of the body, so there are different propensities [120 acquired by mind. Skill is the direction of energy to the educated part; partial moral mania seems to be the direction of morbid energy, or energy manifest under abnormal circumstances, through certain tendencies of disposition. And the most convenient means of classification is presented by the similarity of the most prominent features or symptoms of the disease in different cases, as it is these features and their object that call attention to that part of the disposition which is primarily affected.

2177. Disposition and Character. The disposition is just the stereotyped edition of a man. While a man is young and under favorable circumstances, his tendencies are only movable types. If we say a man's disposition is good, it is that the circumstances of the past have biassed him-like a bowl-to run over this green world in a direction we think heavenward. This is disposition in the lump. But we all know how infinitely the various rooms of the house-disposition, so to speak-vary in different individuals. We find one man liking solitude and the great lessons it teaches, while another seems to enjoy his neighbor's elbows in his side as he is jostled in the market-place. One man has great ventures forth in the waves' hands, and prays that the wind may bring home his ships, and that his coffers may be at their golden flood-tide. Another man lives in the shadow of great quiet hills, with nothing but books for friends, and would rather hear the babble of the streams than the clink of all the coins in the world. One man imagines that

"To breathe is not to live,"

while another man thinks that "well fed" is the acme of happiness, and never to want, the highest perfection. It is the sum of all a man's tendencies to the external that we designate his "disposition;" and when we use such words as "miser," or "glutton," we mean to express, with as much exactness as one word can, the whole disposition of an indi

vidual. To say that a man whose disposition impels him to choose what is bad rather than what is good, is a bad man, and a stupid man, seems to be warranted by the dictionary meanings of words. We see many who choose the evil and eschew the good every day of their lives, and we see others who prefer the good of the spirit to the good of the body. But liberty is an excellent thing, and if we were all compelled by law upon all occasions to do well we would make the millenium a seven months' child--a consummation not to be desired. So we are all allowed to choose what is bad, if 11 we prefer it, so long as our choice neither directly nor indirectly tends to injure other people. When disposition would impel us to the choice of something which belongs to another, and, when we appropriate the article to our own use, law steps in, and, for the reason that it is convenient that folk should be able to possess without molestation what belongs to them, punishes us, in order to prevent the formation of such unsocial (in the wide sense) dispositions. Such is the principle of our law, and whether the disposition is a result of disease or not, so long as punishment is calculated to restrain, so long should it be had recourse to.

2178. Diseased Disposition and Exculpation.-But it is true that a disposition may get too strong for a man. He may, even when the strongest reasons for refraining from a certain act exist, (e. g. the presence of witnesses and the certainty of punishment,) be unable to restrain his propensity. And where such a fact can be satisfactorily proved, it seems to us, after careful consideration of the subject, that the individual should be held irresponsible for such acts.

179. Partial Insanity considered.-Partial insanity, then, may, according to medical men, be traced to an abnormal increase of vital energy in any part of the mental organism, which will probably be manifested in an excessive activity of that state of consciousness with which the part affected is connected, or, what seems to us more probable, will, in all likelihood, manifest itself through those channels of mental life in which the greatest amount of mental energy has been wont to flow, or, in other words, be directed by the disposi

tion of the individual. In relation with this statement it must be remembered that a man's disposition is not always an open book from which a runner might read, that it is not always formed by overt acts-although in many cases these are the scaffoldings of disposition-but is often built up in secret by the coral insects of thought. It must be remembered also that a disposition is not omnipotent, and that many wise men constantly act in direct opposition to the tendency of their nature; but where the true disposition can be ascertained it will, we imagine, be found the channel through which the excessive mental energy generated under the influence of disease will flow. It is true that not unfrequently the disease seems rather to change the character of the individual, and a man that was scrupulously honest before, becomes a thief; a philanthropist, a persecutor. But these facts, the truth of which we admit, only bear out our statement, for it seems [122] to us a law of the manifestation of energy that its excessive flow under the influence of disease, through a channel in relation to which it is excessive, is productive of a result contrary to that which the ordinary healthy passage of energy would be expected to cause. If fifty people try to get through a doorway suited for the passage of one person at a time, not one gets exit, and that although the door is wide open and there are fifty persons wishing to get through. So it is with energy. As long as the disposition-channel-to make a phrase is sufficient to allow the exercise, say of generosity, it manifests itself in good works; but when it has, owing to the excessive activity of mind, become too limited, there is a display of excessive meanness in all the actions of the individual, so that our assertion that it is the disposition of the individual that influences the manifestation, and gives a character to the symptoms, is borne out by facts.

PART 1.-KLEPTOMANIA.

180. The Idea of Property.-The idea of property, as we have it in our times, was not built in a day, any more than Rome was. That it has been built seems certain. In the

first instance it may have been acquired from the undoubted possessory feeling a man has with regard to his own body. A man would recognize his hands as his own, and from that rudimentary notion of self-possession anything that could minister to the welfare of self would, in time, become associated with the idea of property. Food would probably be that with which this advanced idea of property would be connected. But the real development of the notion of "mine" must have arisen from the remembrance of some want in the past, and its satisfaction in a time nearer the present, and from a sufficient appreciation of the course of nature to believe that such a want might arise in the future, when its satisfaction might be difficult. The man who really first had property was he who thought, "I am not hungry just now, but I may be in time to come. I have more food than I can eat just now, and I may not have enough to eat in time to come." But he found out that it was necessary to remember where the food was; then he found [123]it necessary to hide the food and mark the place, so that he might find it again; and it was this fact of its being hidden that was the law that gave him the true feeling of ownership. But if food was "owned," and men began to think that possession gave a right to property, why should not the implements with which the food was procured be a subject of property? The hunter transferred the skin to his back or stretched it over a pole to shelter him, and so property increased. Then began the differences of the language of property. At first property in food only gave the pleasure of satisfaction of appetite, and then of taste; then when the hunter came for it again he had the satisfaction of feeling that by his ingenuity he had “earned his blessings," that he had done better than his neighbors by making the present live, as it were, on the past; then came pride in the shape of the instrument, in its ornamentation, in the glossy hide, in the antlers, in his house or wigwam, in the cleverness of his bartering exchanges, and in the stores he had laid up against the time to come. And so his feelings ramified, as it were, so the idea of property grew and strengthened, for feelings are strong in proportion to the number of actual or possible associated sensations. Then