Finally, the law holds that individuals laboring under amentia, dementia, or melancholia, and who have no knowledge that they are doing right or wrong, what is commanded or forbidden, are to be exempted from punishment in case they commit murder.

246. Murder in relation to Morbid Impulse. But this is not enough: it is believed that in many cases individuals may have been sane until just before the commission of the crime, and that the murder may be the first indication of insanity; and it is impossible to deny that this may be, and is sometimes, the case. There is no prescribed form of beginning to be mad, and there is no vagary, no act which, from its 165 apparent motivelessness and absurdity, may not be the first external manifestation of the internal disease. So far, then, everybody is at one-that murder is committed by insane persons, and that an act of murder may be the first indication of the presence of morbid mental conditions. In a former part of this work we explained at some length how the action which was done with an overwhelmingly powerful motive (if it is trivial in comparison with the ordinary motives of mankind) may, and does, give an appearance of motivelessness and impulsiveness. Now, this impulsiveness, which is due to the incapacity of the mind to be influenced by all the tendencies of ordinary humanity in an attitude of choice, has many analogues in that part of nature which is only half animate--if we use animate as meaning life with choice, in which sense we should not call plants animate, and in this sense moral notions would be coëxtensive with animacythat part of nature which is out of the dominion of immediate consciousness. Thus, we find that one man cannot choose but laugh when he is tickled, although the time and place and presence may make it most imprudent: if he was to die for it he could not help it. After he has laughed he may be sad enough because he made a fool of himself, but the next time you find him in a public place, with every motive which can be brought to bear on a man to make him grave, and tickle him again, he will laugh till his sides are sore. Now, in hysteria we find this condition not produced by the actual volition of another, and the actual acts of another, but by

disease in the organism of the individual. Laughter and tears come, and real voluntary tears may be shed afterwards, but no vows will keep away that laughter and those tears, which are just as much an attribute of the inanimacy of man's nature as inertia is. No will can abolish inertia. That a man can reason about a thing after it has happened, and can with perfect accuracy place it in the category of right or wrong, does not prove that it was in his power to do or to abstain from doing it, as the case may be, at the time. If a man gets drunk, and during his intoxication he commits a crime, the law very properly holds him guilty of the crime committed by him during his temporary incapacity to govern himself, because the law argues that a man ought not by any act of his own to incapacitate himself from ruling his conduct according to law and justice.' If, however, it could be proved that the man had not made himself [166] drunk, if it could be proved that another, by force, fear, or fraud, made him take that which caused his temporary incapacity, then it appears to us to be the best opinion that he would not be held responsible for any criminal act committed by him during the drunkenness, if the intoxication was of such a nature as to preclude the possibility of his knowing what he did. So in cases in which this irresistible impulse occurs it seems unfair to punish the individual for any act which was entirely beyond his control, as the incapacity was not willingly produced by his own deliberate act. True, it may have been caused by his own acts, as a man's past life is a cause; in the true sense of the word, of any subsequent fact of his being. But so in a case of duress it might be argued that the man, if he had never cultivated the society of his friend, or if he had never told him that he had £1000, would not have been subject to duress, and that, therefore, the duress was brought about by his own act. But these causes are much too remote for the law to take cognizance of, and if a real impulse to kill-using the phrase as we have above explained its meaning can be proved to exist, if it can be shown that no amount of certainty of punishment was a motive to him, and that had punishment for the act been as absolute a certainty

See per Parke, B.; Reg. v. Thomas, 7 Car. & P. 820.

as one of the laws of nature (e. g., that if a man puts his hand into the fire he will be burned,) it would not have restrained the act, and that this is due to disease, then we hold that the law ought to exempt that individual from all criminal responsibility. One or two more words concerning this impulse, and how it comes to be an impulse to kill (for we have repudiated the propensity theory,) before we turn to some of the cases which have been adduced to prove its existence.

247. Homicidal Impulse considered.'-This impulse, which is just the ordinary passion for any desirable object unrestrained by any motive, and that due not merely to an excess of the passion, but to the diminished power of appreciative motive resistance, which is due to disease, is peculiar in that it is an impulse only in one direction to the external world. It may be to theft, it may be to suicide, or it may be to murder! How is this? How comes it that a man who is influenced by ordinary motives in every other relation of life is uninfluenced in this one relation? And second, how comes it that this impulse is satisfied when it has acted with one spasmodic effort? Why does the homicidal maniac cease to kill after having murdered one or two people? If a man 167 has lost all power over his actions in one direction, why does this vis of nature, which cannot be governed by such a governor as the engine mind has over it, wear itself out with one or two acts of atrocity? These are questions of the utmost importance, and little or no attention has been bestowed upon this part of the subject.

248. The Limitation of the Impulse.-Why should a man's relations to the world be injured in himself, by disease,

The pathology of impulse has been considered fully in another place. One fact is always to be borne in mind. and that is the close connection which exists between homicidal impulse and epilepsy. What seems an isolated manifestation of insanity is really associated with serious brain lesion, which results in discharges of energy through the habitual grooves of feeling. If the man is morose or melancholy, this bursting energy may result in murder or suicide. The real character of the act depends npon the habitual character of the thought of the individual, just as we find epilepsies always affecting the most used muscles first, so we should expect to find it affecting the most used thought or series of thoughts. It is to this circumstance that the form of the moral mania, whether homicidal, suicidal, or other, is, we are convinced, due.

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only in relation to a very limited class of objects? Just because it is a law of nature, which is to be found everywhere. The man who sees a decollated head, which is always before his eye, the man who sees a "dagger of the mind," yet sees other objects with perfect distinctness, he can tell you the color of a rose and the shape of a mountain. We find it, therefore, in disease, and cannot say why. It may seem extraordinary that one drug should contract the pupil of the eye, another flush the face and neck, another give ringing in the ears, and so on. We only sail round about it when we give for a reason the words of Dr. Watts, "It is their nature too." But we find the same law in the mental phenomena of health. Men have prejudices, which are the backstair influences of mental life. One man will be miserable for a week if he has eaten flesh on a Friday, while another will feel unhappy if he has not. One individual will feel nervous if there are thirteen persons at table, if two magpies cross her path, or if a friend married in May. And yet all these individuals are sane, and can reason well and soundly concerning other ordinary phenomena. One man will sicken over something that another enjoys. But we have considered this question at some length in an earlier part of this work.

249. The Satisfaction of the Impulse or Desire.Why is the impulse satisfied by one act? Why, if a man has lost the power of choice, and a comparatively insignificant motive binds him abjectly, why should that insignificant motive lose its force at once upon the completion of one act, according to its mandate? This, again, is just a fact in nature, and if analogy brings one nearer to knowledge—as it is supposed to do there are many facts of an analogous character which can be mentioned. The desire for an object believed to be desirable ceases for a time on the attainment of the object sought or wished for. It may return, but in the meantime there is a sate. So it is with the death of another, or the death of some one, or the cutting of a throat-for death, as an actual object, is not often the object of the homicidal maniac's desire-when it is done the individual is satisfied: the wish may return, and does [168] return, as hurtful feelings come at intervals to healthy men, but it is gone in the mean

time. Then, the nature of the act which the individual has done, the result of the impulse is so startling, so likely to induce consideration, so well calculated to call up ordinary motives, horror, sorrow, consternation, and the like, as to deter from the whimsical motives which are to be found in the insane person's mind. So powerful is this fact, that it calms a man's anger, if before he was half mad with fury. So powerful that even upon the maniac such an event, associated as it is in mind with all those motives which make the book of conscience-which makes cowards of us all-will have a calming effect. And the actions of the insane upon such an occasion are often more rational than at other times. ? 250. In many Cases Homicidal Impulse would be restrained by Punishment.-Such being the fact, then, we proceed to state some of those cases which have been recorded as proofs of the existence, and as indicative of the peculiar modifications, of this mental fact-this irresistible impulse. We would say, however, that many of the cases which have been given, even by high authority, do not seem to warrant any opinion save that there are many cases of homicidal impulse which might be restrained by the fear of certain punishment, for we are convinced that an immunity from all disagreeable consequences is one means of increasing the frequency of a real insane impulse to kill, as it is of increasing the frequency of the common sane desire to do the same act.1

251. Cases of Homicidal Impulse.-Cases of homicidal insanity are very numerous, and much attention has been directed to this kind of emotional insanity. The works of Esquirol, Rush, Prichard, and Marc, contain many interesting cases. In this place we shall quote only a few of those. In France, in 1854, a boy shot his stepmother. He confessed the act, but said it was the result of a mysterious, irresistible impulse, (169) a term with which reporters on his

Reference to the following works may be made: De la Folie cons. dans ses Rapports avec les Quest. Med. Jud., par C. C. H. Marc; Dr. Ludwig Meyer on "Mania Transitoria," in Virchow's Archiv., vol. viii., p. 192; M. Brierre de Boismont in the Annales Méd. Psych., vol. viii.; Prichard "On Insanity in relation to Jurisprudence;" Bucknill and Tuke's Psychological Medicine, etc.