48 PROCEEDINGS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. 



e uidence, the pui-pose of the law is to obtain infoi-mation just as it 

 \^ ould endeavour to discover foreign law, or ecclesiastical law, or 

 fricts concerning engineering, mechanics, or any of the arts and 

 sciences. What medical experts and writers comi^lain of is that 

 judges and lawyers can and do know nothing of disease of insanity, 

 while the legal gentlemen say it is too much and intolerable that the 

 witness should usurp the functions of judge and jury, and claim the 

 right of deciding the whole question. 



The common ground upon which these conflicting scientists fight 

 this battle is evidently the mind — an unsound mind law says, a 

 diseased mind medicine says. The chief difiiculty is, therefore, not 

 which science should claim the exclusive right of appropriating the 

 mind, but what the mind in itself is. When the mind is diseased, 

 one party says every act is that of a diseased mind, and is, therefore, 

 to be regarded as an insane act. The mind is a totality says Lord 

 Brougham ; and this has been quoted a])provingly by Dr. Willard 

 Parker, by Dr. Gilman, and others of eminence. 



The Courts of law, however, have not acted upon this doctrine, 

 and they repeatedly and every day act upon the assumption that a 

 man may be sane upon one subject and insane upon all others, or 

 that being insane upon one, or a monomaniac, he may be sane upon 

 all others. He may be subject to delusions, but otherwise sensible. 

 And so a man who is unquestionably insane upon one or on a variety 

 of subjects, may yet have his will upheld, or his contract enforced 

 against him. If he understands fully what is necessary to dispose of 

 property by will or by agreement, he may be so far as the law cares 

 hopelessly and incurably insane upon all others. Does he under- 

 stand the nature and value of his property, his relations and their 

 claims upon him'? Then his will stands, though it were drawn (as 

 wills have been drawn) in the rooms of an asylum. If he understands 

 the value of property and conducts himself so that the other party 

 had no suspicion of his insanity, then his contract can be enforced 

 against him, though his object were to use that property to erect 

 another tower of Babel. 



These conclusions of the Court leave no doubt as to its view on 

 the totality of the mind and on the effect of a diseased mind, though 

 it is not disputed that many able lawyers side with the medical view. 

 It is evident if unsoundness as here been stated is due to diseased 



