468 INTEMPERANCE AND INSANITY 



living under favourable circumstances, but are incapable from 

 mental defect existing from birth or from an early age : (a) of 

 competing on equal terms with their normal fellows ; or (b) of 

 managing themselves and their affairs with ordinary prudence. 



" ' Moral ' imbeciles, i.e. persons who from an early age display 

 some mental defect coupled with strong vicious or criminal 

 propensities on whom punishment has little or no deterrent 

 effect." i 



767. Or consider " The very good definitions submitted to us 

 by Sir James Crichton-Browne, of the * imbecile ' and the * feeble- 

 minded ' " which " do not turn on the ' capacity of earning a living, 

 but have in some measure to define the child by anticipation, by 

 standards applicable to a later time of life than early childhood, 

 such as prudence, independence, and self control,' or * taking care 

 of himself in the common affairs of life.' " These definitions are : 

 " An imbecile is a person who, by reason of arrested development 

 or disease of the brain dating from birth or early years, has the use 

 of his observing and reasoning faculties so restricted as to in- 

 capacitate him for education in the ordinary sense or for taking 

 care of himself in the common affairs of life, and who in appearance 

 and manner generally evinces his mental short-comings. 



" A feeble-minded person is one who, by reason of arrested 

 development or disease of the brain dating from birth or from 

 some age short of maturity, has his reasoning faculties partially 

 weakened, so that he is slow or unsteady in his mental operations, 

 and falls short of ordinary standards of prudence, independence, 

 and self-control. 



" The moral imbecile is a person who by reason of arrested 

 development or disease of the brain dating from birth or early 

 years displays at an early age vicious or criminal propensities 

 which are of an incorrigible or unusual nature, and are generally 

 associated with some slight limitation of intellect." 2 



768. Both these descriptions imply incapacity to learn. Those 

 furnished by the Royal College of Physicians, however, merely 

 describe the social and material consequences of the defect rather 

 than the defect itself consequences which might conceivably 

 arise from lunacy, or mere " backwardness " due to illness, or 

 exceptionally bad training. Sir James Crichton-Browne goes 

 deeper, for while he also describes the effects, he attributes them to 



1 Report of the Royal Commission on the Care and Control of the Feeble-minded, 

 vol. viii. p. 188. 



2 Op. cit. y vol. viii. p. 189. 



