The Plea of Insanity. 



293 



ably always will be, a tendency to speculative theories and over- worked 

 hobbies. Men of a speculative cast of mind, and a controversial dispo- 

 sition, will sometimes frame a theory upon a very limited number of 

 facts, experiments, or observations, and thereafter adjust every thing 

 to it ; bending facts and phenomena to such theory when they will 

 yield, and boldly questioning or ignoring them when they will not. 

 There are few men who possess the requisite force and grasp of intel- 

 lect, combined with a well-balanced mental organization, coolness of 

 judgment, freedom from emotional disturbance, patience to wait tho 

 slow processes of inductive methods, and perseverance to push them to 

 legitimate results, which are indispensable to safe conclusions in the 

 realm of psychological investigation. Such men there are, however, 

 and they are making steady advances in psychological medicine; and 

 we may reasonably hope that at no distant day their labors will result 

 in relieving medical jurisprudence from some of its present embarrass- 

 ments. 



Within a comparatively recent period moral insanity has become a 

 disturbing element in criminal jurisprudence. By this name is meant 

 insanity of the moral system, co-existing with sanity of the mental. 



It assumes that the moral and mental functions are so separable 

 that one can be insane without involving the other; and that this 

 severance actually exists in cases of moral insanity. It is claimed by 

 the highest authorities that this species of alleged insanity has, psy- 

 chologically, no existence ; and it is generally repudiated as a legal de- 

 fense. It will have been noticed by readers of the Guiteau trial, that 

 the most distinguished experts there examined deny the existence of 

 moral insanity. It still finds distinguished advocates, however, both 

 among alienists and jurists; and even when overruled as a defense, it 

 doubtless sometimes creeps into the jury-box and secures a verdict of 

 not guilty, against law and evidence. 



The perplexity caused by this alleged species of insanity is greatly 

 increased by its numerous subdivisions into the large and increasing 

 family of monomanias. Among these may be mentioned homicidal 

 mania, kleptomania, pyromania, erotomania, pseudomania, oikeiomania, 

 dipsomania, fanatico-mauia, and politico-mania. In his testimony on 

 the Guiteau trial. Dr. Gray stripped from some of these manias the 

 Greek costumes in which they had posed and imposed, and left them in 

 their naked deformity and moral depravity, as murder, arson, theft, 

 and drunkenness. Under the nomenclature of moral insanity, a person 

 may lie, steal, ravish, burn and kill, ad libitnm, and go unwhipped of 

 justice. 



The doctrine once fully established and universally recognized, that 



