510 Witchcraft , Insanity , and Crime . [September, 
the form of the gallows or of perpetual imprisonment is a 
secondary question. The essential points are that he shall 
not have the opportunity of repeating his offence, and that, 
in view of the heredity both of insanity and crime, he 
shall on no account be suffered to become a father. 
As regards animals they are not, indeed, in these days 
arraigned before courts of law, but they are frequently 
punished for their offences, and the dread of punishment 
weighs with the more intelligent domestic species — horses, 
dogs, even cats — as a powerful motive in deterring them 
from actions to which they are otherwise inclined. Even 
elimination is, pending that “ emancipation ” of animals of 
which some hysterical spirits dream, the recognised doom of 
individual brutes which have committed some grievous out- 
rage, and indeed of entire species which have been found 
perilous to man’s person or his property. The tiger and the 
wolf cannot help, in virtue of their very nature, preying 
either upon our hocks and herds or upon ourselves ; but this 
plea renders their extirpation all the more imperative. 
The following doCtrine seems to me fraught with grave 
dangers : — “ It will be held that a lunatic may be capable of 
making wills and contracts, and of giving testimony in 
court, even if not responsible for any offence he may have 
committed.” 
It is important to note that Dr. Beard fully admits that 
the plea of insanity has been abused to the acquittal of the 
guilty, who have thus not merely escaped the scaffold, but 
have been turned loose upon the world again. He writes : — 
“ The psychology of the future will not admit the plea of 
insanity except for those who are seriously sick in mind, and 
who manifest their insanity by decline in the instinCt of 
self-preservation (it is declining in the people of England, 
pari passu , with the tribal instinCt), and in the power of 
adapting themselves to environment, by important moral 
decline or by lack of rememberable consciousness ; simple 
eccentricity, or hypochondria or hysteria, or morbid impulses 
or morbid fears, will not be regarded as diagnostics of insa- 
nity.” It must be admitted that Psychology will have to 
make great progress before experts cease to differ on such 
delicate distinctions. 
Returning to the main subject, it will astonish not a few 
to learn that “ at this very hour, in and around Salem and 
adjoining Massachusetts towns, witchcraft is cherished by 
the sons and daughters of these Puritans : they may not 
know or confess that they are believers in the delusion, and 
the faCt of such belief would only be brought out by close 
