land, of the customs of society: they have not sufficient mental power to influence their feelings and emotions by means of reason, and they are incapable of appreciating any of the doctrines of a revealed religion. There seems little reason for applying the term imbecile to these. There is another class, however, in which, together with very considerable capacity for the acquisition of knowledge, and for the retention of memories, there seems to be an entire absence of that power which is used for the determination of the moral qualities of acts. It is very difficult to account for [52]{ the peculiar powers we find in some individuals. It is said that "Genius does what it must; But perhaps there is some reason for believing that everything "does what it must." That one man who is able to reason accurately about mathematical problems, one whose wits are nimble to discover an "undistributed middle" in any sieve of arguments, should yet be a stupid man in all the practical affairs of life, is a matter for some wonder. There is no reason why a man who has attained intense delicacy and skill in any mechanical operation should not retain the same qualities when his energy is applied to some analogous work. Why, for instance, a man who draws admirably should not write well. And yet so it is, and there is no reason to think that Nature has deviated from her ordinary procedure when she has given a man real intellectual capacity in regard to several sets of circumstances, and has still left him a fool with regard to other matters of relation quite as simple and comprehensible. There is no easily understood ground for idiosyncrasies. It would be difficult to explain why a man should in aphasia lose one or two words and those only. So it is difficult to explain how, together with considerable intellectual acuteness, there should exist great moral obliquity, or why, while there is really some appreciating of the moral law, there should be very great feebleness of the intellectual nature. But that these cases do occur, a very superficial observation will show, and it is upon such cases that the distinction between moral and intellectual imbecility has been founded. 275. Moral Imbecility.-The assertion that there is such a disease as moral imbecility makes one or two remarks necessary in this place, for there are few questions of more importance in relation to medical jurisprudence than that as to whether it is necessary for the law to recognize an insanity which manifests itself simply by immorality. It is certain that just as there is general and partial insanity-insanity manifesting itself in relation to the whole scope of human conduct and action, and insanity manifesting itself only in connection with certain external relations of the individual so we may distinguish between general imbecility or idiocy and partial idiocy or imbecility. In diseases which are symptomed by defect rather than by exaltation of power, it is more difficult to distinguish between the various forms of the aberration than it is when delusions exist in the mind, but still the often-remarked cunning, ingenuity, and cleverness, which are found compatible with a very marked degree of defect, shows that a similar differentiation of disease exists in relation to imbecility which may be observed in relation to mania. [Not unfrequently, imbeciles are capable of acquiring with much accuracy a large number of facts in one subject or department. Many have been noted for their powers of calculation, and we have ourselves seen an idiot who could spell almost any word backwards. So rapidly was this accomplished that it was found necessary to take down the letters as he uttered them. He spelt long and intricate words in this way with precision and accuracy. Now, the question to be determined is-Can this disease exist in connection with a man's moral conceptions, his ideas of rightness and wrongness, without, at the same time, affecting his other intellectual concepts? Some remarks of Mr. Bain, as to the moral sense, will help us to make clear our opinion as to this matter. "I have," he says, "given it as my deliberate opinion that authority or punishment is the commencement of that state of mind recognized under the various names of conscience, the moral sense, the sentiment of obligation. The major part of every community adopt certain rules of conduct necessary for the common preservation or ministering to the common well-being. They find it not merely their interest, but the very condition of their exist ence, to observe a number of maxims of individual restraint and of respect to one another's feelings on such points as person, property, and good name. Obedience must be spontaneous upon the part of a larger number, or of those whose influence preponderates in the society; as regards the rest, compulsion must be brought to bear. Every one not of himself disposed to follow the rules prescribed by the community, is subjected to some infliction of pain to supply the absence of other motives, the infliction increasing in severity until obedience is obtained. It is the familiarity with the régime of compulsion and of suffering, constantly increasing until resistance is overborne, that plants in the infant and youthful mind the germs of the sense of obligation. I know of no fact that would prove the existence of any such sentiment in the primitive cast of our mental constitution. An artificial system of controlling the actions is contrived, adapted to our volitional nature, the system of using pain to deter from particular sorts of conduct. A strong line of distinction is drawn in every human mind between actions that bring no pain except what arises out of themselves, as when we encounter a bitter taste or a scalding touch, and those actions which are accompanied with pains imposed by persons about us. These actions, and the circumstances attending them, make a deep and characteristic impression: we have a peculiar notion attaching to them and to the individual persons the authors of the attendant pains. A strong ideal avoidance, not unmixed perhaps with the perturbation of fear, is generated towards what is thus forbidden by penalties rising with transgression. The feeling drawn out towards those who administer the pain is also of the nature of dread: we term it usually the feeling of authority. From first to last, this is the essential and defining quality of the conscience, although mixed up with other ingredients. As duty is circumscribed by punishment, so the sense of obligation has no other universal property, except the ideal and the actual avoidance of conduct prohibited by penalties. This discipline indoctrinates the newly introduced member of society with the sentiment of the forbidden, which by and by takes root and expands into the sentiment of moral disapprobation. He thus joins with the other members of the community in imposing and enforcing the prohibitions that have been stamped and branded in the course of his own education. Duty, then, may be said to have two prime supports in the more self-regarding parts of our nature-the sense of the common preservation and well-being operating upon a preponderating majority, and the sense of punishment brought to bear upon individuals (who must be the smaller number) not sufficiently prompted by the other sentiment. Order being once established in a society, that is to say, the practice of obedience being habitual to the mass of the community, it is only necessary to apply a disciplinary process to the young to prepare them for the same acquiescence in the public morality. The imposition of penalties begets at once the sense and avoidance of the forbidden and the awe of authority, and this, as a general rule, is retained through life as the basis of the individual conscience, the foremost motive to abstain from actions designated as wrong." It follows, then, if Professor Bain's account of the creation of the moral sentiments is correct--and although we might differ from him in one or two particulars, if this were a philosophical treatise instead of a practical work, we may take it as correct that the moral sense is formed from or by means of the intellectual nature of men, as appreciative of pains in the past, as dreading their infliction in the future, and as dictating prudent abstention from such acts as are most likely to induce a renewed infliction of like penalties. To the creation of this sentiment, however, certain faculties contribute. To appreciate the pains, the individual must be sensitive, or in other words feeling; must have memory to remember past pains, and the occasions upon which they were suffered; must have judgment sufficient to understand the similarities of their present position to that in which they formerly were tempted, and forethought to see that the same penalty will follow a like dereliction of duty. A higher amount of intelligence would enable the individual to appreciate the real fact of duty from the infliction of punishment upon others, but if that is insufficient, the punishment must be personally instead of vicariously administered. But all these faculties are intellectual, and although past experience may produce that aroma of memory which we call sentiment, the sense of moral obligation is unquestionably founded upon an intellectual basis. But it is to be remembered that no artificial system of control, however stringent, would induce an idea of duty or morality in one who was devoid of will. Indeed, this explanation of conscience takes for granted the fact of free volition. Apart from volition, all the punishment in the world would never create an active moral sense, although it might possibly produce a speculative notion of rightness and wrongness. Now, it seems to be a fact that the volition can be affected without at the same time any appreciable disease of the intellectual nature proper. We have seen that will is only to be regarded as active thought, or thought passing over into act, and it might almost seem that, that being so, the same notions which were in the head should appear in conduct. But the fact is that thought cannot pass over into act without the intervention of the body. Now the body is the seat of disease, and it is just in consequence of this disease that will becomes affected. We have seen a man who was under the influence of stimulants attempt to grasp something, say a bottle, and we have seen his misdirected clutch at empty air. Here we had the thought perfectly executed, but in passing over into act, disease intervened, and the volition went sprawling astray. So it is in moral matters: the thought in passing over into act goes astray just as the drunken man's hand did. And so we may speak of a man being intellectually sane while he is morally imbecile. But although such imbecility may exist, its occurrence in fact is very rare. In most cases of moral imbecility, the intellectual faculties are also seriously affected. In many cases, too, it must be remembered that the volitional power of a man, although it cannot be created, can be largely increased by punishment; and where a moral sense is supposed to exist, it seems a ground rather for the infliction of severer penalties, with the view of strengthening volition and emphasising the sense of obligation, than for exempting the individual from all punishment. 76. The Education of Imbeciles.-These remarks lead us to the consideration of the question of the teachability of imbeciles. Many institutions exist throughout this country |