trary to law, and combined with this knowledge the power to appreciate and be moved by the ordinary motives which influence the actions of mankind.

If a man has no sense of pain, he will not learn to dread the fire by being burned. If it is the same to a man whether he take asafoetida or sugar into his mouth; if it is the same to him whether his neighbours praise or disparage him; if it is the same to him whether he have or have not liberty,-then any of the laws that are at present in force in this and in other civilised countries are utterly inapplicable to him, and, as they do not apply to him, he is not responsible to them. But if a man, be he sane or insane, is capable with regard to the act in question of being deterred by fear of punishment -if, like the ordinary criminal, it was a belief in the probability of escaping detection that weighed on the side of committing the act— if it was mainly the ordinary motives which led to the commission of the crime, and if a preponderance of ordinary motives would have deterred, then the criminal laws of this land are applicable to the accused, and he is responsible to those laws, and has no claim to be exempted from punishment on the ground of mental enfeeblement or derangement of intellect. It is to be remembered that a criminal code has been made with reference to those who are in many respects defective human beings. Certain penalties have been declared as the consequences of certain acts, and it is to be remembered that the law is excellent only where, with its punishments, it emphasises the assertions of nature. Laws are for those who cannot see that their truest good lies in order; for those who are incapable of appreciating the fact that honesty and virtue and peace are the conditions of the greatest possible happiness. The wise man would not steal, whether there were a statute-book or no. The good man has a hundred motives for respecting the life of his neighbour besides the fear of a shameful death. But while the statute law supplies certain powerful and easily appreciated motives to guide the actions of those who are so weak as not to see what is for their real advantage of those who have so little self-control that, without the fear of immediate punishment, they could not respect the property of their neighbours,-it does not, after prescribing one set of punishments for such classes, make, as it were, a second storey of the statute-book, and prescribe other punishments for those who, even with the motives supplied by law, are unable either to see what is best for them, or unable to

restrain their desires, although conscious that punishment will follow. It confesses that there are certain classes to whom the law can supply no motive sufficiently strong to induce them to conform to certain rules, and it looks upon those persons as insane and as irresponsible; as punishment of those individuals would fail first in reforming the criminal himself; second, in deterring others of the same class from committing a similar offence: although it might, as an example, deter others, the law does not punish such persons, but contents itself by protecting the community from the commission of the crime again by the same individual. That the above is a sound principle on which to proceed in all cases to the determination of the question of responsibility—that it avoids many intricate metaphysical questions, utterly out of place in a court of law, as to the freedom of the will; and that it will tend to fulfil the true and full function of criminal legislation, will, we feel somewhat confident, appear from a thorough examination of the subject, and may even, we hope, be gathered from what has been said in this chapter.

CHAPTER II.

ON THE CAUSES OF INSANITY.

THOSE Who seek the rainbow are like those who hunt for a cause. And yet it is a great chase. The past is ransacked, and that great digestive system which has supplied the energy for the present, is found to be like a tunnel with an exit at the other end, and no cause anywhere in it. Cause! who can get at the cause? The cause of anything in the present is the whole past! But we have to limit our inquiry to the little things which are next in point of succession to the effect-events of our time; and we call them causes, without raising the metaphysical question. Two things known together, mean knowledge-that is all we know. It is in this light, then, that we must look at the question of the etiology of insanity. Who can say what are the causes of insanity? One must enter into a synthesis of causes, and confess that the man is half the cause of his own hurt, if he is pierced by an arrow, and that he is half the cause of his own disease, if through any combination of circumstances he becomes insane. Life is like a long string of algebraic figures, with the signs plus (+) and minus (−) before each quantity. They are always varying and being carried over from one side to the other of the equation which is to determine the value of x, which stands for health. Who can work it out, till death reduces the value of x to 0? Well, he who would say why a man goes insane, would require a complete and thorough biography of the man, would require to know the influences he fell heir to, the rails which were laid down for him to run on before he was born, by the material fate of hereditary transmission. "Every man carries his destiny on his forehead," say the Mohammedans; but not on his forehead only, say we. Every nerve has an iron destiny forged in the past. Man is like a watch wound up by fate, to go for a season; he is made for

good or evil, by the past; and it is not the present that predetermines the future, but the past that predetermines all time. And what past went before that past? Was it He who was before time? The question is a great one, and not to be answered with a little footrule of common sense. One thing alone seems certain, that any answer to the question, as to what causes insanity,-save that "through all time, if we read aright, sin was, is, and will be the parent of misery," and misery is the parent-and often the child resembles the sire-of insanity,-is almost impossible. But the question narrows itself on account of our inability to answer it. It comes to be a small question, with a little creeping answer, always tentative, always on its hands and knees, always groping in the great darkness.

Causes, then, which are thought at the present time to conduce to insanity, have been divided into predisposing and exciting, and into physical and moral. One thing is clear, whether there is nothing but mind, or nothing but matter; and that is, that the one set of these causes, in so far as we are here concerned, may be regarded as operating through, or by means of, the other. If mind is a manifestation of body, it is quite evident that moral causes are causes only on account of the physical changes which they produce. If mind manifests itself through body (which may be the objective idea), and it is with those manifestations that we have to do in this place; and if, as bad glass distorts the images we see through it, by twisting the rays of light, so defective organism, or the lack of power to adapt subjective ideas to the objective idea, may distort the manifestations of mind,-it is with the cause of this distortion that we have here to do.

I. Of Remote or Predisposing Causes.-Civilization, it is said, has led to an increase of insanity. Statistics, in so far as they bear upon this question, are rubbish. We are told that insanity is rare amongst uncivilized peoples, and that in this country 1 in every 500 is mad. Does that statement afford any figures for comparison? What is "common" expressed in numerical relation? And if it were settled, what would it prove? Not what it is meant to establish, it seems to us. We hear, however, that theoretical considerations lead one to suppose that insanity has increased, and that civilization is the predisposing cause. Those theoretical considerations, as explained by Dr. Maudsley, are, that as in a complex

organization like the human body, there is a greater liability to disease, and the possibility of many more diseases, so in the increased complexity of the mental organization, it is reasonable to expect an increased liability to mental disorder. But why? In the first place, he assumes a fact; and in the second, we know that notwithstanding the increased complexity of structure of the human body, notwithstanding the number of kinds of tissues, and the orderly subordination of parts, that "man seems in his transitions from one climate to another to resemble domestic animals, with this difference, that he bears those changes better in proportion as he is civilized."* Why should not the same principle hold good here? Why should not the more complex mental organization lead to a more careful mode of life? Why should not the higher mental development lead, through science, to the diminution of the disease, through cure, by care in breeding, and by the avoidance of those actions which lead directly or indirectly to abnormal mental conditions?

There is more earnest living in these days, it is true; but why the human mind, which has made for itself the power to be earnest, which has so far overcome barbarism as to have gained the capacity for being "bored,"+ should not have at the same time gained the vigour to withstand its unhealthy influences, it is difficult to say. To assert that the tendencies to disease only can be transmitted, is to say what is absurd; but it is to express plainly what seems to have been tacitly assumed in this case, for the sake of argument. Health is inheritable. And he who says, "I gave my children all the health I got," says something better and nobler than he who says, "I gave my children double the property I got from my father."

We confess, it is difficult to see why our present civilization should have produced this bane. That we pet our lunatics, and number them as carefully as David did the people of Israel, is true, and the more we number, the more the plague rages. That the number of lunatics in asylums at the present time is greater than it was in times past is true, but it proves nothing but that asylum accommodation is much increased. That the number calculated to be in England at the present time is greater than it was some years ago, only suggests a more efficient system of ascertaining the actual amount of lunacy throughout the country, or that phases of life are *Waitz, Anthropology, sec. iv, p. 205. + See Comte.