Responsibility in mental disease / by Henry Maudsley.

  • Henry Maudsley
Date:
1892
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Responsibility in mental disease / by Henry Maudsley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    operation of natural laws ? When will he learn that by the study of these laws and by deliberate conformity to them he may become the conscious framer of his own destiny ? Notwithstanding that the influence of hereditary ante- cedents upon the character of the individual has been admitted by all sorts and conditions of men, its important bearing upon moral responsibility has not received the serious consideration which it deserves. Laws are made and enforced on the supposition that all persons who have reached a certain age, arbitrarily fixed as the age of discretion, and are not deprived of their reason, have the capacity to know and obey them ; so that when the laws are broken, the punishment inflicted is in proportion to the nature of the offence and not to the actual moral responsibility of the individual. The legislator can know nothing of individuals; he must necessarily assume a uniform standard of mental capacity so far as a know- ledge of right and wrong, and of moral power so far as resistance to unlawful impulses, are concerned; exceptions being made of children of tender age and of persons of unsound mind. There can be no question, however, that this as- sumption is not in strict accordance with facts, and that there are in reality many persons who, without being actually imbecile or insane, are of lower moral responsibility than the average of mankind; they have been taught the same lessons as the rest of mankind, and have a full theoretical knowledge of them, but they have not really assimilated them; the principles inculcated