Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Felo-de-se / by J.G. Davey. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.
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![bona fide 'power to do, or not to do, this thing or that, must be sought for elsewhere than in man’s knowledge of right and wrong. Sanity and responsibility, and conversely, in- sanity and irresponsibility, are matters to be estimated by his (man’s) ability or inability to do or to leave undone the right or the wrong. The acts {i,e. the conduct and character) of both the sane and insane, are ever dependent on—in the lan- guage of metaphor—the heart rather than the head] or, what is the same thing, the feelings or affections—rather than the intellectual powers. ^^Aman,” writes Shaftesbuby, ‘^isby nothing so much himself, as by his temper and the character of his passions and affections ; ” these — “ insolent and strong, Bear our weak minds their rapid course along; Make us the madness of their will obey, Then die, and leave us to our griefs a prey ! ” Crabbe. The questions raised then in regard to the confusion of ideas and the state of the memory in the deceased at the period immediately antecedent to his death are seen then to have been irrelevant and altogether outside the legitimate course of the enquiry; and that, in truth, the depressed spirits and the agonized mind should have formed the very pith and starting-point of this very important investigation—and be- cause only insanity does consist in—in very many instances-— such ‘‘ depression ” and agony of feelings. It may be said, in reply, that the course adopted i'n re J. Sadleir, was exactly that prescribed by the law of the land, and therefore the then Coroner was in perfect order; and especially so, in so far as the said ideas and memory are concerned. I cannot think this; though the law does judge, and rightly judge, that every melancholy or hypochondriacal fit does not deprive a man of the capacity of discerning right from wrongand though, as Sir M. Hale has it, It is not every melancholy or hypochondriac distemper that denominates a man non-compos or destitute of reason, for there live few who commit suicide but are under such infirmities; ” yet inasmuch as the prin- ciple involved in the said Law is based on an untruth—is foreign to the laws of Psychological science—and is altogether antagonistic to a sound humanity—is it, I ask, not high time that we should be rid of such a Lawand, what is more, insist on the acceptance by our Law-makers of other and advanced views of sanity and of insanity, of responsibility and irresponsibility. But there is indeed no end to the incon-](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22453040_0014.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
