No psychologist has hitherto been able, and probably it is impossible,
to define _madness_, or to give a clearly marked indication of the
boundary line between sanity and insanity. Mental soundness is merged
in unsoundness by degrees of decadence which are so small as to be
practically inappreciable. It is with the mind-state which precedes the
development of recognized form of insanity the therapeutist and the
social philosopher are chiefly interested. Although in individual cases
the subject of mental derangement may, as the phrase runs, "go mad"
suddenly, speaking generally insanity is a symptom occurring in the
course of disease, and, commonly, not until the malady of which it is
the expression has made some progress. Those mental disturbances which
consist in a temporary aberration of brain function, and which are the
accidents of instability, rather than the effects of developed or even
developing neuroses, can scarcely be classed as insanity; although it is
true, and in an important sense, that these passing storms of excitement
or spells of moody depression may--acting reflexly on the cerebral and
nervous centers, as all mind-states and mind-movements react--exert a
morbific influence and lay the physical bases of mental disease. The
consideration most practical to the community and germane to the
question of public safety is, that in any and every population there
must exist a dangerously large proportion of persons who are always in
a condition of mind to be injuriously influenced by any force which
powerfully affects them. As a matter of history, it would seem that the
majority of such persons are controlled rather than morbidly excited by
the opportunity of throwing themselves into any popular movement. They
may suffer afterward for the stimulation they receive at the time of
public commotions, but while these are in progress they link their own
consciousness with that of other minds, and the tendency to develop
individual eccentricities of mental action is thereby for the moment
repressed or exhausted. It is in the intervals of great public
excitement the peace is disturbed by the vagaries of criminals who are
more or less reasonably suspected of being "insane."
It would be premature to assume that the murderer of Mr. Gold, or the
man who attempted to assassinate the President of the United States of
America, is insane. There are circumstances in connection with each of
these tragedies which must suggest the reflection that the assailants
were possibly, or even probably, of unsound mind. We do not, however,
propose to discuss these features of the respective cases at this
juncture. The full facts are not, as yet, ascertained; but enough is
known to warrant an endeavor to clear the way for future remark by
disposing of the objection that the suspected perpetrator of the
Brighton outrage and the would-be assassin of the President both showed
"forethought" and "method." It is a common formula for the expression of
doubt as to the irresponsibility of an alleged lunatic, that there is
"method in his madness." Nothing can be farther from the truth than the
inference to which this observation is intended to point. It is not in
the least degree necessary that a madman should be unconscious of the
act he performs, or of its nature as a violation of the law of God
or man; nor is it necessary that he should do the deed under an
ungovernable impulse, or at the supposed bidding of God or devil, angel
or fiend. The forms of mental disease to which these presumptions apply
are coarse developments of insanity. Dr. Prichard was among the first of
English medico-psychologists to recognize the existence of a more subtle
form of disease, which he termed "moral insanity." Herbert Spencer
supplied the key-note to this mystery of madness when he propounded the
doctrine of "dissolution;" and Dr. Hughlings Jackson has since applied
that hypothesis to the elucidation of morbid mental states and their
correlated phenomena. When disorganizing--or, if we may borrow
an expression from the terminology of geological science,
_denuding_--disease attacks the mental organism, it, so to say, strips
off, layer by layer, the successive strata of "habit," "principle," and
"nature," which compose the character. First in order go the higher
moral qualities of the mind; next those which are the result of
personally formed habits; then the inherited principles of personal and
social life; at length the polish which civilization gives to humanity
is lost, and in the process of denudation the evolutionary elements of
man's nature are progressively destroyed, until he is reduced to the
level of a creature inspired by purely animal passions, and obeying the
lower brutish instincts. The term "moral insanity" is accurate as far
as it goes, but it expresses only the first stage in a process of
dissolution which is essentially the same throughout, but which has
unfortunately received different designations as its several features
have been recognized and studied apart. The difference between the
subject of "moral insanity" and the general paralytic, who has lost all
sense of decency and lives the life of a beast, is one of degree. The
practical difficulty is to convince the mere observer that forms of
insanity which seem to consist in the loss of moral qualities and
principles _only_, may be as directly the effect of brain disease as any
of those grosser varieties of mental disorder which he is perfectly well
able to recognize, and fully prepared to ascribe to their proper cause.
To the professional mind, at least, it will follow from what we have
said that the injury to mind properties or qualities inflicted by the
invasion of disease may be partial, and must in every case be determined
by laws or conditions governing the progress of disease, perhaps on
the lines and in the directions which have been least well guarded by
educationary influences. A man may lose his faculty of forming a wise
judgment long before he is deprived of the power of distinguishing
between right and wrong. This is so because it is a higher attainment in
moral culture to do right advisedly, than simply to perceive the right
thing to do. The application of principle to conduct is an advance on
the mere recognition of virtue in the concrete, or even the possession
of virtue in the abstract. The question whether any past act of
wrongdoing was an act of insanity does not so much depend upon the great
question whether the person doing it was insane as a whole being, or
whether the deed done was the outcome of passion or error, the direct
fruit of limited or special disease. In short, the insanity of the act
must be inferred from the morbid condition of the brain from which it
sprang, rather than from the act itself. A partially disorganized--or as
we prefer to say "denuded"--brain may be fully capable of sane thought,
except on some one topic, and able to exercise every intellectual
function except of a particular order. Or there may be mental weakness
and neurotic susceptibility in regard to a special class of impressions.
It would be difficult to name any form of act or submission which may
not be the outcome of incipient or limited disease. The practical
difficulty is to avoid, on the other hand, treating the fruits of
disease as willful offenses; while, on the other, we do not allow the
supposition or presumption of disease to be employed as an excuse for
wrongdoing. It is, of course, clear that there may be perfect method in
such madness as springs from partial or commencing brain disease; for
every element in the mental process which culminates in a mad act may be
sane except the inception of the idea in which the act took its rise.
Thus, in the case of the suspected murderer of Mr. Gold, there may have
been perfect sanity in respect to every stage of the process by which
the crime was planned and carried out, and yet insanity, the effect of
brain disease, in the idea by which the deed was suggested. For example,
when a man is suffering from morbid suspicion, and, fixing his distrust
on some individual, purposes to murder him, the intellectual processes
by which he lays his plans and fulfills his morbidly conceived
intention, are performed with perfect sanity, as by a sane will. It is
important to recognize this. There is no difference in _nature_ between
the mental operation by which a "sane" man contrives and executes a
crime, and that by which a known "lunatic" will commit the like offense.
There may be as much _method_ in the one instance as in the other, and
the faculties which exhibit this method may be as sound and effective,
but in the one case the idea behind the act is sane, while in the other
it is insane. The brain is not one large homogeneous organ to be
healthy or diseased, orderly or deranged, throughout at any one period.
Inflammations, and diseases generally, which affect the brain as a whole
do not commonly cause insanity properly so called. The organ of the
mind is a composite, or aggregate of cells, or molecules, any number
or series of which may be affected with disease while the rest remain
healthy. At present we are only on the threshold of investigation
concerning the physical causes of insanity, and have scarcely done more
than recognize the possibility of _molecular_ disease of the brain.
Hereafter science will, probably, succeed in unveiling the obscure facts
of molecular brain pathology, and enable the medical psychologist to
predicate disease of recognized classes of brain elements from the
special phenomena of mind disturbance. This is the line of inquiry, and
the result, to which the progress already made distinctly tends. For the
present, the inferences we can surely draw from known facts are
very few; but prominent among the number are certain which it is
all-important to recognize in view of the judgment which must hereafter
be formed on the two cases now engaging public attention on both sides
of the Atlantic. The existence of method in madness is no marvel, and
that characteristic cannot therefore be supposed, or alleged, to weigh
as evidence against the "insanity" of the criminal. The perpetrators of
these heinous offenses against common right and public safety may be
more or less responsible for their acts, and, so far as these are
concerned, more or less sane or insane. The measure of the morbid
element in their individual cases will be the health or disease of the
particular part or element of the brain from which the offense sprang.
The ultimate judgment formed must be determined upon the basis of
scientific tests to be applied to the action of the brain alleged to be
the subject of partial or incipient disease. There is nothing in the
facts as they stand to supply the materials for a judgment. Precise
scientific inquiry can alone solve the enigma each case presents.
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