The true and sufficient reason for these rules would seem to be the uncertain char acter of the injury inflicted, the impossibility of compensation, and the danger, supposing a pecuniary compensation to be attempted, that injustice would be done under the excitement of the ease. The sound principle, as the ex perience of the law amply indicates, is to inflict a punishment for crime, but not put up for sale, by the agency of a court of jus tice, those wounded feelings which would constitnte the ground of the action.
The rule as indicated above has its lim itations, however, in particular cases; Wy man v. Leavitt, 71 Me. 227, 36 Am. Rep. 303. Thus, it has been held that, when bodily pain is caused, mental pain follows necessarily, and the sufferer is entitled to damages for the mental pain as well as for the bodily ; Lawrence v. R. Co., 29 Conn. 390 ; Fairchild v. Stage Co., 13 Cal. 599 ; Pennsylvania & 0. Canal Co. v. Graham, 63 Pa. 290, 3 Am. Rep. 549 ; Ford v. Jones, 62 Barb. (N. Y.) 484 ; but damages for the mental suffering of one person, on account of physical injury to an other, are too remote to be given by court or jury ; 2 C. & P. 292.
There is a material distinction between damages and injury. Injury is the wrong ful act or tort which causes loss or harm to another. Damages are allowed as an in demnity to the person who suffers loss or harm from the injury. The word injury de notes the illegal act, the term damages means the sum recoverable as amends for the wrong ; City of North Vernon v. Voegler, 103
Ind. 319, 2 N. E. 821.
In Civil Law. A delict committed in con tempt or outrage of any one, whereby his body, his dignity, or his reputation is ma liciously injured. Voet, Com. ad Pand. 47, t. 10, n. 1.
A real injury is inflicted by any act by which a person's honor or dignity is affect ed: as, striking one with a cane, or even aim ing a blow without striking ; spitting in one's face; assuming a coat of arms, or any other mark of distinction proper to another, etc. The composing and publishing defamatory libels may be reckoned of this kind; Erskine, Pr. 4. 4. 45.
A verbal injury, when directed against a private person, consists in the uttering con tumelious words, which tend to injure his reputation by making him little or ridiculous. Where the offensive words are uttered in the heat of a dispute and spoken to the person's face, the law does not presume any malicious intention in the utterer, whose resentment generally subsides with his passion ; and yet even in that case the truth of the injurious words seldom absolves entirely from punish ment. Where the injurious expressions have a tendency to blacken one's moral reputation or fix some particular guilt upon him, and are deliberately repeated in different com panies, or handed about in whispers to con fidants, the crime then becomes slander, agreeably to the distinction of the Roman law ; Dig. 15, § 12 de injur. •