The law has never held that all lunatica and idiots are absolved from all reaponaibility for their civil or criminal acts. Thia consequence was at tributed only to the severeat grades of these affec tiona,—to lunatics who have no more understanding than a brute, and to idiots who cannot "number twenty pence nor tell how old they are." Theoret ically the law has changed but little, even to the present day; but practically it exhibits considera ble improvement: that is, while the general doc trine remains unchanged, it is qualified, in one way or another, by the courts, so as to produce less practical injustice.
Insanity implies the presence of diaease or con genital defect in the brain, and though it may be accompanied by disease in other organs, yet the cerebral affection ia always supposed to be primary and predominant. It is to be borne in mind, how ever, that bodily diseases may be accompanied, in some stage of their progress, by mental disorder which may affect the legal relations of the patient.
To give a definition of insanity not congenital, or, in other words, to indicate its essential element, the present state of our knowledge does not permit. Most of the attempts to define insanity are senten tious descriptions of the disease, rather than proper definitions. For all practical purposes, however, a definition ia unnecessary, because the real question at iaaue ,alwaya is, not what constitutes insanity in general, but wherein consists the insanity of this or that individual. Neither sanity nor insanity can be regarded as an entity to be handled and deacribed, but rather as a condition to be considered in ref erence to other conditions. Men vary in the charac ter of their mental manifestations, insomuch that conduct and conversation perfectly proper and nat ural in one might in another, differently constitut ed, be indicative of insanity. In determining, there fore, the mental condition of a person, he must not be judged by any arbitrary standard of sanity or insanity, nor compared with other persons unques tionably sane or insane. He can properly be com .pared only with himself. When a person, without any adequate cause, adopts notions he once regard ed as absurd, or indulges in conduct opposed to all his former habits and principles, or changea com pletely his ordinary temper, manners, and disposi tion,—the man of plain practical sense indulging in speculative theories and projects, the miser be coming a spendthrift and the spendthrift a miser, the staid, quiet, unobtrusive citizen becoming noisy, restless, and boisterous, the gay and joyous becom ing dull and disconsolate even to the verge of de spair, the careful, cautious man of business plung ing into hazardous schemes of speculation, the dis creet and pious becoming shamefully reckless and profligate,—no atronger proof of insanity can be had. And yet not one of these traits, in and by it
self alone, disconnected from the natural traits of character, could be regarded as conclusive proof of insanity. In accordance with this fact, the princi ple has been laid down, with the sanction of the highest legal and medical authority, that it is the prolonged departure, without any adequate cause, from the states of feeling and modes of thinking usual to the individual when in health, which is the essential feature of insanity. Gooch, Lond. Quart. Rev. xliii. 355; Combe, Ment. Derang. 196; Maid way v. Croft, 3 Curt. Red. 671.
Insanity produced by alcoholism is of two kinds : Delirium tremens, caused by the breaking down of the person's system by long continued or habitual drunkenness, and brought on by abstinence from drink, and called "settled insanity," to distinguish it from "temporary insanity," or drunkenness, directly resulting from drink; Evers v. State, 31 Tex. Cr. R. 318, 20 S. W. 744, 18 L. R. A. 421, 37 Am. St. Rep. 811. See DRUNKENNESS.
Criminal Responsibility. There is a con currence in the law of civilized countries in absolving persons mentally unsound from criminal responsibility. In France, Germany, and Austria the rule is in substance that if a person is unconscious of the nature of his act, or his will is affected or the character of the act is not perceived, there is no crime ; 1 Witth. & Beck. Med. Jur. 181; Krafft Ebing, Ger. Psycho-Path.
That insanity, in some of its forms, an nuls all criminal responsibility, and, in the same or other forms, disqualifies its subject from the performance of certain civil acts, is a well-established doctrine of the common law. In the application of this principle there has prevailed, for many years, the utmost diversity of opinion. The law as expounded by Hale, who divided insanity into partial insanity as to certain subjects, partial as to degree, and total insanity, was that partial insanity was not sufficient to excuse a person in the committing of any capital offence; 1 Hale, P. C. 30 ; and his doctrine was received without question until the beginning of the present century; 8 How. St. Tr. 322; 16 id. 764; 19 id. 947.