GOITEAU'S CASB. 191 �longiiTg foi souie particular thing. But to snape as well as to effectuate this longing, THOUGHT must beinvoked. Thoiiglit is needed to identify the object with that which previously gave gratification ; to distinguish it from other objects: to secrete it; to carry it suecessfully away. In true kleptomania, so far from the derangement being distinctively in the feellng, such derange- ment is to be peculiarly traced to thought or intellect. It is no mark of de- rangement on entering a jewelry store to desire a brilliant that may lie on the eounter. But to thtnk either that it is right to take it, or that it can be taken without disgrace, assumes an abnormal and insane condition of intellect. �The same reasoning applies to all cases of alleged monomahia. A child sets flre to a house, (pyromania.) Here the child selects the particular house by thought; applies the match with thought; is detormined to the act by a men- tal process on whose sanity or insanity the question of responsibility depends. Orsexual propensity is yielded to without restraint, (erotomania ;) and here, also, thought, in its lowest phases of memory, distinction, and identification, is neces- sary to procure gratification, while in its higher phase of reason and sense of right it must exist in a normal state to create responsibility. The insanity, in other words, cannot be psychologically shown, unless it aflects thought. �The difHculty is that "moral insanity," in the popular acceptation of the term, includes two distinct diseases. The flrst, following the phraseology of Bain and Hamilton, as just stated, is that of enfeebled or paralyzed thought, jq)proachingdementia. Here feeling, held in but slight check by the reasoning powers, acts on the will, invol ving th ought only so far as is necessary to identify and secure the object of desire. The other case is that of delirous or deluded thought, where unreal objects are set up for feeling to desire. But in both cases the primary seat of the disease is in thought and intellect. �How unsatisfactory are the analogies which are invoked to explain this alleged separateness of the moral sense, will readily be seen. The reason, the memorj', the moral sense, it is declared, are each packed away in a series of her- metical compartments ; and, so far from their mutually commingling, one may be actually insane without the others being in any sense affected. Man is thus like an iron steara-boat, whose hull is divided into a series of water-tight chambers, so arranged that if the rivets of oue chamber loosen or its plates decay, the injury sustained is to itself alone. But it would be far more cor- rect to compare the ego to the steamer's machinery, in which the derangement of one particular part is the derangement of the whole. Taking reason in its large sense, we must all admit that reason and the moral sense are in the highest degree interdependent. Thus, if an act is repugnant to our moral sense, the closest logical process will fail to convince us of its propriety. On the other hand, even if we should concede, as we have no right to do, that there is such a thing as an innate moral sense, we must accept the alternative that a moral sense is one which may be built up by education — ^penal discipline being one of the chief instruments by which this education can be impartea.* �Delusions. The testimony of the experts, during the course of the trial, taken in connection with Judge Cox's charge, as given above, have gone a great way to finally establishing the rule that delusions toconstitute a defence �•Faits of ths abOTe argument are taken from the forthooming foartli editiou of my oook on Medi- cal Jurisprudence, now in press. ��� �
