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Show " MURDER 'ANDkMADNESS Remarkable Statement Nat at All Justified by the Facts in rVlany cases. From a recent issue" of. a Bombay daily paper we culled the following passage : "There are many reasons against capital punishment, punish-ment, but the one that appeals to me is that no murderer mur-derer is really sane. There 'are two kinds of insanity, in-sanity, mental .and moral. . All the authorities and most of the discussions in. the law courts are directed di-rected to the former. .In. my opinion the latter is just as important. A man's morals may, through heredity and the force of circumstances, get into such a state that he is no more responsible for his actions than the lunatic who believes himself to be God's avenging angel." --'' "The one which appeals most to me is that no murderer is really sane." The Bombay Examiner (Catholic) commenting on above, says: We wonder how any thir.king man could ever pen such a statement. Had Le said that "many so-called so-called murdereds are really insane," the proposition might pass, and even meet with a certain amount of provisional agreement. But. to say straight off that "no murderer is really sane4". certainly passes our comprehension. Given that (man possesses free will at all, an act of murder is as optional to him as any other. All that is wahted is some sufficiently. I tangible motive of self -iut? rest or of hatred or re-'venge re-'venge and the -act becomes possible without the least imputation of insanity. It is only where such an action is performed without any tangible motive or in spite of the'stronge.sand clearest deterrents, that a suspicion of insamfeis aroused. To commit a murder in the public j;lef, on the spur of the moment, in the presence witnesses, and with no chance of disguise or of "escape, Avould certainly argue insanity. But to' perform the same act after af-ter long aforethought aid preparation, privately, with every effort to coni:al the body and to obliterate oblit-erate all clue to the crir.tr. -leaves all the presumption presump-tion on the side of dflib j.ate guilt and responsibil-; responsibil-; ity; 'Huot -ot-thd ctAbiL jtXmurdeV cases- in recent times seem to have been of this latter kind. According Ac-cording to the above cited writer's philosophy, each and every one of these murderers ought to have been acquitted or, rather, remanded to a lunatic asylum. asy-lum. That being the case, ought to apply to all burglars, embezzlers and perpetrators of crime generally. gen-erally. In a certain loose sense of the word, all crime is madness in the sense, namely, that it is quite unreasonable and unworthy of a sane man. But the real question is whether the given action was performed under an impulse so strong and blinding as to render the perpetrator incapable of helping himself ; or whether in spite of his vicious impulses, he still possessed sense enough to know the meaning of his action, and power enough to refrain re-frain from it. If the latter, there remains no feasibility feas-ibility in the plea of insanity, whether "mental" or "moral." In short, granting that the idea of insanity should always be before the mind of those whose duty it is to pass sentence on criminal cases, surely the sanity and responsibility of the delinquent is to be presumed, until definite proof is found to the contrary. The growing readiness to excuse all crime on the plea of insanity is calculated to issue, in the worst possible results. We all know how much the human mind is subject to the influence of "suggestion""; so that (within certain limits) a man can do what he thinks he can do, and cannot do what he thinks he cannot do. Impress mankind strongly with the notion that they are as a matter of course held responsible for their own actions and then, the actions for which they feel irresponsible irrespon-sible will be very few. On the other hand, instil into the public mind the notion that, for the most part, when a man commits a sin the reason is because be-cause he cannot help it; and the result will be to diminish the sense of responsibility and the feasibility feasi-bility of self-control over actions in general with a resulting loss to moral character, and in increase in-crease of wilful sin so far at least as it does not come under the cognizance of the police. We feel convinced, for example, that, the increasing habit if one may call it such of suicide under the slightest provocation, may be due in great part to "suggestion," and this in two ways its frequency among well-respected men depriving it of its former for-mer horror; and the verdict of "temporary insanity" insan-ity" removing the idea of its guilt. |