Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 10.djvu/201

 GUITEAU'S CASE. 189 �The Prisoner. (Excitedly.) God will avenge this outrage. �The Court. Gentlemen of the jury, I cannot express too mnch thanks to you, both in my own came and in the name of the public, for the diligence and fidelity with which you have discharged your duties ; for the patience with which you have listened to this long mass of testimony, and the lengthy discussion by counsel; and for the patience with which you have borne with the privations and incon- veniences incident to this trial. I am sure that you will take home with you the approval of your own consciences as you will have that of your fellow-citizens. With thanks and good wishes, I discharge you from any further service at this term of the court. �Thereupon (at 5 o'clock and 55 minutes p. m.) the court adjourned. �NOTE. �Moral Insanitt. One of the incidental beneflts arlslng from the Uulteau trial has beea the development of the fact that the theory of moral insanity has no longer any professional medical opinion in its favor. In the London Lancet of December 12, 1881, we flnd the following: �"We fancied the 'plea of insanity' had been reduced to absiirdity in the ridiculous attempt made to show that Lefroy was insane; but it seems that the apotheosis of stupidity is to take place in America. It is high time the nonsenserecently talked and written about ' irresponsibility ' should be exposed and ended. If the supreme triumph of medical psychology is to be sought in the attempt to prove that men are mere machines, and that the wrong they do is not their doing, but the outcome of disease, the sooner this branch of science is discountenanced by the common sense of the profession the better will it be for the credit and influence of our cloth. If a man is not acting under a recognizable and formulated delirium when he commits a crime, he is clearly responsible, and ought to beso held unless he is unquestionably, and on grounds other than those arising out of or associated with his crime, shown to be insane. The mistake into which 'experts' and those who follow their lead comuionly fall is to confound the evidences of a neurotic constitution with the symptoms of mental disease. The inheritor of au organism which predisposes to insanity is not necessarily insane. Lefroy was not insane, and Guiteau is not insane. The only insanity accruing to the latter case is that which those who support the plea may thetnselves import into it. The posi- tion of uiatters in regard to this question is becoming one of exceeding gravity, and it will soon need to be very seriously discussed." �In the North American Review for January, 1882, we have opinions from eminent alienists, — Dr.El well, Dr. Beard, Dr. Seguin, Dr. Jewell, and Dr.FoIsom, — by all of whom the theory of moral insanity, as such, is repudiated. The high- est psychological authority is to the sarae efiect. Sir William Hamilton, in defin- ing the mind, says: "If we take the mental to the exclusion of material phe- nomena, — that is.the phenomena manifested through the medium of self-con- sciousness or reflection, — they naturally divide themselves into three categories or primary genera: the phenomena of knowledge or cognition, the phenomena ��� �