Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 49.djvu/857

Rh crime; but this is usually due not so much to internal resistance (active inhibition) as would occur in normal man, as to an external and present force (passive inhibition), which hinders its execution, such as an unexpected incident which takes the place at times of this defect of inhibition, giving to the delinquent the resisting force which he lacks. And this brings us by a natural transition to insane homicide. The author arrives at the conclusion that there does not exist a special form of homicidal "monomania," but that all the forms of madness may be accompanied by homicidal excess. Hence the criterion that he has adopted in his symptomatology of homicidal mania. He differs from the classification that is purely clinical and descriptive, and frequently insufficient for the scientist as for the magistrate. His favorite genetic criterion of the initial idea and the action of homicide in the insane delinquent is very useful in achieving a good result from the important and very distinct comparisons between the delinquent and the criminal madman, and the delinquent and common or non-criminal madman. As a basis for this comparison it is necessary to distinguish the insane delinquent from the non-insane, a matter of deep importance not only for science but also for jurisprudence, because from this distinction arise the various degrees of imputability and the divers means of social defense to be adopted. It is further needful to distinguish in these madmen the insane conduct exclusively due to their intellectual degeneracy from that criminal one which is also due to the lack of the moral sense. In point of fact, in non-delinquent madmen the greater abnormities are to be found in the intellectual functions, while in the delinquent abnormities of the moral sense are most marked. Of course, this is a mere academic discussion, for a real and sharp natural distinction between the forms discussed can not exist, and the non-insane delinquent and the insane are fundamentally equal when it comes to be a question of criminal manifestations.

Let us now consider the psycho-pathological symptoms of homicide. Ferri, with his rich array of facts, of opportune elucidations and examples, undertakes this examination, dividing this last section of his book into two groups which deal with the moment of the homicidal act and the attitude of the insane murderer before, during, and after its execution and during his trial; and finally, as a last chapter, he adds the conclusions to be drawn from the antecedents of the criminals life and the recidivity of the insane homicide.

The deliberation in this unhappy person is due either to the slow invasion of the homicidal idea (homicidal obsession) or to momentary impulse. Hence two distinct generic types of psychopathological characteristics. The first type, in which the decision