Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 13.pdf/108

 A Century of English Judicature. It is a forcible presentation of the old view of mental disease as affecting legal capacity. ''We must always keep in view,'1 he says, "that which the inaccuracy of ordinary language inclines us to forget, that the mind is one and indivisible; that when

eral or partial insanity; but we may most accurately speak of the mind exerting itself in consciousness without cloud or imperfec tion but being morbid when it fancies; and so its owner may have a diseased imagina tion, or the imagination may not be diseased,

BARON ALDERSON.

we speak of its different powers or faculties, as memory, imagination, consciousness, we speak metaphorically, likening the mind to the body, as if it had members or compart ments, whereas, in all accuracy of speech, we mean to speak of the mind acting variously, that is, remembering, fancying, reflecting, the same mind in all the opera tions being the agent. We cannot, therefore, in any correctness of language speak of gen-

and yet the memory may be impaired, and its owner be said to have lost his memory. In these cases we do not mean that the mind has one faculty, as consciousness, sound, while another, as memory or imagination, is diseased; but that the mind is sound when reflecting on its own operations, and diseased when exercising the combination termed imagining or casting the retrospect called recollecting." This doctrine was overthrown