Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 15.djvu/425

L CHAELES MERCIEE, Criminal Responsibility. 411 earliest in the malady and are latest to be recovered," while defect of the higher forms of conduct is often accompanied by excessive activity in the lower forms of conduct. Chapters v. and vi. treat f disorders of mind. Here the most important contention is that elusion is by no means necessarily present in insanity, that it is not the only symptom which should exempt the insane from responsibility, that when it is present it is never an isolated dis- rder, but is " merely the superficial indication of a deep-seated nd widespread disorder," and that, therefore, the practice, long revalent, of exempting from responsibility for an act only when .t can be clearly shown to arise out of a delusion, was based upon a misunderstanding of the nature of insanity. It is then shown that, quite apart from delusion, crimes may be committed through disorders of the will of two main classes ; first, obsessions in which cases the patient " desires, with well-nigh irresistible urgency, to do the act, but does not desire, nay recoils with disgust or with horror from the consequences of the act ". The act is intended but is wholly without or against motives. Whether the word desire can properly be applied to the description of the state of mind of uch patients as they contemplate the act seems open to question. Can a man simultaneously desire and loathe an object ? Ought not the term desire to refer only to what the author speaks of as the consequences of the act ? Cases of the second class are those which the normal emotions and desires are exaggerated in intensity so that they escape from a self-control of merely normal strength. These are classed as cases of moral insanity. It is argued that these states also should be held to diminish in some degree the responsibility of the patient. It is, perhaps, to such cases that the author's doctrine of the retributive nature of punish- ment can be most plausibly applied. In this connexion a nice problem for the moralist and for Dr. Mercier suggests itself. Assuming that, as seems probable, the crimes for which negroes in the United States of America are commonly lynched arise from an excessive violence of the instinctive desire in the black race, should the criminal be less or more severely punished than the white man who commits a similar crime ? Chapter viii. sums up on the question of responsibility. To incur responsibility by a harmful act, the actor must will the act, intend the harm, and desire primarily his own gratification ; the act must be unprovoked, and the actor must know and appreciate the cir- cumstances in which the act is done. If we accept the author's retributive doctrine of punishment we must also accept this defini- tion of the conditions of responsibility. But the acceptance of the third provision would involve the exemption from punishment of all political crimes committed with the desire to improve the lot of a people at the risk of the actor's life or liberty. If the provision is to be interpreted, as it seems to be by the author, to mean merely that absence of motive implies insanity, it is of course perfectly sound.