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50 X. AMERICAN STATE TRIALS.

this aspect of it necessarily creates the difficulty of the inves-
tigation. How shall we distinguish between crime and insane
impulse? May we not mistake one for the other? Is there
not danger that a mistake may be of grave consequence, on
the one hand to give impunity to guilt, on the other to put to
death the innocentt Yes! there is difficulty, there is danger,
a mistake is easy, we may confound two things as opposite as
heaven and hell; and acting upon the error you may bring a
result which shall give color to Voltaire’s exclamation: ‘‘The
world is the theater of only mournful tragedies.’ Certainly,
there is difficulty and danger, but how shall this knowledge
move ust Shall we, therefore, not investigate? Shall we con-
demn without inquiry, lest upon inquiry we might make a
mistaket That is sorry logic, At only for the callous and the
eruel. If we may err upon inquiry, we must err without it.
But, after all, what is the nature of the difficulty supposed
peculiarly to attend the investigation of this type of insan-
ity? You are to determine whether there was the power of
self-control in the given case. The same question comes up
in every ease of manslaughter. In all casea in which you
have to distinguish between murder and manslaughter, the
turning point of the inquiry is the question of self-control,
the dominion and sway of impulse, over the ealmer reason,
As to the disease of epilepsy, its connection with insanity
is conceded by all authors. No man would hold the epileptic
responsible for any act committed in a paroxysm of the dis-
ease, and all agree that the tendency of the disease is to per-
Manent insanity. Repeated epileptic strokes batter out the
tind altogether as in imbecility, or they leave a state of men-
tal irritability and nervous disorder, strikingly analogous to
the phenomena of ‘‘moral insanity,”’ or mania, most appar-
ent in the affective faculties. I say most apparent, because
I am satisfied that in all cases of insanity the whole nature
of man is hurt. Any long-continued disease of the intellee-
tual faculties must involve to some extent the moral facul-
ties, and vice versa, the intellect cannot long escape the in-
fluence of a perverted moral nature. The combination of
homicidal impulse and epileptic disorder is frequent. I shall

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