. A man whose passions are abnormally influenced by bodily
disease, so that he is constantly inclined to act very unreasonably, may
well be called morally insane. Such a state of insanity is not a rare
occurrence, and there is no objection to denominate it emotional,
affective, or moral insanity.

But in such a disease the will remains free; if a man does what he knows
to be wrong and criminal, he then sees reasons for not doing it; and in
this lies the root of his liberty. For seeing himself drawn in one
direction by one motive and in another by another motive, he is not
determined in his choice but by the act of his free will. A merely
organic faculty must be determined by the stronger attraction, as is the
case with brutes; but a spiritual faculty, as our will is, acts freely
in choosing between two opposing motives of action. This is the
philosophical or psychological explanation: and I am well pleased to
find that here again, as in the matter of mental insanity, the courts of
England and the leading courts of the United States follow the sound
teachings of philosophy.

The nearest advance I know of, that has been made towards the
recognition of this moral insanity as a total bar to responsibility, was
made in 1864 by the court of appeals in Kentucky, and again in 1869
under the same presiding Judge Robertson. But Chief Justice Williams
rebukes this strange ruling in most emphatic language. He says: "In all
the vague, uncertain, intangible, and undefined theories of the most
impractical metaphysician in psychology or moral insanity, no court of
last resort in England or America, so far as has been brought to our
knowledge, ever before announced such a startling, irresponsible, and
dangerous proposition of law, as that laid down in the inferior court.
For, if this be law, then no longer is there any responsibility for
homicide, unless it be perpetrated in calm, cool, considerate condition
of mind.

"What is this proposition if compressed into a single sentence? that, if
his intellect was unimpaired and he knew it was forbidden both by human
and moral laws; yet if at the _instant_ of the act his will was
subordinated by any uncontrollable passion or emotion causing him to do
the act, it was moral insanity, and they ought to find for the
plaintiff?... If so, then the more violent the passion and desperate the
deed, the more secure from punishment will be the perpetrator of
homicide or other crimes.... The doctrine o