f moral insanity, ever
dangerous as it is to the citizen's life, and pregnant as it is with
evils to society, has but little or no application to this case. Too
uncertain and intangible for the practical consideration of juries, and
unsafe in the hands of even the most learned and astute jurist, it
should never be resorted to for exemption from responsibility save on
the most irrefragable evidence, developing unquestionable testimony of
that morbid or diseased condition of the affections or passions, so as
to control and overpower or subordinate the will before the act
complained of" (ib., p. 172).

You will notice, gentlemen, that Chief Justice Williams does not deny
the existence of every kind of moral insanity. As I explained before,
not the will but the passions may really be diseased or insane, and they
may prompt the lunatic to commit very unreasonable and even criminal
acts. When the impulse of a passion is violent, so that a man is carried
along by it before he has had time to reflect on the criminal nature of
his act, or at least before he could do so calmly and deliberately, the
courts readily recognize such passion as a partial excuse: murder thus
committed in a moment of strong provocation becomes manslaughter, not
murder in the proper sense of the word. It is not justifiable; but yet
it is far less criminal and less severely punished than when committed
in cold blood, or, as the law terms it, with malice prepense or
aforethought. This practice of our courts is right and highly
reasonable, because on such occasions the will of the culprit is partly
overpowered, or deprived of freedom.

It is a matter of much discussion among jurists whether a passion can
ever be so violent as to overpower the will _absolutely_, so as to
deprive it of all freedom at the moment. If it can, then the culprit
should be totally acquitted for doing what he could not help doing. In
several States of the Union, such an invincible impulse has been
recognized by the courts of justice, and men have been acquitted for
acting on what was supposed to be an invincible impulse to commit crime;
the courts considered this as an extreme form of moral insanity.

I have shown above that on sound principles of philosophy the will can
never be compelled to do wrong; at most it could be said that, in the
cases just referred to, the will was not in the act. Now this, I
suppose, is the case in hydrophobia or _rabies_, in which terrible
disease the