The origin of the insanity in many cases is clearly traceable:  sometimes to lesions; sometimes to illness; sometimes to the mode of life; perhaps more is due to heredity than to any other cause.  At any rate in theory the civilized world has long since ceased to hold the insane criminally responsible for their acts.  This applies only to the clearly insane.  The border-line is impossible to find, and many cases are so difficult to classify that there is often a doubt as to where the given patient belongs.  In times when the crowd is mad with the mob psychology of hatred, people are impatient of insanity and do not care whether the accused was sane or not at the time of the commission of the act.  Many insane are put to death or sentenced to long terms of punishments.  Jails and other penal institutions are constantly sorting their inmates and finding many who were clearly insane at the time their sentences began.

Society is beginning to find out that even where there is no marked insanity, many are so near idiocy that they cannot fairly be held responsible for their acts.  The line here is just as vague and uncertain as with the insane.  Thus far, society has not provided adequate protection for the public against this class; neither has it properly cared for these unfortunates.  It has simply excused their conduct, except in cases where some act is so shocking that it arouses special hatred, and then it freely declares that it makes no difference whether the accused is a defective or not; he is of no value to the world and should die.  Many of this class are put to death.  I am inclined to think that most of those executed are either insane or serious defectives; and those who say that such people are of no value are probably right.  It is perhaps equally true that few if any are of value, for when value is considered we are met with the question:  “Value to whom, or for what?” All you can say of any one is that he wishes to live, and has the same inherent instincts and emotions toward life as are common to all other men.

Even the legal tests as to insanity and feeble-mindedness are neither logical nor humane.  Often the definition is given by courts that if one is able to distinguish between right and wrong, he is sane within the meaning of the law.  This definition of insanity is utterly unscientific.  If the insane or the defective above an idiot is questioned specifically whether certain distinct things are right or wrong, he can generally give the conventional classification.  Often he can tell much better than the intelligent man, for he has been arbitrarily taught the things that are right and wrong and has not the originality or ability to inquire whether the classification is right or how far circumstances and conditions determine right and wrong.

Conduct is ruled by emotion, and actions depend not upon whether one has learned to classify certain conduct as right or wrong, but whether from education, life or otherwise, the thought of a certain act produces a quick and involuntary reaction against doing it.  No one believes or feels that it is always really wrong to violate some statutes, and most men indulge in many practices that are wrong and repulsive but not forbidden by the criminal code.