In short, the insanity of the act
must be inferred from the morbid condition of the brain from which it
sprang, rather than from the act itself. A partially disorganized--or as
we prefer to say "denuded"--brain may be fully capable of sane thought,
except on some one topic, and able to exercise every intellectual
function except of a particular order. Or there may be mental weakness
and neurotic susceptibility in regard to a special class of impressions.
It would be difficult to name any form of act or submission which may
not be the outcome of incipient or limited disease. The practical
difficulty is to avoid, on the other hand, treating the fruits of
disease as willful offenses; while, on the other, we do not allow the
supposition or presumption of disease to be employed as an excuse for
wrongdoing. It is, of course, clear that there may be perfect method in
such madness as springs from partial or commencing brain disease; for
every element in the mental process which culminates in a mad act may be
sane except the inception of the idea in which the act took its rise.
Thus, in the case of the suspected murderer of Mr. Gold, there may have
been perfect sanity in respect to every stage of the process by which
the crime was planned and carried out, and yet insanity, the effect of
brain disease, in the idea by which the deed was suggested.
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