will, his will is entitled to be regarded as a valid testamentary act, and should be upheld. The principle established by that case is expressed in the following sentence of Chief Justice Cockburn's opinion: "If it be conceded, as we think it must be, that the only legitimate or rational ground for denying testamentary capacity to persons of unsound mind is the inability to take into account and give due effect to the considerations which ought to be present to the mind of a testator in making his will, and to influence his decision as to the disposal of his property, it follows that a degree or form of unsoundness which neither disturbs the exercise of the faculties necessary for such an act, nor is capable of influencing the result, ought not to take away the power of making a will, or place a person so circumstanced in a less advantageous position than others with regard to this right." All subsequent cases arising in England have been decided according to this principle, and it is now the established law of that country. Boughton v. Knight, L. R. 3 Prob. & Div. 64; Jenkins v. Morris, 14 Ch. Div. 674; Smee v. Smee, 5 Prob. Div. 84. The same principle has, in its substance, been recognized by the court of errors and appeals of this state. Chief Justice Beasley, in pronouncing the judgment of that court in Lozear v. Shields, 23 N. J. Eq. 509, declared that partial insanity was insufficient of itself to justify a decree setting aside a sale of real property or any other act. He said: "Mania does not, per se, vitiate any transaction; for the question is whether such transaction has been affected by it. Where a pure defense of mental incapacity is interposed, I think the true test in this class of cases is whether the party had the ability to comprehend, in a reasonable manner, the nature of the affair in which he participated. This is the rule, in the absence of fraud; for fraud, when present, introduces other principles of decision.' My own view as to the true rule on this subject may be stated as follows: Even if it appears that a testator was subject to an insane delusion when he made his will, but it is also made to appear that his delusion was not of a character likely to influence him, and did not influence him in the disposition which he made of his property, his will should be declared valid.

But this is somewhat aside from the question mainly in con

test on this branch of the case, namely, is a belief in spiritualism an insane delusion? Sir John Nicholl, in the celebrated case of Dew v. Clark, 3 Addams, Ecc. 79, (2 Eng. Ecc. R. 441,) defined "insane delusion" as follows: "Wherever the patient once conceives something extravagant to exist, which has still no existence whatever but in his own heated imagination, and wherever, at the same time, having once so conceived, he is incapable of being, or at least of being permanently, reasoned out of that conception, such a patient is said to be under a delusion in a peculiar, half-technical sense of the term, and the absence or presence of delusion, so understood, forms, in my judgment, the true and only test or criterion of present or absent insanity." Dr. Haggard's report of the opinion pronounced in Dew v. Clark attributes somewhat different language to Sir John Nicholl. The following is the definition, as he reports it: "When persons believe things to exist which exist only, or at least in that degree exist only, in their own imagination, and of the non-existence of which neither argument nor proof can convince them, they are of unsound mind: or, as one of the counsel accurately expressed it, 'it is only the belief of facts which no rational person would have believed, that is insane delusion.'"' 1 Williams, Ex'rs, 35; 1 Redf. Wills, 71. Sir James Hannen in Boughton v. Knight, L. R. 3 Prob. & Div. 64-68, adopted the definition as reported in 3 Addams as the true one. He said he believed it would solve most, if not all, the difficulties which could arise in investigations of the kind now under consideration. Chief Judge Denio, in Society v. Hopper, 33 N. Y. 619-624, said: "If a person persistently believes supposed facts, which have no real existence except in his perverted imagination, and against all evidence and probability, and conducts himself, however logically, upon the assumption of their existence, he is, so far as they are concerned, under a morbid delusion; and delusion, in that sense, is insanity." And Cockburn, C. J., in Banks v. Goodfellow, (page 560,) says: "When delusions exist which have no foundation in reality, and spring only from a diseased and morbid condition of the mind, to that extent the mind must necessarily be taken to be unsound."

According to these definitions, it is only a delusion or con

ception which springs up spontaneously in the mind of a testator, and is not the result of extrinsic evidence of any kind that can be regarded as furnishing evidence that his mind is diseased or unsound; in other words, that he is subject to an insane delusion. If, without evidence of any kind, he imagines or conceives something to exist which does not in fact exist, and which no rational person would, in the absence of evidence, believe to exist, then it is manifest that the only way in which his irrational belief can be accounted for is that it is the product of mental disorder. Delusions of this kind can be accounted for upon no reasonable theory except that they are the creations of some derangement of the mind in which they originate. To illustrate: In Smee v. Smee, 5 Prob. Div. 84, the testator imagined himself to be the son of George IV., and that when he was born a large sum of money had been put in his father's hands for him, but which his father, in fraud of his rights, had distributed to his brothers; and in Smith v. Tebbitt, L. R. 1 Prob. & Div. 398, the testatrix imagined herself to be one of the persons of the Trinity, and her chief legatee to be another. The delusion, in both instances, as will be noticed, was indisputably a wild and baseless fancy, not the product of evidence of any kind, but obviously the offspring of a disordered condition of mind. But where a testator is induced, by false evidence or false statements, to believe a fact to exist which does not exist, or where, in consequence of his faith in evidence which is true, but which is wholly insufficient to prove the truth of what he believes, he believes a fact to exist which in reality has no existence, his belief may show want of discernment, that he is overcredulous and easily duped, or that he lacks power to analyze and weigh evidence, or to discriminate between what is true and what is false, but it furnishes no evidenee whatever that his mind is diseased. His belief may show lack of judgment or want of reasoning power, but not that his mind is unsound.

The testator's belief in spiritualism was not a morbid fancy, rising spontaneously in his mind, but a conviction produced by evidence. The proofs show that when he first commenced attending what are called "seances" he was inclined to be skeptical. Afterwards his mind seemed to be in an unstable condi

tion, he sometimes believed and at others doubted; and that it was not until the spirits gave an extraordinary exhibition of their power, by printing or painting on a pin, worn by his mother-in-law on her neck, in brilliant letters, which sparkled like diamonds, the word "Dickie," a pet name of his dead wife, that his last doubts as to the reality of the manifestations were removed. Believing, as I do, that these manifestations were correctly described by Vice-Chancellor Giffard, in Lyon v. Home, L. R. 6 Eq. 655-681, when he called them "mischievous nonsense, well calculated, on the one hand, to delude the vain, the weak, the foolish, and the superstitious, and, on the other, to assist the projects of the needy and of the adventurer" still it seems to me to be entirely clear that it cannot be said that a person who does believe in their reality is, because of such belief, of unsound mind, or subject to an insane delusion. No court has as yet so held. No cases on this subject were cited on the argument. Those which I have examined uniformly hold that a belief in spiritualism is not insanity. The court in Robinson v. Adams, 62 Me. 369, said: "Belief in spiritualism is not insanity, nor an insane delusion. The term 'delusion,'

as applied to insanity, is not a mere mistake of fact, or the being misled by false testimony or statements to believe that a fact exists which does not exist." And in Brown v. Ward, 53 Md. 376, it was said: "The court cannot say, as matter of law, that a person is insane because he holds the belief that he can communicate with spirits (of the dead), and can be and is advised and directed by them in his business transactions and in the disposal of his property." Substantially the same view was expressed in Otto v. Doty, 61 Iowa, 23, 15 N. W. Rep. 578, and also in the matter of Smith's Will, 52 Wis. 543, 8 N. W. Rep. 616 and 9 N. W. Rep. 665. The utmost length to which any court has as yet gone on this subject is to declare that a belief in spiritualism may justify the justify the setting aside of a will when it is shown that the testator, through fear, dread, or reference to the spirit with which he believed himself to be in communication, allowed his will and judgment to be overpowered, and in disposing of his property followed implicitly the directions which he believed the spirit gave him; but

in such case the will is set aside, not on the ground of insanity, but of undue influence. Thompson v. Hawks, 14 Fed. Rep. 902.

There is no evidence in this case which will support a conclusion that the testator at the time he executed his will, was subject to an insane delusion. Nor do I think there is any evidence in the case which will support a judgment declaring that the will in question is the result of undue influence. There is no proof tending to show what influence the spirits or the medium exercised over the testator in making his will, except that which proceeded from the testator's own mouth. His declarations are competent to show the condition of his mind, but not to prove undue influence against either persons or spirits. Rusling v. Rusling, 36 N. J. Eq. 603-607. For the purpose of proving undue influence, they are without the least force. Neither the medium, nor Mrs. Williams, (the mother-in-law,) nor any other person who was present at any of the seances, has been examined as a witness. No legal evidence of what occurred at any of them is before the court. The charge of undue influence is mainly directed against Mrs. Williams. She is said to be a believer in spiritualism, and the proofs show that she went with the testator frequently when he went to the medium to consult the spirit of his dead wife.

There are

some things in her conduct which are calculated to create strong suspicion. Without apparent cause she seems to have entertained feelings of strong dislike towards all the testator's relatives. On the day of his wife's funeral she ordered his sister out of the house, without cause or right, and in utter defiance of the proprieties of the occasion, and after his sister refused to go she put herself so near to the testator and his sister as to be able to overhear everything they said. From that time forward, up to the time of testator's death, Mrs. Williams continued to reside with him, and his sister never, after the funeral, went to his house, nor, so far as appears, did any of his other relatives. When the testator died Mrs. Williams not only neglected to send notice of his death to any of his relatives, but did what she could to conceal his death from them. After the testator's death she admitted that she had persuaded or gotten him to insert the clause in his will which defers the turning over of his property to his daughter until she is 25, stating that the rea