3. But there are many cases where the intellectual powers seem to have suffered a perversion, so that the person becomes incapable of forming correct inferences and deductions from those facts which he may correctly observe or recollect, and thus his judgments be no safe guide for his conduct. But this form of insanity is of much less frequent occurrence than the next. And it was formerly supposed, and is now to some extent, even among the reasonably well informed, that the proper definition of insanity consisted in this, that the person had false perceptions, but reasoned correctly from his false assumptions. But this is true only in the more common forms of the disease.

person should believe something to exist which does not exist, and that he should act upon this belief." Dr. Ray, Med. Jur. of Insanity, § 128, ed. 1860, says: i Madness is not indicated so much by any particular extravagance of thought or feeling, as by a well marked change of character, or departure from the ordinary habits of thinking, feeling, and acting, without any adequate external cause." And after stating very forcibly that it is impossible to erect any sure and unerring standard of sanity, by which one suspected of mental unsoundness is to be measured and his condition thus determined, he says: "In a word he is to be compared with himself, not with others." And Dr. Gooch, in the London Quarterly Review, No. 42, 355, says: "It is the prolonged departure, without an adequate external cause, from the state of feeling and modes of thinking, usual to the individual when in health, that is the true feature of disorder in mind." And again the same writer says: "It is therefore not the abstract act or feeling which constitutes a symptom; it is the departure from the natural, and healthy character, temper, and habits that gives it this meaning, and in judging of one's sanity it is consequently as essential to know what his habitual manifestations were, as what his present symptoms are." It often occurs that the testimony discloses some cause, either physical or moral, affecting either his prospects in life, or his physical system, and which experience has taught us to expect might have more or less tendency to derange and disorder the mind, and which is contemporaneous with the marked change in temper, disposition, and character, which it is also proved has come upon the testator before the time of executing his will. This would tend very decidedly to confirm the apprehension of the existence of insanity. And if the change shown to have occurred could be shown to have had any connection with those who were his natural heirs, or with the persons to whom he had bequeathed his estate, it would raise a very natural apprehension of mental unsoundness.

4. Moral insanity, where the passions and emotions, and the entire moral composition is so far perverted, and inverted, so to speak, as to have no natural, or normal affections, is common, and in a degree almost universal, in cases of insanity. Says an .able writer, "Extreme irritability, proneness to anger, suspicion, concealment, obstinacy and perverseness, are common. In regard to the affections, various abnormal impulses and inclinations are observed. Fondness or aversion to particular persons, without any special reason; disposition to exercise cruelty, murderous desires, a wish to commit arson, or to steal. Memory is generally good in reference to things occurring during the disease, or to persons with whom the patient was then connected, but defective or mistaken as to things which occurred previously. Of the intellectual faculties not all are uniformly in an abnormal state; on the contrary, some functions occasionally improve, thus producing a complex state of madness, on the one hand, and of wit, reflection, and shrewdness, on the other. Monomania is also included under this head. There is often a disposition to soliloquize aloud; and to laugh, without a visible

reason."

5. And there are many cases where all these defects and irregularities of the mind and the affections concur in the same person. And either the one or the other will be developed just according to the exciting cause which is presented. But it is not by any means an uncommon occurrence, that paroxysms of one character or another will occur without the suspicion of the existence of any exciting cause, and often where, to all human appearance, it would seem none could have existed.

* Wharton & Stillé, § 106. We do not, by adverting here to this form of insanity, intend to recognize that absurd development of moral obliquity, which allows the possessor to commit crime without compunction, as insanity. If that were to be allowed, there would always exist a ready excuse for crime. The act itself would always afford satisfactory evidence of the existence of the malady.

1. The characteristic of monomania is, that it exhibits itself only to a very limited

extent.

2. It differs from eccentricity, chiefly, in the unconsciousness of any peculiarity. n. 1. Insane delusion is the belief of facts which no sane person could believe.

3. The test of insanity often exists in the surrender of the will to imaginary direction.

4. Moral insanity is not commonly called into exercise in the testamentary act.

5. Partial insanity, or monomania, is the most difficult form in that respect.

6. The case of Greenwood presents a remarkable delusion. It existed only in re

gard to his next of kin.

7. The case of Dew v. Clark is a leading one upon this question.

n. 6. Lord Lyndhurst's commentary upon partial insanity.

8. The opinion of Sir John Nicholl contains an instructive commentary.

a. Violence, cruelty, or antipathy, is not insanity. There must be mental perversion on the subject of the will.

b. Where the will is the direct offspring of morbid delusion it cannot be upheld.

c. Lord Hale's definition of partial insanity. It is exceedingly difficult of clear definition.

d. The forms and developments of madness almost infinite. Illustrations.

e. The term madness very loosely applied in popular use; most persons have

seen cases.

f. The difference between insane, and other delusion, is that argument and reason avails nothing in the former, and will commonly remove the latter.

g. Dr. Battie defines it as "deluded imagination."

h. Mr. Locke seems to suppose it consists in reasoning correctly from false
premises!

i. But he includes false fancies, and partial derangement in his definition.
k. Dr. Francis Willis, a great authority, and one of large experience.

1. He says an unsound mind is marked by delusion, insensibility, or perversion of feeling; and sundry other characteristics.

9. The general result of all the cases is, that a will produced or colored by insane deInsion cannot be upheld.

10. Lord Brougham's opinion that partial insanity produces testamentary incapacity. 11. This does not appear to have been followed by the courts, or by writers upon the

subject.

12. Dr. Taylor's analysis of the cases.

13. Moral insanity may invalidate a will, where it has an agency in producing it.

14. Marked case of eccentricity, but held not to amount to insanity.

n. 13. Comments upon the propriety of the decision.

15. Sir H. J. Fust's distinction between insanity and eccentricity.

16. Unnatural fondness for brute animals no certain indication of insanity.

17. The marked distinction between eccentricity and insanity is, that the conduct of

the former is characteristic of the person, but that of the latter is not.

18. Delusion in the deed to avoid the instrument must appear to have formed the

groundwork of the act.

19. A case in Georgia very closely resembling Greenwood's case.

20. An insane delusion in regard to relationship of a legatee, avoids the will.

21. Careful definition of insane delusion.

n. 20. The opinion of Turley, J., in regard to peculiarity of religious belief.

22. The opinion of Shaw, Ch. J., as to unsoundness of mind.

23. Belief in many absurd notions will not defeat testamentary capacity.

§ 11. 1. MONOMANIA, as we have said, consists in a mental or moral perversion, or both, in regard to some particular subject, or class of subjects; while in regard to others, the person seems to have no such morbid affection. It is not supposed the mind. is altogether quiet, and sound, at such times, upon any subject; but apparently so upon some subjects, and not upon others. The development of its infirmity is exhibited, exclusively, upon particular subjects. The degrees of monomania are very various. In many cases the person is entirely capable of transacting any matters of business out of the range of his peculiar infirmity; and he often manifests considerable sagacity, and forecast, in keeping the particular subject of his delusions from the knowledge of others. But more commonly, he is not conscious of entertaining opinions different from the mass of men, even upon the particular subjects of his delusion; and refuses to be convinced of laboring, in any degree, under mental unsoundness.

2. It is this chiefly, which distinguishes monomania from mere eccentricity. The eccentric man is aware of his peculiar

1 Taylor, Med. Jur. 626, 6th ed. "It is only the belief of facts, which no sane person would believe, which is insane delusion." "That a person should believe something to exist which does not exist, and that he should act upon this

ity, and persists in his course from choice, and in defiance of the popular sentiment, while the monomaniac verily believes he is acting in conformity to the most wise and judicious counsels, and often seems to have lost all control over his voluntary powers, and to be the dupe and victim of some demon, like that of Socrates.

3. One of the most unequivocal evidences of insanity, in many persons, is entire surrender of their wills, and the apparent submission to chance direction, or the caprices of others, or often to imaginary whisperings, which they seem to regard as the voice of supernatural wisdom and power. And this passiveness of the will often occurs in persons of the strongest understandings, and the most self-reliant. Some of the subjects connected with monomania are alluded to in the last section.2

4. We have no occasion to go much into detail upon that species of monomania, which, by some writers, is denominated instinctive mania, and by others, moral monomania, as it chiefly affects the moral sense. The consideration of this form of insanity is important, chiefly, in the administration of criminal jurisprudence. It is not often that it can be called into action in the testamentary act.

5. But in regard to partial insanity, or what is properly de

belief." Id. ed. 1861, 629; Dew v. Clark, 1 Add. 279; s. c. 3 Add. 79. Opinion of Sir John Nicholl.

Ante § 10. Dr. Taylor says: "The power which is most manifestly deficient in the insane is generally the controlling power of the will.” Med. Jur. 629. But we have known some marked cases of confirmed insanity, where the patient held such control of voluntary action, both of mind and body, as not to disclose any symptom of derangement to strangers.

3 Ray, Med. Jur. of Insanity; § 163 et seq., p. 177 et seq., ed. 1860.

* Wharton & Stillé, § 185 et seq. This writer enumerates no less than nine distinct forms of this species of insanity, where the perceptive and reflective faculties seem entirely normal, and the moral sense, upon some particular subject, not only lost, but instead of it, an almost irresistible impulse to crime, as in homicidal insanity, or that which prompts to theft, arson, lying, suicide, fanaticism, or politics.