liability, frequently arise. Whether they are competent to make a contract or a will must depend upon the degree of mental ability and understanding which they possess. And the same may be said of their criminal responsibility.

For any process of reasoning, or any general observation or abstract ideas, total imbeciles are incompetent; but the affective faculties are frequently unusually active, particularly those which lead to evil habits, as thieving, incendiarism, drunkenness, homicide and assaults upon women. These defects and inclinations vary in degree in different imbeciles, some being hardly distinguishable at first sight from ordinary men of feeble endowments, while others encroach upon the line which separates them from idiocy : 6 Field's Lawyers' Briefs, § 414.

§ 18. Imbecility as an excuse in criminal cases.

In criminal cases the responsibility of imbeciles depends upon their ability to distinguish between right and wrong in connection with the act in question, or in case of homicide, upon the understanding that they were "committing

an offense against God and nature," or whether they are deprived of understanding and memory : See Criminal Law, vol. 2, Field's Lawyers' Briefs, § 271; Com. v. Rogers, 7 Met. (Mass.) 500; 41 Am. Dec. 458.

§ 19. Moral imbeciles.

In respect to moral imbeciles it has been observed that they are unable to appreciate fully the distinction between right and wrong, and according to their several opportunities and tastes they indulge in mischief as if by an instinct of their nature. To vice and crime they have an irresistible proclivity, though able to discourse on the beauties of virtue and the claims of moral obligation. When young, many of them manifest a cruel and quarrelsome disposition, which leads them to torture brutes and bully their companions. They set all law and admonition at defiance, and become a pest and a terror to the neighborhood. It is worthy of notice, because the fact throws much light on the nature of this condition, that a very large proportion of this class of persons labor under some organic defect. They are scrofulous, rick

ety or epileptic, or if not obviously suffering from these diseases themselves, they are born of parents who did. Their progenitors may have been insane, or eccentric, or highly nervous ; and this morbid peculiarity has become, unquestionably, the efficient cause of the moral defect under consideration. Thus lamentably constituted, wanting in one of the essential elements of moral responsibility, they are certainly not fit objects of punishment; for, though they may recognize the distinction between right and wrong in the abstract, yet they have been denied by nature those faculties which prompt men more happily endowed to pursue the one and avoid the other: Ray's Med. Jur. 112-130.

Such humane and philosophical views have not, however, received much favor from the courts or authors, as we have already noticed.

In his legal relations and responsibilities the total imbecile is like the idiot, unable to bind himself by contract, or make a will, and is not criminally responsible for his acts. But as there are varying degrees of imbecility, the competency and responsibility of the imbecile may become the subject of legal inquiry, and his

responsibility will depend upon his knowledge and mental ability to understand the nature of the obligation, or to comprehend the character of the civil or criminal act. In this respect the liability would be the same as in case of partial insanity and dementia, which we have noticed and shall hereafter more fully consider. The author would say that from his knowledge of certain cases of moral imbecility in youths, the asylum would perhaps generally be the appropriate place for them.

§ 20. Dementia distinguished from amentia.

Dementia is that unsoundness of mind which is characterized by mental weakness and decrepitude, and by total inability to reason correctly or incorrectly. It has been distinguished from amentia as follows: "In idiocy the deficiency is congenital, in imbecility it shows itself in early life, but in dementia it supervenes slowly or suddenly in the mind already fully developed, and in childhood, manhood or old age. It differs also from mania, for it consists in exhaustion and torpor of the faculties, not in violent and sustained excitement. In dementia we recognize an acute

ence.

or primary, and a chronic or secondary form. The first is rare, and consists in a state of melancholy or stupor; the second is very common, and characterized by incoherence, differing from the incoherence of mania by the absence of excitement. Some demented persons, however, are liable to maniacal paroxysms, and maniacs to remissions of comparatively tranquil incoherThere is a senile dementia, and a form of dementia associated with general paralysis. Dementia also has its degrees and stages of forgetfulness, irrationality, incomprehension, and inappetency. A patient suffering from dementia, as he passes from bad to worse, first exhibits want of memory, then loss of reasoning power, then inability to comprehend, and lastly, an abolition of the common instincts and of volition:" Guy & F. on For. Med. (5th ed.) 194; 6 Field's L. B., § 417.

In the progress of this mental disorder, the mind usually dwells only on the past, and the thoughts succeed one another without any obvious bond of association. Delusions, if they exist, are only transitory, and leave no permanent impression; and for everything recent the mind