Modern authorities agree that a man cannot have insane
delusions and not be in other respects insane, for it is
mental derangement which is the cause of the delusion.
In the first place, therefore, a fundamental conception of the
judges in answering the questions was probably fallacious, and
in the second, although the test they offered was distinctly
limited to persons "afflicted with insane delusions," it has
ever since been applied to all insane persons irrespective of
their symptoms.
Finally, whether the judges knew anything about insanity or
not, and whether in their answers they weighed their words
very carefully or not, the test as they laid it down is by no
means clear from a medical or even legal point of view.
Was the accused laboring under such a defect of reason as not
to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing, or not
to know that it was wrong? What did these judges mean by
know?
What does the reader mean by know? What does the ordinary
juryman mean by it?
We are left in doubt as to whether the word should be given,
as justice Stephens contended it should be, a very broad and
liberal interpretation such as "able to judge calmly and
reasonably of the moral or legal character of a proposed
action,"* or a limited and qualified one.
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