The pathology of the moral sense cannot detain us long, its detailed study belonging to the department of criminal anthropology. Numerous works have been published on this subject within the last half-century; there would be no advantage in presenting a bald abstract of these. Lombroso’s view of the “born criminal,” with his physiological, psychical, and social characteristics, has been violently attacked, and sustained serious damage. Several successive theories have attempted to explain the existence of this moral anomaly: atavism, according to which the born criminal is a survival, a return to primitive man, who is assumed to have been violent and unsociable; infantilism, which has recourse, not to heredity, but to arrested development, and alleges that the perversion which is permanent in the criminal is normal, but transient, in the child; the pathological view which connects the criminal type with epilepsy, considered as the prototype of violent and destructive impulses; the sociological view (the most recent), which attributes a preponderant function to social conditions, and maintains that the criminal is “a microbe inseparable from his environment.”[184] We need not enter into a detailed examination of these hypotheses, which have given rise to much passionate debate: one question alone concerns our subject, that of moral insensibility—a condition described, long before the days of criminal anthropology, under the names of _moral insanity_ (Prichard, 1835), _folie morale_, impulsive insanity, instinctive monomania, etc., and which will serve to show once more the independence and the preponderance of feeling in the moral life.[185]
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Footnote 184:
It should perhaps be added that the more scientific writers on criminal anthropology do not regard the chief causes suggested above as rival theories, but rather as factors which may co-operate to produce criminality, the biological factor (heredity, arrest of development, infantilism, etc.) acting as predisposing cause, the sociological factor as exciting cause.—ED.
Footnote 185:
According to Krafft-Ebing, _Lehrbuch_ (vol. i., sec. 2, chap, iii.), Regiomontanus already maintained, in 1513, that depravity is quite independent of the accurate knowledge of good and evil; he attributed this anomaly to the influence of the planet Venus.
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“Moral insanity is a form of mental derangement in which the intellectual faculties appear to have sustained little or no injury, while the disorder is manifested principally or alone in the state of the feelings, temper, or habit.” Such is the formula of Prichard, which has been but little modified since. Translated into the language of pure psychology, it signifies: a complete absence or perversion of the altruistic feelings, insensibility to the representation of the happiness or suffering of others, absolute egoism, with all its consequences. By a self-evident analogy, this state has been called one of moral blindness; and, like physical blindness, it has various degrees. It has also been compared to idiocy. Reduced to the vegetative and sensitive life, the idiot is, intellectually, opposed to the genius, while the moral idiot is the antithesis of the great benefactors of humanity (Schüle).
We may find numerous instances of moral insanity in works on mental pathology and criminal anthropology.[186] It shows itself in two forms: (1) the passive, or apathetic—_i.e._, that of pure insensibility; if the temperament is cold and the circumstances favourable, there is no violence to be feared; (2) the active, or impulsive, where there is no check on the violence of the appetites. Taken as a whole, it consists in: complete insensibility, absence of pity, cold ferocity, absence of remorse after committing acts of violence, or even murder. On this last point statistics and figures have been given whose precision makes me somewhat suspicious;[187] for it is very difficult to penetrate so far into the consciousness of a criminal as to be duped neither by the hypocrisy which simulates remorse, nor by the boastfulness which feels but will not acknowledge it. The absence of all maternal feeling, though rare, has also been observed.
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Footnote 186:
Especially Despine, _Psychologie naturelle_ (ii. pp. 169 _et seq._), and Maudsley, _Pathology of Mind_.
Footnote 187:
_Dictionary of Psychological Medicine_, art. “Criminal Anthropology.” Here it is stated that, at Elmira, 34 per cent. criminals on admission exhibit entire absence of moral susceptibility; while (according to Dr. Salsotto, at Turin) in 130 women guilty of murder, or complicity in murder, genuine remorse was only observed in 6.
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Moral insensibility is usually innate, and coincident with other symptoms of degeneracy. Among several children of the same family, brought up in the same surroundings, having received the same care, a single one may differ from all the rest, be amenable neither to gentleness nor to force, and manifest a precocious depravity, which will only strengthen as he grows older.
This state may be acquired and momentary, its causes being epilepsy, hysteria, apoplexy, paralytic dementia, senile decay, blows on the head, etc. Krafft-Ebing, besides an observation made by himself (_loc. cit._), quotes from Wigan the case of a young man who, in consequence of being struck on the head with a ruler, developed complete moral insensibility. When, by means of the operation of trephining, a splinter of bone pressing on the brain had been removed, he returned to his former state. We have met with other analogous cases in the course of this work.
The most difficult and fiercely debated point is whether this moral anomaly is strictly instinctive and emotional in its origin, intellectual activity being entirely unconnected with it. Most writers take the affirmative view of this question, others deny it. The different modes of mental activity are so interdependent, and their relations so close, that it is difficult to solve the question definitely. We cannot refuse to admit that the intellect sometimes suffers from a counter-shock; but observation shows that most of these persons are well acquainted with the requirements of morality, and have had the abstract ideas of good, of evil, and of duty instilled into them by education, though without the slightest influence on their conduct. They have moral _ideas_, not moral feelings—_i.e._, a disposition to feel and act. The law is to them nothing but a police regulation, which they are conscious of having broken. Their intellect, often firm and clear, is only an instrument for weaving skilful plots, or justifying themselves by subtle sophisms.
It was worth our while to recall, if only in a cursory manner, the nature of moral insensibility, in order to show the importance of the emotional element. In these cases there is a lack of completeness, and the deficit comes, not from the intellect, but from the character.
