Charles Arthur Mercier

Criminal Responsibility Charles Arthur Mercier

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1905 edition. Excerpt: ...that Robinson is in the next room; and I am wrong, for the voice I hear is Brown's. But if I look into the next room and see that it is Brown and not Robinson who is speaking, I correct the belief, and attribute the voice to Brown. If, however, in spite of this experience--of this opportunity of correcting my belief--I still maintain that the voice is Robinson's,--if, in short, my error is incorrigible when ample means of correcting it are furnished--then it ceases to be a mistake, and becomes a Delusion. So if I maintain that Brown is locked up in the cellar when he is not, the erroneous belief may be a mistake or may be a delusion. But if I go to the cellar and find it empty, and, having searched it and locked it, I still maintain that Brown is there, the belief is a delusion. Or if I believe a thing which is impossible, and needs no proof to demonstrate its falsity, such as that I have attended my own funeral, or that I can stand at Holyh'ead and shake hands with a man at Kingstown, or that my face is luminous and renders other light unnecessary, then again the belief is called a delusion. Insanity is not estimated by disorder in the process of thought. It is estimated by the corrigibility of erroneous beliefs. If these are corrigible, they are sane mistakes. If, under circumstances appropriate for their correction, they remain incorrigible, they are illusions, hallucinations, or delusions, as the case may be. This criterion of delusion has been examined at least once, with great care, in a legal judgement, and rejected. Sir J. P. Wilde, in Smith v. Tebbett, is reported to have said:--' I search the decided cases in vain for a guide. What is to be the proof of disease? What is to be the test, if there be a test, of morbid action? The existence...