XL.--MENTAL UNSOUNDNESS
The presumption in law is in favour of a person's sanity, even though he
may be deaf, dumb, or blind.
The terms 'insanity,' 'lunacy,' 'unsoundness of mind,' 'mental
derangement,' 'madness,' and 'mental alienation or aberration,' are
indifferently applied to those states of disordered mind in which the
person loses the power of regulating his actions and conduct according
to the ordinary rules of society. The reasoning power is lost or
perverted, and he is no longer fitted to discharge those duties which
his social position demands. In some cases of insanity, as in confirmed
idiocy, there is no evidence of the exercise of the intellectual
faculties. It is probable that no standard of sanity as fixed by nature
can be said to exist. The medical witness should decline to commit
himself to any definition of insanity. There is no practical advantage
in attempting to classify the different forms of insanity.
According to English law, madness absolves from all guilt, but in order
to excuse from punishment on this ground it must be proved that the
individual was not capable of distinguishing right from wrong in
relation to the particular act of which he is accused, and that he did
not know at the time of committing the crime that the offence was
against the laws of _God_ and _nature_.
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