The popular idea of insanity is of wild, incoherent, or crazy conduct. If maniacal, the timid or frightened young girl who would not hurt a fly, and the tottering, harmless old man if confused and partly demented, are hurried off to the asylum with the use and show of force suitable for a desperate criminal, while the victim of overwhelming delusions, because he seems clear, logical, and collected, is vigorously defended against the physician's imputation of insanity until he commits an offence against the laws, when he is fortunate if he is not treated as a criminal. It is often impossible for judges, juries, counsel, and even medical experts, to wholly divest themselves of the popular notions of insanity in cases appealing strongly to the passion or prejudice of the day. Cases involving the question of responsibility for crime are decided against science and the evidence because of certain preconceived notions upon insanity which no amount of skilled opinion can controvert. Jurors, and less often judges, make up their minds what a sane man would do under given conditions, and of what an insane man is capable, judging from the facts within their own experience; and in forming their decisions it is the act itself, and not the man, diseased or otherwise, in connection with the act, that chiefly governs them. Often they are right, not seldom wrong. Strange, apparently purposeless, illogical, inconsistent action is frequently attributed to the author of it being insane on that subject, whereas he may be {100} simply acting from strong impulse or emotion, and may be by no means insane. On the other hand, because a man knows right from wrong in the abstract, and can ordinarily behave well, the very characteristic workings of his insane mind are often seized upon as unquestionable proof of sanity, even when they admit of no other explanation to the skilled physician than that of insanity. There is no doubt of the fact that the whipping commonly used in the treatment of the insane by the monks several centuries ago put an end to much insane conduct; and in insane asylums now, in spite of the best efforts of the medical staff to the contrary, a brutal, bullying patient is sometimes struck by another patient or an attendant in return for some unusually exasperating and cruel conduct, with the result of making him behave well in the future. It is with reference to this class of cases that the crowd oftenest errs in its definition of insanity. Society claims a voice in the enforcement of the laws for its own protection, assuming to know who could control themselves from crime and who not, and naturally wishes the standard of responsibility to be kept high. Of course its sympathies and prejudices largely govern its voice in the matter.