{101} In the partly irresponsible condition of mind often produced by grave hysteria, so-called nervous prostration, and the general mental and moral demoralization often seen in seduced and abandoned women, or after exhausting illness, or following apparent recovery from cerebral hemorrhages or embolism, blows upon the head, sunstroke, chronic alcoholism, syphilis, etc., there may be loss of self-control and a distinct moral perversion or decided change of character without very evident mental impairment; and the courts recognize a diminished capacity, as the result of disease, to appreciate and follow what is right and just and to avoid what is wrong or unjust, and yet not complete irresponsibility. In this connection the fact should be borne in mind that a very little mental disease can make bad people criminals, and may not take others beyond the bounds of propriety. A criminal may become insane and be still pretty much the same kind of a criminal as before. Morality, too, is relative, and many criminals, like children, know almost nothing of abstract truth, justice, or virtue, because they have never been taught them; and there are many cases where the perverse or criminal actions of people may be about equally explainable on the theory of insanity or wickedness. The criminal, a creature of his surroundings and associations, may often not be discriminated from the man with mental disease. Indeed, it is not difficult to take the philanthropic position that all criminals are insane because they are not in sympathy with the moral conceptions of their time, or, to use the fashionable expression of the day, because they are not in harmony with their environment. Such a view of crime, however, leads to only one of two conclusions—either that insanity is no sufficient defence for wilful violation of the laws, or that all criminals should be treated as persons of unsound mind.