Meanwhile some important medico-legal cases had brought into prominence Dr. Maudsley’s belief that there are many forms of mental disease in which a patient ought not to be held criminally responsible for his actions, although he might be fully cognisant of their nature. This was definitely expressed as far back as 1864 in a pamphlet entitled “Insanity and Crime,” a medico-legal commentary on the case of George Victor Townley, by the editors of the _Journal of Mental Science_. It was in 1872 more fully developed by Dr. Maudsley in his “Responsibility in Mental Disease,” which has gone through numerous editions. In 1879 the “Pathology of Mind” appeared in a separate and enlarged form, and contains a systematic exposition of the subject, introduced by an account of sleep, dreaming, somnambulism, and allied states. He then proceeds to deal with the causation of insanity, both social and material, and then further expounds the symptoms of insanity, treating it as one disease with varied manifestations, and then delineating the clinical groups of mental disorders met with in practice and which the physician has to deal with. One great merit of the book is, that the clinical pictures it contains are drawn from life. An extract from chapter iv., dealing with the influence of conditions of life on the production of insanity, will show how at every step Dr. Maudsley introduces considerations bearing on morality. “The maxims of morality which were proclaimed by holy men of old as lessons of religion indispensable to the well-being and stability of families and nations, are not really wild dreams of inspired fancy, nor the empty words which preachers make them; founded on a sincere recognition of the laws of nature working in human events, they were visions of eternal truths of human evolution. Assuredly the ‘everlasting arms’ are beneath the upright man who dealeth uprightly, but they are the everlasting laws of nature which sustain him who, doing that which is lawful and right, leads a life that is in faithful harmony with the laws of nature’s progress; the destruction which falls upon him who dealeth treacherously and doeth iniquity, ‘observing not the commandments of the Lord to obey them,’ are the avenging consequences of broken natural laws. How long will it be before men perceive and acknowledge the eternity of action, good or ill, and feel the keen sense of responsibility, and the strong sentiment of duty which so awful a reflection is fitted to engender? How long before they realise vividly that under the reign of law on earth sin or error is inexorably avenged, as virtue is indicated, in its consequences, and take to heart the lesson that they are determining in their generation what shall be predetermined in the constitution of the generation after them?”