"What is this proposition if compressed into a single sentence? that, if his intellect was unimpaired and he knew it was forbidden both by human and moral laws; yet if at the _instant_ of the act his will was subordinated by any uncontrollable passion or emotion causing him to do the act, it was moral insanity, and they ought to find for the plaintiff?... If so, then the more violent the passion and desperate the deed, the more secure from punishment will be the perpetrator of homicide or other crimes.... The doctrine of moral insanity, ever dangerous as it is to the citizen's life, and pregnant as it is with evils to society, has but little or no application to this case. Too uncertain and intangible for the practical consideration of juries, and unsafe in the hands of even the most learned and astute jurist, it should never be resorted to for exemption from responsibility save on the most irrefragable evidence, developing unquestionable testimony of that morbid or diseased condition of the affections or passions, so as to control and overpower or subordinate the will before the act complained of" (ib., p. 172). You will notice, gentlemen, that Chief Justice Williams does not deny the existence of every kind of moral insanity. As I explained before, not the will but the passions may really be diseased or insane, and they may prompt the lunatic to commit very unreasonable and even criminal acts. When the impulse of a passion is violent, so that a man is carried along by it before he has had time to reflect on the criminal nature of his act, or at least before he could do so calmly and deliberately, the courts readily recognize such passion as a partial excuse: murder thus committed in a moment of strong provocation becomes manslaughter, not murder in the proper sense of the word. It is not justifiable; but yet it is far less criminal and less severely punished than when committed in cold blood, or, as the law terms it, with malice prepense or aforethought. This practice of our courts is right and highly reasonable, because on such occasions the will of the culprit is partly overpowered, or deprived of freedom. It is a matter of much discussion among jurists whether a passion can ever be so violent as to overpower the will _absolutely_, so as to deprive it of all freedom at the moment. If it can, then the culprit should be totally acquitted for doing what he could not help doing. In several States of the Union, such an invincible impulse has been recognized by the courts of justice, and men have been acquitted for acting on what was supposed to be an invincible impulse to commit crime; the courts considered this as an extreme form of moral insanity.