In this chapter we have seen how this underlying anomaly served under certain stressful situations to give rise to mental disorder, and have concluded that crime and psychosis must be, in these individuals, branches of the same tree. If this is true the question arises whether the habitual criminal does not rather belong in a hospital than in a prison. It is a little premature to decide this at the present day, but it is unquestionably certain that it is the psychiatrist who will in time furnish us the most valuable data concerning the "criminal character." It is he who will eventually bring to light unshakable proof that in the habitual criminal we must see an anomalous human being, who stands in the same relation to normal man as disease does to health, and then, the problem of recidivism as well as that of the psychoses of criminals will be easier of solution. REFERENCES [1] WILMANNS: "Ueber Gefängnispsychosen." Halle a. S., 1908. [2] BONHOEFFER: "Klinische Beiträge zur Lehre von den Degenerationspsychosen." Halle a. S., 1907. [3] BIRNBAUM: "Zur Frage der psychogenen Krankheitsformen." _Zeitschr. f. d. ges. Neurolog. u. Psych._ 1910. [4] SIEFERT: "Ueber die Geistesstörungen der Strafhaft." Halle a. S., 1907. [5] STRANSKY: "Ueber die Dementia Praecox, Streifzüge durch Klinik und Psychopathologie." Wiesbaden, 1909. CHAPTER III THE FORENSIC PHASE OF LITIGIOUS PARANOIA Maudsley[1] has long ago said: "It would certainly be vastly convenient and would save a world of trouble if it were possible to draw a hard and fast line and to declare that all persons who were on one side of it must be sane and all persons who were on the other side of it must be insane. But a very little consideration will show how vain it is to attempt to make such a division. That nature makes no leaps, but passes from one complexion to its opposite by a gradation so gentle that one shades imperceptibly into another and no one can fix positively the point of transition, is a sufficiently trite observation. Nowhere is this more true than in respect of sanity and insanity; it is unavoidable, therefore, that doubts, disputes and perplexities should arise in dealing with particular cases."