The Court of Cacus; Or, The Story of Burke and HareLeighton, Alexander
History
The Court of Cacus; Or, The Story of Burke and Hare
Leighton, Alexander
Body snatching; Burke, William, 1792-1829; Hare, William, 1792?-1870?
Yet after all this information, which was so industriously gleaned, the
psychologist was not satisfied. He wanted to vindicate human nature from
even a possible diverging incidence of a law which could account for such
crimes, by tracing them to malignity and mammon. We would fain look with
favour on such scepticism; and it is to be admitted that all who had the
curiosity to see and converse with this man discovered a want. With a low
animal brow, he justified the phrenologist by discovering no power of
ratiocination, if, indeed, what is termed reasoning was not an
impossibility to him. His mind was entirely under the government of
external objects, among which selfishness made its selection, irrespective
of the humanities, of which he had none. We might thus term him, as he has
been called, a fool or semi-idiot, only within the limits of that
responsibility which the law is bound, for the preservation of mankind, to
push far beyond the verge where nature draws her distinctions between the
morally sane and the insane. We thus get quit of the heavy imputation
which the doings of such a man cast upon our kind; and if we are met by
the reflection, that Burke had both thought and sense to an extent which
was rather a surprise to those who conversed with him with a view to
ascertain the structure of his mind, we have the advantage of the reply,
that, naturally indolent, if not soft, he allowed himself to be ruled by
another, who, with all his defects, possessed resolution and a dominating
will. The history of mankind is full of the phenomena of "imposed
will"--the source of more divergence from the normal line than we ever
dream of.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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