able to maintain this position. “It ought to be the law of England,” says Mr. Justice Stephen, a very great authority, “that no act is a crime if the person who does it is at the time when it is done prevented by defective mental power, or by any disease affecting his mind, from controlling his conduct, unless the absence of the power of self-control has been produced by his own default.” A reasonable doctrine to lay down, no doubt, and one which medical men generally would accept; but one asks oneself at once: How many persons guilty of serious crimes--the only class in regard to whom the question is of practical importance--are to be counted sane? The point on which we must fix our attention, however, is that it should make so much difference whether a criminal is insane or not. Our law is still in so semi-barbaric a condition that the grave interests of society and of the individual are made to hinge on a problem which must often be insoluble. Practically it cannot make the slightest difference whether the criminal is sane or insane. Sane or insane, he is still noxious to society, and society must be protected from him. Sane or insane, it is still our duty and our interest to treat him humanely, and to use all means in our power to render him capable of living a social life. Under any system, at once fairly humane and fairly rational, the question of insanity, while still of interest, can make little practical difference, either to society or to the criminal. It is unreasonable and anti-social to speak of insanity as a “defence.” It is an explanation, but, from the social point of view, it is not a defence. Suppose we accept the definition of insanity which, as we have seen, is now widely accepted by medical men and favoured by many eminent lawyers, that insanity is a loss of self-control, the giving way to an irresistible impulse. It cannot be unknown to any one that self-control may be educated, that it may be weakened or strengthened by the circumstances of life. If we define insanity as a loss of self-control and accept that as a “defence,” we are directly encouraging every form of vice and crime, because we are removing the strongest influence in the formation of self-control. When a “defence” of kleptomania was brought before an English judge in a case of theft he is said to have observed: “Yes, that is what I am sent here to cure.” We need not hesitate to accept this conception of the function of the court, provided always that the treatment is scientific, effectual, and humane.