Whatever share indifference to human suffering may have had in all these atrocities and all this misery, it is likely that thoughtlessness, superstition, and ignorance have had a much larger share. We have noticed that, when a certain deed gives a shock to public feelings, the circumstances in which it has been committed are easily lost sight of. Considering that the Chinese punish persons who have killed their father or mother by pure accident, it is not surprising that they punish madmen who kill a parent wilfully. Even a man like Smollett, the well-known writer, thought it would be neither absurd nor unreasonable for the legislature to divest all lunatics of the privilege of insanity in cases of enormity, and to subject them "to the common penalties of the law."[171] Moreover, as we have seen, madness is often attributed to demoniacal possession,[172] and in other cases it is regarded as a divine punishment.[173] From a pagan {275} point of view this would make the lunatic an object of pity or dread, rather than of indignation; as the Roman legislator said, the insane murderer ought not to be punished, because his insanity itself is a sufficient penalty.[174] But in Christian Europe, where up to quite recent times men were ever ready to punish God's enemies, a lunatic, who was supposed to have the devil in him, or whose affliction was regarded as the visitation of God upon heresy or sin,[175] was a hateful individual and was treated accordingly. Finally, we have to take into account that the sensibility of a lunatic was thought to be inferior to that of a sane person;[176] that the mental characteristics of insanity were little understood; and that, in consequence, many demented persons were treated as if they were sane because they were thought to be sane, and others, though recognised as lunatics, were treated as responsible because they were thought to be responsible. The history of the English law referring to insanity bears sad testimony to the ignorance of which lunatics have been victims in the hands of lawyers. [Footnote 171: Smollett, quoted by Tuke, _op. cit._ p. 96.] [Footnote 172: See also Doughty, _Arabia Deserta_, i. 258 _sq._; Westermarck, 'Nature of the Arab _[vG]inn_ illustrated by the Present Beliefs of the People of Morocco,' in _Jour. Anthr. Inst._ xxix, 254; Andree, _op. cit._ p. 2 _sq._; Tuke, _op. cit._ p. 1; Pike, _History of Crime in England_, i. 39; von Krafft-Ebing, _op. cit._ p. 5.] [Footnote 173: Plato, _Leges_, ix. 854. Esquirol, _Des maladies mentales_, i. 336.] [Footnote 174: _Digesta_, i. 18. 14; xlviii. 9. 9.] [Footnote 175: Wood-Renton, _loc. cit._ p. 339.] [Footnote 176: _Ibid._ p. 339.]