It should perhaps be added that the more scientific writers on criminal anthropology do not regard the chief causes suggested above as rival theories, but rather as factors which may co-operate to produce criminality, the biological factor (heredity, arrest of development, infantilism, etc.) acting as predisposing cause, the sociological factor as exciting cause.—ED. Footnote 185: According to Krafft-Ebing, _Lehrbuch_ (vol. i., sec. 2, chap, iii.), Regiomontanus already maintained, in 1513, that depravity is quite independent of the accurate knowledge of good and evil; he attributed this anomaly to the influence of the planet Venus. ----- “Moral insanity is a form of mental derangement in which the intellectual faculties appear to have sustained little or no injury, while the disorder is manifested principally or alone in the state of the feelings, temper, or habit.” Such is the formula of Prichard, which has been but little modified since. Translated into the language of pure psychology, it signifies: a complete absence or perversion of the altruistic feelings, insensibility to the representation of the happiness or suffering of others, absolute egoism, with all its consequences. By a self-evident analogy, this state has been called one of moral blindness; and, like physical blindness, it has various degrees. It has also been compared to idiocy. Reduced to the vegetative and sensitive life, the idiot is, intellectually, opposed to the genius, while the moral idiot is the antithesis of the great benefactors of humanity (Schüle). We may find numerous instances of moral insanity in works on mental pathology and criminal anthropology.[186] It shows itself in two forms: (1) the passive, or apathetic—_i.e._, that of pure insensibility; if the temperament is cold and the circumstances favourable, there is no violence to be feared; (2) the active, or impulsive, where there is no check on the violence of the appetites. Taken as a whole, it consists in: complete insensibility, absence of pity, cold ferocity, absence of remorse after committing acts of violence, or even murder. On this last point statistics and figures have been given whose precision makes me somewhat suspicious;[187] for it is very difficult to penetrate so far into the consciousness of a criminal as to be duped neither by the hypocrisy which simulates remorse, nor by the boastfulness which feels but will not acknowledge it. The absence of all maternal feeling, though rare, has also been observed. ----- Footnote 186: Especially Despine, _Psychologie naturelle_ (ii. pp. 169 _et seq._), and Maudsley, _Pathology of Mind_. Footnote 187: