“Out of the Christian society,” continued Mr. Merton, “where there are wanting the means which Christians have to defend themselves against his approaches, and to drive him away, his power is, no doubt, far greater. Among Mahometans, and among the pagan tribes of Asia, Africa, and America, inhabiting a land which has, so to speak, never been baptized, or sprinkled with holy water, his power is still very great; and, if we may credit the well-attested reports of our missionaries, almost as great as ever. He recovers his power, too, in Christian nations in proportion as they recede from the faith and piety of the Gospel, and fall anew into heathenism.” “But there are some difficulties, under the point of view of jurisprudence, in the way of your doctrine of Satanic invasion,” interposed Jack. “Suppose a man possessed by a devil kills another, or commits some act which the law regards as a crime, is the man guilty, and to be punished?” “You are a lawyer,” replied Mr. Merton, “and nothing is more natural than that you should ask that question. The difficulties you suggest, however, are no greater on the supposition of Satanic invasion than on any other theory. They are the same, whether we contend that the person is subjected by Satan or by mesmerism, by a primitive or elemental force of nature, or by what some manigraphs call madness without delirium, or instinctive insanity. The question turns on the fact whether the man is involuntarily and completely subjugated, or whether he retains the exercise of his free will; or, in other words, whether the actions are really his, or those of the power that oppresses or subjugates him. For myself, I think our courts are beginning to adopt a very dangerous doctrine with regard to insanity, and are admitting the plea of insanity where it ought not to be entertained. In an Eastern city, not long since, it was gravely contended by counsel, that a man must be held to be insane and irresponsible, because his crimes were so aggravated. Under this lies a dangerous principle, which, in its development, will lead to the conclusion that all great criminals are insane and irresponsible. But in regard to another class of cases, cases in which there obviously is no inebriety, ill health, or delirium, and yet in which the person seems to himself to be irresistibly urged by a foreign power, against his will, to the commission of horrible acts, I think the law, or the practice of the courts, is quite too severe. I take a case cited to my hand by a respectable French writer, that of a father who killed his young son. The father was an honest, temperate, and industrious man, of a mild and affectionate disposition, and it is clear that he loved his son with great tenderness.