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On Moral Insanity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2018

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The perusal of Dr. Savage's most interesting article in the July number of this Journal has suggested to me, as no doubt to all who read it, some important reflections. If I venture to submit my own thoughts on the subject, it is mainly in the hope that their consideration may lessen the “abstract metaphysical difficulty” (to which our President confessed in his address) “of conceiving moral as distinct from intellectual insanity.” I may say at once, that I believe the difficulty chiefly arises from our disregarding the number and complexity of the mental processes involved in even the simplest moral acts. Let it be remembered that all recent physiological psychology has gone to show how numerous, almost beyond belief, are the factors of even the most rudimentary perception. The ground, indeed, seems almost to fail from under one's feet when one realizes how such an apparently elementary act has been shown to be the sum of numerous observations and differences, of which many are, perhaps, unsuspected, and all are unknown to our direct consciousness.

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Part I.—Original Articles
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Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1882 
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