From the observations which have been detailed concerning unsoundness of mind there is, according to legal construction, an evident connection between unsoundness and imbecility. My object, however, is not the interpretation of law, but the exposition of nature and fact. It alone interests me to describe the phœnomena of mind—to compare the performance of its offices in a sound and morbid state—and to measure by the accredited standard of common sense and intelligible reasoning, the degree of imbecility, inability, or incapacity, which disqualifies an individual to conduct himself and manage his affairs.
The necessity of legal interference and protection in cases of insanity, having been
sufficiently adverted to; it now remains to shew that a person from imbecility of mind may be equally incompetent to the management of himself and affairs. The mind may be weak from birth, or it may at any period of life become enfeebled by disease. Like the body it has its regular periods of growth and development, of maturity and declension: but they are not periodically connected. An unusual precocity of mental vigour has been occasionally remarked; and in advanced age the wisdom of the man frequently survives the infirmities of the body. Men are relatively competent, wise or foolish, learned or ignorant, compared with others. On the scale of intellectual being, we may place the philosopher at the summit, at the bottom the degraded ideot: and in the population of this world the intermediate range is adequately filled up. There are many considerations which demand attention on this important
subject. To state that certain acquirements were to be attained as the proof of competency, would be an imperfect criterion. Much might be acquired memoriter, which the learner would not understand: a very feeble intellect, insufficient for the purposes of human affairs, might be trained to answer correctly a string of known questions, without being able to comprehend or adapt them to any useful purposes. It should likewise be considered that the different departments of employment require very different degrees of mental capacity. A person might be able to manage duly a small income, who would be inadequate to the distribution of a large revenue: a man might be competent to keep a shop, who would become overwhelmed and distracted in the learned professions: a country squire might gallop hospitably through life, without being able to discharge his duty as a magistrate. It is not the want of
acquirement that should disqualify an individual; many persons from distaste, indolence, from neglect of parents and guardians, remain lamentably ignorant in the current acceptation of the words—they are unable to write or read, they are unacquainted with the symbols which represent numbers: yet with these deficiencies they are enabled to conduct themselves in the world. Speech itself is not absolutely necessary; because a person born deaf, and consequently dumb, if he understood the signification of characters, called letters, and their composition, termed words: if he comprehended that such words were significant of such things, so that when the object was presented he could select the appropriate word, and alternately when he saw the word could point to the thing:—moreover, if he had learned to form these characters, he would possess a sufficient substitute for speech, and become capable of intelligible
communication—as a correspondent he would be on a level with him who enjoyed the utmost fluency of speech. So bountiful has the author of nature been in the construction of the human frame, that when one avenue to knowledge has been impervious, it has been transmitted through the medium of another; sufficiently to constitute the person an intelligent being and a moral agent. It is the capacity of acquirement to which we are to direct our investigations. If a scale were constructed, and a certain degree fixed as the point of competency, the circumstance of his not having arrived at such point, ought not to disqualify the person. It ought to be determined that he is unable to acquire so much. It is true a man may be ignorant as far as certain acquirements, which we term learning, are concerned, and which form the basis of ordinary education; he may know nothing of what has passed in the world, which we
denominate the history of our species; but he may be an attentive observer of the objects in nature, and know fully the purposes to which they are applied. Such a man, although ignorant, does not want the capacity to acquire, and therefore ought not to be disqualified. It has occurred to me in many instances, to be consulted concerning persons whose minds have been naturally weak, or enfeebled by disease; and it always appeared that by patient enquiry, a satisfactory estimate of their capacity might be instituted. It would extend far beyond the limits of the present work to detail the whole of the circumstances connected with this subject; but it may be briefly stated that the person exercising his judgment ought particularly to ascertain the power of his attention; as his knowledge of objects, and his memory of them, will depend on the duration of his attention; and it will be indispensably necessary to
investigate his comprehension of numbers, without which the nature of property cannot be understood. If a person were capable of enumerating progressively to the number ten, and knew the force and value of the separate units, he would be fully competent to the management of property. If he could comprehend that twice two composed four, he could find no difficulty in understanding that twice, or twain ten, constituted twenty. This numeration also presumes he comprehended that so many taken from ten, or substracted which is the converse, would leave so many as the remainder—without such capacity, no man, in my own opinion, could understand the nature of property, which is represented by numbers of pounds, shillings, and pence. Indeed the capacity to acquire this knowledge seems to constitute the preeminence of man in the creation, as an intellectual being. The same imbecility of
mind is often produced in adults, and in those of advanced age, by paralytic or epileptic attacks, and from various affections of the brain, and requires the same accurate investigation, to determine on the competency of such persons, to be entrusted with the management of themselves and affairs.
From the foregoing remarks, it appears indispensably necessary that some criterion should be fixed as the test of sufficient capacity. In the case even of an ideot ex nativitate, it must be ascertained that he is really an ideot; and the same process of investigation, which enables us to determine this fact, will apply to the intermediate gradations of human capacity. All ideots are not of the same degree of intellectual depravity; some possess more memory than others, and display a talent for imitation;—they will whistle tunes correctly, and repeat passages from books,