§ 133. The Nature of Intention.
Intention is the purpose or design with which an act is done. It is the foreknowledge of the act, coupled with the desire of it, such foreknowledge and desire being the cause of the act, inasmuch as they fulfil themselves through the operation of the will. An act is intentional if, and in so far as, it exists in idea before it exists in fact, the idea realising itself in the fact because of the desire by which it is accompanied.[[340]]
An act may be wholly unintentional, or wholly intentional, or intentional in part only. It is wholly unintentional if no part of it is the outcome of any conscious purpose or design, no part of it having existed in idea before it became realised in fact. I may omit to pay a debt, because I have completely forgotten that it exists; or I may, through careless handling, accidentally press the trigger of a pistol in my hand and so wound a bystander. An act is wholly intentional, on the other hand, when every part of it corresponds to the precedent idea of it, which was present in the actor’s mind, and of which it is the outcome and realisation. The issue falls completely within the boundaries of the intent. Finally an act may be in part intentional and in part unintentional. The idea and the fact, the will and the deed, the design and the issue, may be only partially coincident. If I throw stones, I may intend to break a window but not to do personal harm to any one; yet in the result I may do both of these things.
An act, and therefore a wrong, which is intended only in part, must be classed as unintended, just as a thing which is completed only in part is incomplete. If any constituent element or essential factor of the complete wrong falls outside the limits of the doer’s intent he cannot be dealt with on the footing of wilful wrongdoing. If liability in such a case exists at all, it must be either absolute or based on negligence.[[341]]
A wrong is intentional, only when the intention extends to all the elements of the wrong, and therefore to its circumstances no less than to its origin and its consequences. We cannot say, indeed, that the circumstances are intended or intentional; but the act is intentional with respect to the circumstances, inasmuch as they are included in that precedent idea which constitutes the intention of the act. So far, therefore, as the knowledge of the doer does not extend to any material circumstance, the wrong is, as to that circumstance, unintentional. To trespass on A.’s land believing it to be one’s own is not a wilful wrong. The trespasser intended, indeed, to enter upon the land, but he did not intend to enter upon land belonging to A. His act was unintentional as to the circumstance that the land belonged to A. So if a woman marries again during the lifetime of her former husband, but believing him to be dead, she does not wilfully commit the crime of bigamy, for one of the material circumstances lies outside her intention. With respect to that circumstance the will and the deed are not coincident.
Intention does not necessarily involve expectation. I may intend a result which I well know to be extremely improbable. So an act may be intentional with respect to a particular circumstance, although the chance of the existence of that circumstance is known to be exceedingly small. Intention is the foresight of a desired issue, however improbable—not the foresight of an undesired issue, however probable. If I fire a rifle in the direction of a man half a mile away, I may know perfectly well that the chance of hitting him is not one in a thousand; I may fully expect to miss him; nevertheless I intend to hit him if I desire to do so. He who steals a letter containing a cheque, intentionally steals the cheque also, if he hopes that the letter may contain one, even though he well knows that the odds against the existence of such a circumstance are very great.
Conversely, expectation does not in itself amount to intention. An operating surgeon may know very well that his patient will probably die of the operation; yet he does not intend the fatal consequence which he expects. He intends the recovery which he hopes for but does not expect.
Although nothing can be intended which is not desired, it must be carefully noticed that a thing may be desired, and therefore intended, not in itself or for its own sake, but for the sake of something else with which it is necessarily connected. If I desire and intend a certain end, I also desire and intend the means by which this end is to be obtained, even though in themselves those means may be indifferent, or even objects of aversion. If I kill a man in order to rob him, I desire and intend his death, even though I deeply regret, in his interests or in my own, the necessity of it. In the same way, the desire and intention of an end extend not merely to the means by which it is obtained, but to all necessary concomitants without which it cannot be obtained. If an anarchist, desiring to kill the emperor, throws a bomb into his carriage, knowing that if it explodes and kills him it will also kill others who are riding with him, the assassin both desires and intends to kill those others. This additional slaughter may in itself be in no way desired by him; he may be genuinely sorry for it; yet it falls within the boundaries of his desire and of his intent, since it is believed by him to be a necessary concomitant of the end which he primarily seeks. The deaths of the emperor and of the members of his suite are inseparably connected, and they constitute, therefore, a single issue which must be desired and intended as a unity or not at all. When I know or believe that A. cannot be had without B., I cannot say that I intend A. but not B. If I desire A. sufficiently to overcome my aversion to B., then I desire the total issue of which A. and B. are the two inseparable factors. With respect to all circumstances which I know or believe to exist, and with respect to all consequences which I know or believe to be inevitable, my act is intentional, however undesirable those circumstances or consequences may be in themselves. I choose them deliberately and consciously as necessary incidents of that which I desire and intend for its own sake.
Any genuine belief, however, that an event may not happen, coupled with a genuine desire that it shall not, is sufficient to prevent it from being intended. So any genuine doubt as to the existence of a circumstance, coupled with a genuine hope that it does not exist, is enough to prevent the act from being intentional as to that circumstance. The act may be grossly negligent, it may be absolutely reckless, but it is not intentional. If I fire a rifle at A., knowing that I may very probably hit B. who is standing close to him, I do not for that reason intend to hit B. I genuinely intend and desire not to hit him. An intention to hit B. would be inconsistent with my admitted intention to hit A.[[342]]