PASSING NOTES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26958, 18 December 1948, Page 2

PASSING NOTES

Comprendre c’est pardonner. (To understand is to forgive.)—Madame de Stael. A correspondent sends two legal extracts and asks for an opinion. The first one is from Halsbury, Laws of England, which says that a person labouring under a defect of reason and not knowing that what he was doing was wrong is not in law responsible for his act; but it is no defence that he was suffering from “ moral insanity’ or under the influence of a mere uncontrollable impulse. The other extract (from the New Zealand Crimes Act, 1908) states that natural imbecility shall exempt a person from conviction for an offence; but further, a case is cited where it was no defence for a man who had killed his child to say that “he had a fixed idea ” to act so, and that he suffered from an uncontrollable impulse. Such is the substance of the extracts on which I am asked to comment. Of law lam profoundly ignorant. The question my correspondent wants answered is, “Is there an insanity of the emotions? ” My own opinion is that there is. This is a question of fact. I believe psychologists will say that emotional instability is the cause of much delinquency and crime. Mere knowledge is inert, as Aristotle iong ago asserted. Feeling, desire, emotion, passion—this is the origin of the drive that puts will into action. The knowledge of a penalty to be paid or the knowledge that an act would be wrong, or a sin. or a crime will act as a deterrent only up to a certain point. When the emotional stress gets the upper hand the knowledge of the nature of the deed is pushed out. It is possible to be intellectually sane and yet emotionally insane either at certain times or under certain conditions. The ancients said: “Anger is short madness.” The fixed idea comes from an emotional disturbance, which may be also intellectual and perhaps physiological. The extracts sent to me allow no plea for emotional insanity. Surely that cannot be the full meaning of the law!

Some say he's mad.—Macbeth,

After writing the former paragraph I came quite unexpectedly upon an account of a famous trial for murder 40 years ago when a niedical man was charged in the New Plymouth sessions of the Supreme Court with having shot a woman with a revolver. The Crown Prosecutor asked a witness, Dr Truby King, if the prisoner in his opinion had a knowledge of what he was doing, to which Dr King replied that he had a knowledge, but not a knowledge that would enable him to make a rational choice, adding, “if a man were dominated absolutely at the time he shot the woman by ideas of injustice, unfairness, the delusion that the world was against him, then he had not a proper knowledge.” The Prosecutor then asked, did the prisoner know that he was committing an unlawful act? Dr King replied: “I think he did know that shooting a fellow being was an illegal act,” but his brain was wasted with chronic alcoholism. The counsel for defence asked witness if he thought that the brain functions controlling desire were diseased, to which Dr King replied, “I have no doubt of it.” And he added that the prisoner’s delusions could be connected with the shooting. Judge Chapman asked if the accused, when he shot the woman, possessed the power to form a rational judgment, to which the witness said he was convinced he did not possess it. The judge then asked, was the act dominated by some influence arising from mental disease, v/hich influence he could not control by his will? Dr King said this was so. The judge then asked: “Do you consider a man wanting to that extent in control is responsible? ” to which witness replied: “He is absolutely irresponsible.” The verdict was “mentally insane.” Well, I’m no lawyer, but this does not square with what my correspondent sends, that an uncontrollable impulse is no defence. That season comes, wherein our Saviour’s birth is celebrated.—Hamlet. In the words of an old song, “ It’s just a year ago to-day ” since I wrote a Dickens-inspired paragraph on Christmas. And whom should I take, for an inspirer rather than the one who taught the English-speaking world the lessons of kindness and sympathy not only in his Christmas books, but throughout all his writings? His great heart beat for the poor, the afflicted, the down-trodden. Good reader, take out your old books once again and read of Scrooge, and Marley s Ghost, and Tiny Tim, and the wonderful Christmas turkey “that never could have stood on two legs.” I don’t know that Dickens would have passed a strict test on religious orthodoxy. But he would have passed with firstclass honours in a test for humanitarianism. It is good for us to revive and refresh our hearts by contact with such writers. Without them just imagine the world of money-making, of soulless smartness, and self-ad-vantage, the world of old Ralph Nickleby, when all the time there is open to us the kindly world of the Cheeryble Brothers of the jolly Mark Tapley or the good-hearted Mr Pickwick. Look up once again how Mr P. treated Alfred Jingle, Esq., in the Fleet prison for debtors —one of the most touching scenes in all Dickens s works. This is the season of the open heart, of goodwill to men, of remembrance of old friends. Apart from the Life that gave Christmas its origin and its beautiful spirit, there is no pers on who hath done more than Dickens to give to all mankind a Merry Christmas. Abstract liberty, like other mere abstractions, is not to be found.— Edmund Burke, “On Conciliation, 1775. A Russian professor said, recently that men are not born free and equal, that freedom and equality are conferred on mfn by social arrangement. Such I took to be his meaning as expressed in a cable message. , Rousseau says, “Man is born free; he is everywhere in chains: society has enslaved him”—a direct negative to -the Russian dictum apparently. Yet within the limits of their social experience they were both right for in Russia such freedom as the masses, now enjoy is paradise compared with what the Czarist regime allowed them. Ana Rousseau was right in this, that under the “ancien regime” of France into which he was born the masses were deprived by the existing social code of any freedom Nature might have conferred on them. In my humble, but firm, opinion, these dicta are wrong. Man is neither bond nor when born in primitive society. He is helpless and wholly dependent on his parents and their tribe—he is for the time being outside both freedom and servitude, yet gifted with innate potentialities of freedom. As for -equality—there never has been any. and no society can confer it except in opportunity. If freedom is only a result of social arrangement, to be taken away as it has been given, it has no national sanction beyond the ephemeral fait accompli. Christians believe what Plato believed, that there is an eternal fount or idea of justice which guarantees a belief in true freedom. The arrangements of the Kremlin or of UN can never guarantee freedom to man. If we abolish the abstract belief, then freedom, despite Burke, is only a dissolving cloud lit for a moment by a gleam of sunlight.

Compound for sins they are inclined By damning those they have no mind to ' —Butler: “ Hudibras,” 1663.

From a friend I have been given a letter which throws some light on Russian tactics and on the attitude of the new Asiatic States- The letter is of general interest and records impressions of the Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East, ECAFE Cat Lapstone) given by two people who have played a very considerable part in public and official activities in Australia: K came up for lunch and told us of her two visits to the ECAFE conference. Said she had not known that the public could listen in, and had greatly enjoyed not only the things that were discussed but more particularly the way it was all done. The careful speech, the interpreting, and above all the delicate inter-play, e.g. Russia appears to be championing the coloured races against the predatory Empire and is having a lot of surprises (hence the row about the Mayories—so pronounced). At a committee which the visitors attended, the first business was to elect a chairman. New . Zealand proposed Burma, who asked to be excused

(pressure of other business, I think). New Zealand then proposed India (or Pakistan), with Australia seconding; Malay proposed Australia, India seconding—or something like that. Anyway it surprised Russia quite considerably. Another interesting point was .. . the various parties that are being given. There isn’t a British one. but always a British Commonwealth one. This is emphasised very firmly and representatives of all the British Commonwealth stand as host in the receiving line. Last year Burma was one of them, but since then she has declared herself to be a separate republic, so could not participate. But the Burmese delegate stood around and finally joined the receiving line, saying to his next-door neighbour; “ I feel this is where I belong.” . . . Civis thinks that as the Russian delegate was so shocked by the conditions of the Maoris under democratic tyranny it might have been worth his while to call a meeting, or at least a corroboree, of the Arnhem aborigines, for they are in that primitive condition where communism can flourish. Civis.