moral imbecile the defect is not so much lack of inhibition as lack of feeling; the emotions are too neutral. Ordinarily instinctive behaviour is controlled both by intellectual and emotional factors; in the moral imbecile the instincts remain functioning and the intellect intact but the mind is deprived of the normal affective guidance. The individual who does not feel strong emotions will not comprehend them in others and perhaps will not even recognise their existence. He may superficially obey the dictates of fashion but will not develop altruism. Such an one can pursue an intellectual end undisturbed by the views of those around him but is incapable of feeling moral ideas though intellectually able to render lip service thereto. His conduct remains amoral but it is only when he violates certain taboos in a specified manner that he can be legally certified.

The Moral Imbecile is one who from an early age has displayed some permanent mental defect coupled with strong vicious or criminal propensities on which punishment has had little or no deterrent effect.

The word 'permanent' excludes any temporary instability or misconduct resulting from repressions which might be relieved by psychotherapy or which as in many adolescent cases might be outgrown. 'Early age' excludes so-called moral insanity or obsessions or compulsions arising in later life. It is true that the exact limits of the term have not yet been determined by the High Court but from decisions in the lower courts it is unlikely that it would be extended to include the period of adolescence. Also it has been laid down by a Justice of the High Court that there must be real evidence as to early age in any case dealt with under the Mental Deficiency Act, an opinion of the certifying medical practitioner based on his observation of the conditions found in later life will not suffice. It must also be noted that the definition runs: permanent mental defect coupled with vicious etc. propensities, not defect shown by such vicious or criminal propensities. In this connection the legal attitude is perhaps shown by a direction to the jury by a master of the High Court in a case involving the civil capacity of an alleged imbecile: "They (the jury) must be satisfied that the respondent was incapable of governing himself and his affairs by reason of unsoundness of mind, mere weakness of character, mere liability to impulse or susceptibility of influence, good or bad, mere imprudence, extravagance, recklessness, eccentricity or immorality-no, not all these taken together would suffice unless they believed themselves justified on a review of the whole evidence in referring them to a morbid condition of intellect." To come under the definition then there must be evidence of mental

deficiency apart from the conduct complained of and this evidence must be consistent largely in the personal observation of the certifying officer, mere history will not suffice. Answers to the so-called ethical test questions sometimes applied afford little assistance, for the true moral imbecile has a perfect appreciation of verbal morality as applied to others; his difficulty is not to answer questions but to order his life honourably and harmoniously. Sometimes the responses will show a lack of normal appreciation but more often the subject will weave a web of words to explain all situations and to show he has been misunderstood and the victim of mischance. An innate mental basis as apart from habits derived from the social environment must be proven. Nevertheless in certain cases the certifying officer by going over the past history in conversation with the subject may be able to show that the state of his mind is such that he was not, is not and is never likely to be able "to understand what is for his profit and what for his loss," the definition suggested by a legal commentator of some centuries past. It is quite clear, however, that law has an intellectual bias and comprehends better failures in reasoning power than in emotional inhibition.

Lastly, the punishment must have been real and appreciated as such by the subject, too often in such cases the early life has been one of indulgence with punishment confined to threats. Under these conditions it is usually far easier to deal with the individual as feeble-minded than as a moral imbecile.

In dealing with cases in which the main evidence to be considered is anti-social behaviour and the reasons assigned for such, it is very necessary fully to consider the matter of early environment and to disentangle innate and permanent tendencies from acquired and possibly avoidable habits. In this task, the certifying officer must review his decision at the bar of his own conscience, considering on the one hand, whether he under such circumstances could have acted differently, and on the other, whether he may be projecting on to the subject any of his own personal prejudices and beliefs, always remembering that "if every man had his deserts, who should 'scape a whipping?"

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DELINQUENCY AND MENTAL DEFECT (IV)1.

By W. H. B. STODDART.

THE word 'delinquency' originally meant a crime or misdeed of some kind; but psychologists have for some considerable time extended its meaning to include "a tendency to commit crimes or misdeeds" and, in such psychological discussions as the present, delinquency refers to the tendency only and not to the misdeeds themselves; and for the purpose of this symposium I take the term Mental Defect to mean Intellectual Defect or Defect of Intelligence.

Having adopted these meanings we may say that the topic of our symposium is "Moral Defect and Intellectual Defect" and our object is to discuss the relationship between the two, if any exists. We are justified in supposing that it does exist because we are familiar with the fact that Mentally Defectives, especially low grade imbeciles, steal, fight and lie like troopers.

Having thus orientated ourselves, let us consider the normal:Morality and Intelligence. My predecessors in this symposium are all agreed that Morality is not innate but acquired after birth. For practical purposes and for the most part I agree with them.

Learning is also acquired after birth, so let us begin by noting this similarity: that morality and academic learning are both acquired during the life of the individual. Moreover, the essentials of both are acquired during the first twelve years or so, but normally both continue to grow to some extent throughout life. So far as academic learning is concerned this is obvious, and I will justify the statement respecting morality by a short digression to explain its nature.

Every normal child is born into the world with certain latent instincts which, if allowed free uncontrolled play, would prove anti-social and their owner would be an immoral selfish beast; but, partly from an innate tendency to comply with the wishes of his fellows (herd-instinct) and mainly from training and association with moral, ethical and conventional beings, he learns to control his instincts and thus to become a

1 A contribution to the Symposium presented at the Joint Meeting of the Educational Section and the Medical Section of the British Psychological Society, April 25th, 1923.

moral, ethical and conventional member of society. The instincts to which I refer are of course those of self-preservation, sex, their subdivisions and variations. Morality is just this control of the instincts. It is responsible for what Freud has called Repression and, although this Repression occurs mostly during the first twelve years or so, it continues through life so that the instincts normally tend to become more and more repressed.

However this may be, our conclusion is that both academic learning and morality are mostly taught, the former mostly by education at school, the latter mainly by example and precept in the family circle; and just as the children of barge-dwellers and van-dwellers never acquire much learning because they do not attend school, so the children of thieves and drunkards do not achieve a high degree of morality. The lad Jacoby, who was executed for the murder of Lady White, was a recent example of a youth whose delinquency was due to absence of moral training. He had no father and his mother was a drunkard; but he had received an ordinary education at school and was perfectly intelligent. A comment by Dr East on the fact that the law makes no allowance for such a person should prove interesting.

The natives of Uganda see no wrong in murdering a person in order to acquire his property and they are incapable of appreciating the point of view of an Englishman who tries to teach them otherwise; but if a native child were brought to this country and placed in the care of moral foster-parents, there is little doubt that he would grow up a decent member of society.

Similarly, a negro can be brought to this country, receive an University education and obtain a degree, while his countrymen at home remain uneducated.

Now in Psychiatric practice we find, as you are all aware, that there are many children who, from injury to the head at birth, fevers and other diseases during early life, morbid affections of the brain or perhaps merely hereditary tendencies, are not capable of growing up intellectually. Some remain helpless babies all their lives and are known as idiots, others attain somewhat higher mentalities and are called imbeciles (low grade if they are of a 7 year old mentality, high grade if they achieve the learning and intelligence of a child of 12). If their mentality gets past this age, but not past the standard of a 15 year old child, we say that the patient is backward.

In a normal child, the tendency to do the right thing grows at the same time, so that it ought to be possible to devise tests for morality

corresponding with the Binet tests, were it not that children indulge in all sorts of peccadilloes and indecencies, when unobserved by adult eyes, which their elders would never suspect. The responses to and results from set psychological morality tests would therefore prove to be far too high.

Now in the mentally defective my experience is roughly this: that the patients of the lower mentalities (idiots and low grade imbeciles) have much less control of their instincts and are much more immoral (I use the word in its widest sense) than normal children of the same intellectual level and that the moral tone of high grade imbeciles and backward children is well up to or even in advance of that usually found in normal children of their own intellectual mentality. At most, their delinquency is less marked than their mental defect. If the experience of others in this matter agrees with mine it is a very strong argument against the existence of 'moral imbecility,' which means innate delinquency with little or no intellectual defect.

Respecting motherhood occurring in high grade imbecile girls I ought to say that I do not regard their fall as a serious sexual delinquency, so much as an inability to take care of themselves by reason of intellectual defect.

In psychiatric practice we meet, on the other hand, patients who have at one time been perfectly normal individuals, but owing to all sorts of adverse circumstances they have fallen from their high estate, so that their academic knowledge has regressed towards that of a child or their power of reasoning has become distorted or the control of their instincts has become diminished, in some instances to such an extent as to cause them to fall into the hands of the police; but the degree of dissolution in the two departments (moral and intellectual) is not necessarily the same. Indeed one of them is usually in advance of the other.

I need not remind members of this audience that in every one of us there are unconscious forces at work, which are constantly striving for expression-unrecognised and unacknowledged instincts which we are unwilling to admit to ourselves. Normally they succeed by being sublimated into some social or academic channel; but in some instances these forces are so strong that they escape the repressing forces and appear in some symptomatic guise which causes people who are not psychologists to call such patients 'lunatics.'

In other cases the person remains normal so long as he is in good physical health, but should he be attacked with fever or other disease,