Dr. Winslow, having wandered hither and
thither in uncertainty of statement, told us that
if he were asked to test the sanity of a man, " I
am satisfied that I should be able to arrive at a
safe conclusion if I were to place before the
alleged lunatic a series of designedly fictitious
facts, asking him how he would conduct himself,
supposing those facts were true." Yet he can
but make his own measure of discretion the
standard whereby to estimate that of his neighbour.
What if he asked a sane man how he
would deal with a youth accused of imbecility
by such and such persons, under such and such
conditions; whether he would put implicit faith
in the instructions of the attorney working
against such a youth, and whether he would
take care to examine him from that attorney's
paper, in the way least likely to put him at his
ease? Would he certify the sane man imbecile
for answering, No? But Dr. Winslow owns that
in this case his opinion was influenced by his
instructions, and he declares honestly that every
such case " speaks for itself, and laymen of the
world are quite as competent as professional
witnesses to come to a right conclusion,
provided they have all the facts before them."
With admitted equal power, therefore, of
arriving at a decision, the jury of laymen of the
world came to a decision contrary to Dr. Winslow's.
What confidence does this give us in a
mad-doctor's accuracy of opinion concerning the
sanity of any one of us?

Dr. Mayo detected that the victim under
examination "made disjointed remarks," but he
was in vain pressed to give an instance. Some
of our most thoughtful men are such disjointed
talkers that we fear they will henceforth dread
the critical ears of the President of the College
of Physicians. " I did not," Dr. Winslow had
said, " draw this young man's attention to the
sinfulness of his conduct; in fact, we did not
go into the ethics of the matter at all." But
Dr. Winslow was not aware that, whatever he
might suppose, it was precisely and especially
"the ethics of the matter" that were being gone
into by his fellow examiner, the President of
the College of Physicians. " Speaking of the
ethical part of the case— by far the most
important" Dr. Mayo begins, referring to the
same examination in which, according to Dr.
Winslow, the ethics of the matter were not
gone into at all! Dr. Mayo tells us, however,
that " all the phenomena" of the ethical part of
the subject "were correctly stated by Dr.
Winslow." The only oddity was, that Dr.
Winslow himself didn't know how ethical he
was. Or, probably the doctors differ as to
what they would call ethics, just as easily as
they can differ as to what they will call unsoundness
of mind.

So Dr. Mayo deduced legal unsoundness from
defect of morals, and was not to be appeased,
though upon one point the culprit, " seeing that
he had produced an unfavourable impression
upon us, very cunningly said"— what of course,
being in his own favour, was an additional proof
of his imbecility; the perception of this being
an illustration of the cunning usual in mad
doctors. Then, again: having repeated to the
court his highly objectionable and uncalled-for
question, the Chief of Physicians observes of
the young man severely, that " he treated the
question with great levity." Levity, indeed!
when he ought to have read a moral lecture to
his interrogator!  Again: because the foolish
but not ill-natured youth had the merit— not
rare in men of his sort— of sticking by his chosen
friend— the friend of his choice not being, as
Dr. Mayo would perhaps require him to be, a
Socrates— " the adhesiveness he showed in his
attachment to that friend, in spite of admitting
a low opinion of him, was another circumstance
which indicated an indifference to decency and
decorum. It suggested to me his incapacity in
another sense— incapacity in regard to the
management of affairs for such a man would be
sure to have bad associates, and give way to
them." All sorts of insane inferences are to be
drawn from fidelity to an ill-chosen friend. To
Bedlam then with the Lovelaces! Let the
College of Physicians sit in judgment upon every
man's choice of companions, and let none but
the discreet be reckoned sane. " There are too
many names for insanity," says Dr. Mayo. " My
own judgment would direct me to be satisfied
with the simple expression that Mr. Lovelace is
of unsound mind. The power of making
bargains and doing certain sums is consistent with
this sort of unsoundness." Dr. Mayo observed,
also, that his victim had a good memory for
events; "but that," he made haste to add, "is
not an extraordinary phenomenon in cases of
uusoundness of mind. I entered," says this
doctor, " upon the examination of Mr. Lovelace
with the belief that there was a large body of
evidence which would prove that his mind was
unsound." Once started by the attorney for
the prosecution with such a belief, the rest was
easy. For himself, he had only to reconcile what
he found with what had been told him, and he
tells us— after positive testimony in his character
of skilled witness, that he had found the young
man to be of unsound mind— that his opinion of
the uncontrollable character of such unsoundness
"is not founded upon my own observation.
I observed sufficient to convince me that he
is cunning enough to seem to be aware of social
obligations"!

When about to be released from his two
hours of torture, the young man was asked to
write a letter— no subject being suggested to
him. The letter, however, was unexpectedly and
undeniably pertinent and good, and, as the doctor
says, far more consistent with soundness of
mind than with unsoundness, but it is not
inconsistent with the latter." Nothing is inconsistent,
in fact, with an unsoundness which, as Dr. Mayo
says, "is a fitter subject for description than for
definition," and which he shows himself as little
able to describe as to define. He says that
"moral obliquity, supposing it to mean perversion,"
is one sign of it; but " vice is not perversion."
Will Dr. Mayo give some more Croonian
lectures at the College of Physicians to explain