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The problem of the determination of the degree of culpability of an individual who has committed an anti-social act is sometimes associated with great difficulties. A variety of factors may enter into the solution of this problem. An illegal act may be committed accidentally or unexpectedly and independently of the individual's will. It may be committed under an unavoidable necessity, such as in cases of protection of ones self or ones family. It may be committed under the influence of extreme passion or anger, when consciousness becomes blurred and cerebral inhibition is obliterated. It may be committed by insane individuals whose delusional ideas, accompanied or not by hallucinatory images, develop morbid impulses or deliberate and well planned criminal tendencies. Finally, illegal acts may be committed by individuals who, though not insane in the strict sense of the word, are nevertheless different from normal individuals by their power of reasoning, by their sentiments, tastes, sympathies, etc. To this class belongs the large category of psychopathic individuals, and also the mental defectives. The discussion of the underlying psychological moments of each of these groups of individuals is comprised in an extensive literature. We will be concerned exclusively with the medico-legal relation of the latter group alone. In order to ascertain the degree of legal responsibility of mental defectives, it is necessary first to emphasize the characteristic clinical features of mental deficiency. In considering all varieties of deviation from normal in the psychic sphere we find a long scale beginning with mental monstrosities and ending with slight mental feebleness. When the intellectual powers are involved in their entirety we deal with idiocy. When the arrest of mental development is only incomplete and is, therefore, compatible with the existence of some intellectual manifestations, we deal with imbecility. There are also individuals in whom only certain powers are likely to reach a degree of development; in whom there is no general, but only partial defect of intellectual powers. For example, one will show a meager power of intellectual acquisition, in another the power of judgment is defective; another is incapable of acquiring ele-

Mental Deficiency and the Importance of Its Recognition from a Medico-Legal Standpoint