You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
As this book emphasizes, the moral responsibility of the insane has been a fascinating and debatable topic from antiquity to the present. It is fascinating because it is confusing, and even now, in modern times, there is still no closure about the responsibility of persons suffering from severe emotional problems who have committed criminal acts. There are guidelines, of course, but they can be and are being questioned; and thus in many instances the vulnerability of our legal system becomes most apparent.
Crime has always intrigued the public, and this is especially true in contemporary society, as evidenced by the amount of violence and murder seen on television and written about both in fiction and in actual reports of famous cases. Whether preoccupation with violent crimes is related to the amount of crime is not known. Still, murders have become main attractions, namely the O. J. Simpson trial, which caused millions of people to remain riveted to their television sets watching every single detail. In fact, there were waves of depression after the trial ended, apparently because a vital source of enjoyment was no longer available.
Daniel Robinson gives us a panoramic view of the history of insanity. The title of his book, Wild Beasts and Idle Humours, at first puzzled me, but it is, in itself, a pithy description of the continuum of evolution of the legalistic aspects of criminal responsibility. “Wild Beasts” refers to impulsive, uncontrollable madmen, running amok and indiscriminately killing people; “Idle Humours,” much more subtly, has to do with internal disruption and reality testing.
Robinson reviews the ancient legal concepts on which Roman law is based. Examination of laws related to insanity in Homeric times and the laws of classical Greece and Rome reveals how