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And to a degree his mind always dictated the dreams, at least the subject was of his own volition. If it was necessary to travel or transact business, the dreams were postponed and he lived right here on earth, a man of good judgment, safe reason and proper conduct. Unsoundness of mind is not necessarily folly.
There must be a test by which to separate the opposing elements so as to build only from the sound, and that test is a sufficiently liberal one which accepts as sound whoever will make a sworn recantation of his former unsoundness."
I remember in my boyhood reading The Ancient Mariner to a hard-headed lawyer of no literary taste. He listened to the poem, and merely remarked that its author was a horrible fool. There is no doubt that physical unsoundness often is a cause of mental excellence. Some of the best women on earth are the ugliest.
In the case of commonplace screws, if they do their work well, it is for the most part in spite of their being screws. It is because they are sound in the main, in those portions of their mental constitution which their daily work calls into play; and because they are seldom required to do those things which their unsoundness makes them unfit to do.
There is unsoundness in the perverse person who resolutely docs the opposite of what you wish and expect: who won't go the pleasure excursion you had arranged on his account, or partake of the dish which has been cooked for his special eating.
Finally in the "minutes of conference between your Lordship and certain physicians, held on the 7th January, 1823, in the Portsmouth case," there is an endeavour to explain the nature of unsoundness, and of imbecility or weakness; but it is insufficient to direct the physician to any clue whereby his doubts can be solved, and unfortunately relapses into the original contradictory statement.
Such a doctrine, from its intrinsic unsoundness, can not long influence any considerable portion of our people, much less can it afford a good reason for a dissolution of the Union. The most palpable violations of constitutional duty which have yet been committed consist in the acts of different State legislatures to defeat the execution of the fugitive-slave law.
Still the movement interested me, and many of its principles took firm hold of me and held me for years in a species of mental thraldom; insomuch that I found it difficult, if not impossible, either to refute them or to harmonize them with other principles which I also held, or rather which held me, and in which I detected no unsoundness.
Your Lordship seems to consider that we have derived some advantages by the issue of a commission to ascertain this unsoundness of mind, and without such due consideration, it is presumed you would not have adopted it; but the citation of your own accurate phraseology, as it appears in your judgment of 1815, on the Portsmouth petition, will best illustrate the subject.
Continually she showed that their interrogations were irrelevant to any business before the court, or that entered into the ridiculous charges against her. Next came a wretched Dominican that pressed her with an objection, which, if applied to the Bible, would tax every one of its miracles with unsoundness. The monk had the excuse of never having read the Bible.
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