"The effort to dominate too many, and too varied an assortment of minds, no doubt, a species of self-hypnotism; but Professor Carney's remarks on the distinction between insanity and moral depravity were interesting. I have just arrived from America, and it is possible that the ideas he advanced, although fresh to me, may be an old story to you."
"We have worked much together, Carney and I," replied the Doctor. "He knows the subject well enough, although we do not agree in all things. He, for instance, classes many cases as insanity, which to me are plainly a lack of moral, not of mental, strength. He denies the existence of an absolutely unmoral person whose mind is sound and whose power of reasoning is normal. To him such a case does not exist."
"I wonder what he would have thought of a case I had an opportunity of observing a few weeks ago," remarked Mr. Miller. "There he could find no trace of insanity, no lack of logic, or of reason, but an absolute absence of any moral sense. I think I have never seen a more perfect example of the thing he denies. Here was a young woman, beautiful, delicate of body, refined, of good manners, and moderately educated, to whom no law of man or of society was sacred, who denied the power of God as lightly as she defied the opinion of the world; who knew nothing of shame, of duty, or of kindness, and whose mind was as clear as yours or mine, and whose mental process was absolutely regular."
"Tell me of her," said Dr. Crossett eagerly. "I have several times found cases that at first seemed to be as lacking in moral sense as this one you describe, but always on close study I have found some promptings of the softer impulses. I, for instance, have seen a thief who robbed the poor-box of a church share his booty to feed a hungry child whom he met casually upon the street. I have seen a burly brute, who a few hours before had murdered his wife, weep over the sufferings of an injured dog. Here there was not an absolute lack of the thing we perhaps might call soul, although that examples of total and absolute depravity exist among the sane is a favorite theory of mine. Tell me of this woman!"
"She was a woman, although she looked to be little more than a child," began Mr. Miller. "It was at Narragansett Pier, a summer resort, not far from New York. I had noticed her from the first, my attention being attracted by the curious fact that, in spite of her gracious and happy manner, both my grandchild and her little dog seemed to be overcome by a queer aversion from the moment when they first came near to her."