f.
I am firmly convinced that this man believes in his delusions. One thing
is certain, and that is, his disciples believe in him implicitly. This
man is dangerous to society, inasmuch as he has caused the separation of
several wives from their husbands; the wives abandoning their husbands
to follow him to "Heaven," as he calls his farm house.

The crank is, generally, a harmless individual, and is not anti-social
unless his delusions take the form of homicidal impulse, pyromania,
kleptomania, etc.

Homicidal impulse is the most dangerous to society of the many mental
vagaries and derangements which afflict the dwellers in the borderlands.
Its invasion is sudden and its impulse is, generally, overpowering. A
man may be walking the streets presumably in perfect health, and yet
have, all the while, a voice whispering in his ear "kill, kill." His
insane desire at length reaches its acme, and he throws aside every
mental restraint and kills the first individual he may chance to meet.
Again, he may desire to kill some particular individual, and will
carefully and systematically arrange his plans for the successful
enactment of the homicide. The murderers of Garfield and Harrison
probably belong to this latter class, though in the case of Prendergast,
the slayer of Mayor Harrison, this opinion may be erroneous. There is
something about his photograph that leads me to believe that he is a
moral imbecile, rather than an intellectual dyscrasiac.

A clerk in a solicitor's office, at Alton, Hampshire, England, one
afternoon took a walk outside the town, when he met some children. He
persuaded one of these, a girl of nine, to go with him into a
neighboring garden. A short while after, he was seen walking quietly
home; he was seen to wash himself in the river and then go back to his
office. The little girl did not return home, and, search having been
instituted, her dismembered body was found strewn about the garden. The
clerk was arrested, and in his diary was found this entry, recently
made: "Killed a little girl; it was fine and hot." This man was either a
sadistic sexual pervert, or a victim of homicidal impulse. Maudsley
gives this instance as an example of the latter, while Krafft-Ebing
gives it as an example of the former. There is a great difference
between these two mental derangements. The victim of homicidal impulse
kills without any ulterior object, while the sadist kills in order to
gratify his unnatural and perverte