arned to
speak and until the intellect Las become sealed up, as well as the
intentional rearing of a person to ignorance, as reducible to this head.
This was written before Caspar's case had occurred. He says, also, that
they are similar to cases of homicide; because the latter are punished
for destroying the rational being, and not the physical man. Murder and
the destruction of the intellect are, therefore, equally punishable. The
one merits the punishment of death as well as the other. Nor are we to
take the possibility of a cure into consideration, any more than we do
the possibility of extinguishing a fire. But where the law does not
prescribe the punishment of death irrespectively of the possibility of
recovery, the punishment would rarely exceed ten years in the House of
Correction. We must understand Tittmann's remarks, however, to refer
entirely to the law of Saxony,--that being the government under which he
lived, and the only one in whose criminal code this crime is recognized.

Feuerbach wished to have this murder of the soul inserted in the
criminal code of Bavaria as a punishable crime; but he was unsuccessful,
and the whole doctrine has subsequently been condemned. Mittermaier, in
a note to his edition of Feuerbach's "Text-Book of German Criminal Law,"
denies that there is any foundation for the distinction taken by him and
Tittmann. He says, that, in the first place, it has not such an actual
existence as is capable of proof; and, secondly, all crimes under it
can easily be reached by some other law. The last objection does not,
however, seem to be a very serious one. If, as Feuerbach says, the
crime against the soul is more heinous than that against the body, it
certainly deserves the first attention, even if the one is not merged in
the other. The crime being greater, the punishment would be greater;
and the demands of justice would no more be satisfied by the milder
punishment than if a murderer were prosecuted as a nuisance. The fact,
therefore, that the crime is reducible to some different head, is not an
objection. We meet with the most serious difficulty when we consider the
possibility of proof. Taking it for granted that the crime does exist in
the abstract, the only question is, whether it is of such a nature that
it would be expedient for government to take cognizance of it. The soul
being in its nature so far beyond the reach of man, and the difficulty
of ever proving the effect of human actio