good over evil" (Hughes, p. xiv). Charles Darwin with his theory of natural selection as the basis for evolution of the species would soon challenge that view. However, Ray in the field of mental illness challenged even earlier the prevailing assumption that people who committed crimes while they were insane did so because their reason had been affected. According to Hughes, Ray's theory of moral insanity held that the criminally insane "had a form of the disease in which a person could be fully aware that his behavior was wrong yet be unable to control himself" (p. 29). In a 1935 article, Ray said "while the reason may be unimpaired, the passions may be in a state of insanity, impelling a man . . . to the commission of horrible crimes, in spite of his efforts to resist" (Hughes, p. 39).
Ray's Challenge to the Anglo-American Legal Establishment
The Treatise, which was reissued in many editions, and many of Ray's other writings and lectures from the 1830s on were devoted to a frontal attack on the Anglo-American
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