It is easy to declare that a disturbance of the cerebral lobes produces assassins and demonomaniacs.

The famous alienists of our time claim that analysis of the brain of an insane woman disclosed a lesion or a deterioration of the grey matter.

And suppose it did! It would still be a question whether, in the case of a woman possessed with demonomania, the lesion produced the demonomania, or the demonomania produced the lesion....

Admitting that there was a lesion! The spiritual Comprachicos have never resorted to cerebral surgery.

They don't amputate the lobes--supposed to be reliably identified--after carefully trepanning.
They simply act upon the pupil by inculcating ignoble ideas in him, developing his bad instincts, pushing him little by little into the paths of vice; and if this gymnastic of persuasion deteriorates the cerebral tissues in the subject, that proves precisely that the lesion is only the derivative and not the cause of the psychological state.
"And then, and then, these doctrines which consist nowadays in confounding the criminal with the insane, the demonomaniac with the mad, have absolutely no foundation.