The Loeb-Leopold case - The Clarence Darrow Collection

The Loeb-Leopold Case
Dr. White points out that when the child is born
there is very little intelligence, but the emotions are
working. The child is hungry. A noise affects it.
It has a feeling of discomfort, warmth or cold, which
it expresses by cries. There is a reaction. The
child in its primitive emotion takes the food that is
given it. The child is not concerned with determin-
ing who pays for that food, whether it is honestly
come by or not,, whether the person who got it committed
crimes for it. The intelligence grows, and
the emotional side grows, and at an early period of
life impressions are given to the child.
But if it does not happen, your Honor, that the
emotional side of the child grows in parallel lines
with the intellectual side, there will be the same diffi-
culty in the mind of the child as there would be in
the physical body if one arm grew regularly and the
other was only half length. In that case it would be
a physical cripple, and the child with a mind that
did not grow along parallel lines, on the intellectual
side and the emotional side, would be an intellectual
cripple.
Now, I am not going to discuss the crime itself.
That has been done by Mr. Darrow. But, having
that in mind, knowing that much of the thing, the
alienist talks to the boy or man, whoever it is, hav-
ing a clue of that departure from the pattern, and
finds out if the thing was an adequate emotional
response to a given logical stimulus. If it had been
a crime of revenge, or passion, or something of that
220