fatuous and furious and facile and furiosity

The local sheriff would call together witnesses and a jury and cognosce the witnesses. The word cognosce can either mean "to judicially examine" or, referring to the result of the process, "to make a judicial finding." Though the OED gives several definitions of cognosce, all are related, and the one that is most closely connected with the 1747 Blair v. Blair case is this: "Judically to examine and pronounce (a person) to be of a certain status; esp (ellipt.) to pronounce to be an idiot or lunatic. So, in Erskine's 1773 Institutes we have: "The son ought to be declared or cognosced an idiot by the sentence of the judge." But the use of the term is not confined to findings of mental incapacity as this 1818 quotation shows: "George Douglas's elder brother was cognosced nearest agnate."

Legal Terms for the Result of Such "Cognoscing"

Though a full review of the legal terms to describe the possible results of such a process is beyond the scope of this essay, I will make reference to various terms of mental incapacity known in 18th Century Scotland. The chief distinction observed was whether the defendant or subject of the suit was fatuous or furious. Or, one could talk about idiotry and furiosity. From 1597 we have: "Anent the brieve of Idiotrie and furiositie," and from 1752, we have: "Services of Idiotry and Furiosity to pay [fees] as general Services." That the distinction is kept right until the end can be seen in the 1868 statute abolishing the brieve: "The brieves of furiosity and idiotry hitherto in use are now abolished." Thus, to be an idiot is different from being "furious." An idiot is one who has a natural absence or marked defiency in ordinary understanding. Other words used in the book Autism in History are "stupid" or being a "natural fool." As an 1874 dictionary had it: "Idiocy is a defect of mind which is either congenital or due to causes operating during the first few years of life."

An idiot or natural fool (or fool natural) could also be referred to as a fatuous person. The Latin word behind fatuous means silly or stupid, but the legal meaning of the term in Scottish Law is given concisely by Erskine in 1773: "Fatuous persons, called also idiots..who are entirely deprived of the faculty of reason and have an uniform stupidity and inattention in their manner and childishness in their speech." Though Erskine doesn't mention the necessity of congenital "stupidity" in order to qualify one as fatuous, it seems to be implied. And, the word fatuous can be used interchangeably with idiot, as in these quotations. From 1842: "When a fatuous or furious person has been cognosced.." or from 1868: "Such person shall be deemed insance if he be furious or fatuous."

Before mentioning a word about furiosity, I ran across another term to describe the fatuous person, the person characterized by idiotry. It is a person of "facile mind." Normally we think of a person with a facile mind as quick and mentally very capable, but in the 18th and 19th century in Scotland, facile had another connotation. Jamieson's Dictionary of the Scottish Language (1825) had this:

"A facile man is a forensic phrase in Scottish, which has no synonyme in English. It does not signify one who is weak in judgement, or deficient in mental ability, but one who possesses that degree of softness of disposition that he is liable to be easily wronght upon by others" (quoted in Autism in History, 34).

But the term could also be used to describe someone with more severe mental impairments. A 1756 case talked about a person who was:

"so weak, facile, and simple that he was...an easy prey to any man who would be bad enough to take the advantge of him, under the colour of sincerity and friendship..."

Thus, though a court was charged with deciding whether a person was fatuous or furious, was possessed of idiotry or furiosity, the word facile with respect to his mind could enter into the discussion.

Finishing with Furious

I have spent so much time giving the nuances of words describing the more "calm" idiocy in 18th Century Scotland that I have little room for the more "mad" derangement--furious or furiosity. As the name suggests, a person afflicted with furiosity is considered "mad" or "insane," even if he isn't literally "out of control." It was not until the 19th century that furious people were locked up in the "insane asylums," and as early as 1609 we have this quotation: "Furious men should be taken, and keiped be their friends." Professor Houston also sompleted another study of madness: Madness and Society in 18th Century Scotland (2000). His book presents an extensive combing of several thousand existing brieves from that period where people were attempting to have others declared mentally incompetent. Though I have not done a considerable amount of work in the area, what begins to appear when one "reads up" on the area is that popular judgments (there were no mental health "professionals" in those days) were probably as sophisticated in judging a person's sanity as professional judgments are today. We just have more pills to deal with people in 2006....

Conclusion

A journey through terminology no longer used can not only provide a window into another culture and time, but can help us clarify some of the assumptions on which we operate in our own day.

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