that provocation may reduce an offence which would otherwise have
been murder to manslaughter. According to current morality, a man
is not so much to blame for an act done under the disturbance of
great excitement, caused by a wrong done to himself, as when he
is calm. The law is made to govern men through their motives, and
it must, therefore, take their mental constitution into account.

It might be urged, on the other side, that, if the object of
punishment is prevention, the heaviest punishment should be
threatened where the strongest motive is needed to restrain; and
primitive legislation seems sometimes to have gone on that
principle. But if any threat will restrain a man in a passion, a
threat of less than death will be sufficient, and therefore the
extreme penalty has been thought excessive.

At the same time the objective nature of legal standards is shown
even here. The mitigation does not come from the fact that the
defendant was beside himself with rage. It is not enough that he
had grounds which would have had the same effect on every man of
his standing and education. The most insulting words are not
provocation, although to this day, and still more when the law
was established, many people would rather die than suffer them
without action. There must be provocation sufficient to justify
the passion, and the law decides on general considerations what
provocations are sufficient.

It is said that even what the law admits to be "provocation does
not extenuate the guilt of homicide, unless the person provoked
is at the time when he does the deed [62] deprived of the power
of self-control by the provocation which he has received." /1/