Its force also resided in its principal subject—the study of deviance, abnormal behavior, moeurs, and mental states. Referred to as “the mental science” and the “moral science,” respectively, in late-eigh- teenth- and early nineteenth-century Britain and France, its practitioners sought “ratios of deviancy” (much as they did “laws of mortality”) that would both describe and prescribe thought and action.

Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ E…, loc. 604