Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 15.djvu/682

 good influences, will lead at least quiet and orderly lives, but who are equally plastic to evil, and who will inevitably bloom into criminality if surrounded by lawless associates.

From two persons who have had extensive acquaintance with criminals, as also with those living in ignorance and poverty, which too often prove the approximate cause of crime, we are able to draw conclusive reasons for believing that the instinct of imitation may be used with astonishing effect, if rightly directed over those whose habits have not become irretrievably fixed. The author of "The Juke Family," on the one hand, and the author of "The Dangerous Classes," on the other, have done much to prove this hypothesis. Mr. Dugdale selected for his elaborate analysis the history of an extensive family, some of whom are yet living, whom he calls the Jukes; these he follows through town registers, almshouses, court-records, hospitals, prisons, etc., for six generations, from 1720 to 1872. For greater certainty in tracing the hereditary influence, he follows the female line of descent with the most definite results; his minute research, as to the character and fate of these persons, proves that where any member of the family was removed from the influence and example of crime, either by adoption into or marriage with honest and respectable families, the criminal tendencies disappeared, and the individuals reverted to a reputable life. Thus the imitative faculty was found, even in these cases where vicious blood was a recognized inheritance, to be as active in the imitation of good as of evil ways of living.

Particularly was this the case with those members of this criminal family who escaped from the vicious environment before the age of eighteen—these all took to honest ways, imitating the honest people with whom they lived; notably one who at the age of fifteen married a faithful and industrious German—this branch of the female line never produced a criminal, which was a remarkable exception with the Jukes. Another point bearing on the argument of the propelling influence of imitation is the discovery of the fact that where relatives of the poor have received shelter in almshouses, the children of these more readily resort to them in emergencies than do others in more pressing need, who have had no such record in their families. In fact, pauperism of the chronic kind is more difficult to cure than a tendency to criminality—for the first indicates weakness, the latter vitality.

As a general rule it may be assumed that before maturity the life of every individual is in the main imitative; later, experience and social compulsion reach the reason and teach all persons of average brain-power and moral culture that conformity to the laws of society is in the end more profitable than crime. The exceptions to this rule will be certain to exhibit some form of abnormal development. But the important practical truth is manifest, that while there is growth in the substance-matter of the brain, and this organ is acquiring