Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 15.djvu/684

 to imitate the industrious and honest habits of their guardians and neighbors, exemplifying the logic of reason, that "an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure."

Observing the analogies of nature might teach the social scientist as well as the philanthropist that the measures taken to produce excellence in the animal and vegetable kingdoms are equally applicable to human beings. And what is the course of an arboriculturist or horticulturist if a plant shows abnormal qualities and a tendency to disease? If the owner desires to restore it to a healthy condition, would he allow it to remain among the aborted or monstrous members of its kind? Would he not rather remove it from the soil where its development had proved so unfortunate, to better-selected ground, and to the vicinity of normal healthy plants? So with stock: no breeder of horses or cattle would hope to cure a distemper among his animals if he allowed the diseased to herd together, mutually infecting each other. No, the worst cases he would speedily remove and isolate, and all in succession who showed symptoms likely to result disastrously to themselves or others. The sick would be put into clean quarters, and a more careful system of air and diet provided. Can we expect to cure abnormally developed human beings with less trouble?

The conclusion to be drawn from these considerations of the different phases of crime suggests at least this practical idea: that, in all stages of education, the proper direction of the will, the due control of the emotions, and the subjection of nervous impulses to the cool judgment of the reason, are far more important than the mere acquisition of this or that branch of so-called knowledge. A large majority of crimes, particularly crimes of violence, occur because the perpetrators have never been taught or compelled to control their feelings; probably nine tenths of all the crimes, follies, and disasters of which human beings are victims, might be prevented if the youth of the country were habitually instructed in the danger of allowing themselves to be controlled by impulse and feeling—if they could be taught that their nerves and muscles, as well as their desires, should be always under the direction of the intellect or will: and, if this sort of education could supplant that which is usually given to girls and young ladies, might we not hope to see a diminution of that weakly, nervous, hysterical class, which we are almost tempted to rank as criminal, since their very existence is a bane to every family in which they exist? To diminish crimes' of all sorts, let the teaching of self-control, the subordination of the emotions to the will, a knowledge of the nervous system, and a worthy, definite object in life, become a part of the education of every youth, male and female. Many crimes which are penally punished are the outcome of semi-insane persons, whose really abnormal condition is not recognized by court or jury, while others are excused as insane when their culminating crime is but the outcome of habitual indulgence of violent temper. Of all the insane, but the