Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 41.djvu/454

438 of the continuance of the congenital criminal. He has always existed; his presence is apprehended just in proportion to the sensitiveness of the public conscience. Morrison, in his instructive book, says, in regard to the confirmed vagabond and criminal, that "most of them are not adapted to the conditions of existence which prevail in a free society. Some of them might have passed through life fairly well in a more primitive stage of social development, as, for example, in the days of slavery or serfdom; but they are manifestly out of place in an age of unrestricted freedom, when a man may work or remain idle just as he chooses. . . . All men are not fitted for freedom, and, so long as society acts on the supposition that they are, it will never get rid of the incorrigible criminal."

The persistence of those acts which, as society has evolved, have been deemed criminal, are acts natural to all animals. In the decalogue half the commandments, significantly grouped together, refer to acts and impulses inherent in the animal kingdom, from the lowest to the highest. Murder and adultery, of course; covetousness precedes the act of stealing; theft, in its various forms, from the simplest act to stock-watering; and lying, from the deceptive behavior of a bird to the lies embodied in the advertisements of the modern newspaper—are all part and parcel of man's inheritance.

Dr. Bruch Thomson, Surgeon of the General Prison, Scotland, says, "Habitual criminals are without moral sense—are true moral imbeciles." Carl Vogt advanced the idea that certain cases of congenital idiocy were evidences of reversion. Let one spend a few hours only in the worst wards of an asylum for the feeble-minded, and attentively study the movements and desires, the wanton mischief, the shocking impulses which animate these unfortunate creatures, and he is forced to admit the possibility of such a condition.

Whatever view prevails does not concern us at present. The important truth to realize is that overwhelming and incontestable evidence shows that the criminal, as a type, not only exists, but that his criminal taints are transmitted, and that this transmission may run through many generations. It is proved by voluminous evidence, easily accessible, that children are born criminals. They are, as Dr. Fletcher says, not only reared, nurtured, and instructed in it, but the habit becomes a new force—a second nature—superinduced upon their original natural depravity. In speaking of this class he says, "These communities of crime, we know, have no respect for the laws of marriage, are regardless of the rules of consanguinity, and, connecting themselves only with those of their own nature and habits, they must beget a depraved and criminal class, hereditarily disposed to crime."