Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/174

162 It will readily be conceded that no two individuals have exactly the same degree of responsibility, but all must be held to equal responsibility under the law, until it shall be demonstrated in certain cases that a given person is by reason of defective cerebral tissues unable to support the social relation, in which case society should permanently restrain him. This decision should be reached by experts, who would carefully compare the environment to which the individual had been exposed with his mental state, or the functional product of his brain. This, I believe, has actually been done in some States by the enactment of the habitual criminal law, which provides for the perpetual restraint of these cases, without regard to the nature of the last offense.

Without at all suspecting the anatomical and physiological conditions upon which it depends, many intelligent observers, who have been intimately associated with the criminal classes in prisons, reformatories, etc., agree as to the fact that a large proportion are unable to resist the commission of crime, even under the most favorable circumstances, and a still larger proportion under the unfavorable circumstances in which their defective organization tends to force them.

A commission of experts appointed by the State to thoroughly examine the inmates of prisons, to determine their mental status, might do much, by effecting the permanent restraint of certain cases, to diminish crime and the cost and suffering it entails, with a fuller measure of justice toward all parties concerned.

A few words in regard to heredity, by way of digression. It is not disputed that the form which the aggregation of cells takes entering into the structure of a man's nose may be distinctly hereditary, and it is no less reasonable to suppose that variations in the convolutions of the brain are equally hereditary; and that, influenced by the same or a similar environment, the functional product observed in the child will be similar to what obtained in the parent that is, practically, crime is often hereditary, and to the same extent so may be any other mental tendency.

Finally, a few words in reference to insanity and criminal responsibility. Practically the best definition of insanity is that of Dr. Maudsley, which is substantially this: Insanity is a disease of the brain, producing such a change in the mode of feeling, thinking, and acting as to render the individual unable to support the ordinary relations of life. The question of responsibility is rarely raised in well-developed cases, where the disease of the brain renders the centers inactive and the person sits and mopes in silent misery, or in the cases where the disease of the cerebral structures is so severe as to constantly stir them to irregular and unwonted activity, prompting the individual to laugh, weep, sing.