Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 5.djvu/253

Rh can no more escape the use of the former than the recognition of the latter. Facts are nothing until they are brought together, compared, interpreted, and some view of them arrived at—and that is a theory. From the most trivial events in daily life to the grave and critical decisions of deliberative bodies, from the question of taking along an umbrella to that of the financial policy of the nation, or a declaration of war, action follows theory as the all-essential thing in the determination of results.

A tragedy has just been enacted in Boston, which affords an impressive illustration both of the importance of theories and the terrible evils that flow from the adoption of wrong theories. A year and a half ago a lad named Jesse Pomeroy was convicted of the atrocious crime of luring young children into by-places and gashing and mutilating them in the most cruel manner. He carried on this savage practice for months, operating upon no less than seven children, and was then taken up by the authorities. How to estimate his conduct, and what to do with him, was then the question. The nature of the acts that he had perpetrated, by their wanton and persistent cruelty, marked him out as not only an exception to the class of youthful offenders, but as an inhuman monster, wanting in moral sense and destitute of the common attributes of humanity. His conduct showed that he was abnormally and insanely constituted. That he was a deficient human being was just as evident as a matter of fact as if he had been born blind, deaf, or without arms. But the authorities proceeded upon another theory—they assumed that he was like other bad boys, and could be reformed, and so they sent him to the State Reform School, After remaining there a year and five months he was released "on probation"—five years before the time at which he would have been entitled to a legal discharge.

On the 22d instant "the body of a boy, four years of age, was found by the water-side in South Boston, bleeding from a multitude of wounds. There were eighteen stabs in the region of the heart. The hands were cut, as if in the little fellow's attempt to ward off the blows of the murderer. The throat was slit, and one eye was nearly cut from its socket. Footmarks in the mud seemed to prove that the child had been led to the spot by some older companion, who must have lifted him down from the wharf, where the prints first appeared; and the condition of the body showed that the murder had been committed but a very little while before its discovery—that is to say, in broad day." Jesse Pomeroy was suspected of the deed, arrested, and confessed that he perpetrated it.

This case, shocking as it is, is by no means rare in its quality. The instances are numerous of individuals who have displayed a propensity for the apparently wanton infliction of pain and destruction of life. The life-destroying impulse may take the direction of suicide, or be turned against others, and frequently manifests itself as an ungovernable propensity to kill infants and young children; and examples are not wanting in which persons are conscious of this terrible tendency in themselves, and, while still able to resist it, invoke restraint from others as their only protection. There is such a thing as insanity—a diseased condition of mind in which reason and self-control are destroyed and responsibility ceases. There cannot be a doubt that Jesse Pomeroy belongs to this class, and his first perpetrations of cruelty should have been held to establish this as absolutely as if his intellect had been shattered and he had been a raving maniac. If the theory at first acted upon, that he was soundly constituted, responsible, and capable of reform, be carried out, of course nothing remains but to strangle him in due form—and that is the short method which society generally