Distribution of Malformations
Malformations (associated, as we have said, with individual development) may be found in all individuals who, through various causes (degeneration, disease, denutrition, defects of adaptment), have undergone any alteration in development. And, since we have not yet acquired a recognised standard of morality of generation, and the social environment, including the school, weighs heavily upon humanity in the plastic state, who is there without malformation? Complete normality is a desideratum, an ideal toward which we are progressing, and, we might add, it is the battle-flag of the teacher.
Accordingly, all men have malformations. It is interesting to see how they are affected by variations in age and social condition, and how they are distributed among normal persons and degenerates, in order to measure the extent of their contribution to the diagnosis between normal and abnormal man.
Fig. 138.—Percentage of stigmata among the peasantry, the labouring class and the wealthy class, for children and adults.
On the basis of notes taken from an important work by Rossi,[48] I have drawn up the following table, relating to malformations based upon a comparative study of children and adults, grouped under three different social conditions—peasants, city labourers and persons of the wealthy class.
At the further extremity of the horizontal lines will be found the figures recording the number of times that any one anomaly occurs in a hundred instances. The other indications are explained in the figure itself.
From this it is apparent that anomalies of the cranium are much more rare than those of the face, both in children and in adults.
But in children the anomalies of the cranium (and this includes the cases of plagiocephaly), are much more frequent than in adults in all social classes; this shows that in the course of growth the malformations of the cranium have to a great extent disappeared.
In regard to the face, on the contrary, or, at least, in regard to certain malformations of the face, the opposite holds good; the mandible and the zygomata, or, in general, that part of the face which grows rapidly during the period of puberty, show more anomalies in the case of adults than in the case of children.
This shows us that a face which is still beautiful in childhood may acquire malformations in successive periods of growth. In simpler words, the facts may be expressed as follows: that the cranium corrects itself and the face spoils itself in the course of growth.
But in the case of facial asymmetries the same thing occurs that we have already seen in regard to plagiocephaly; it is more frequent in children, hence asymmetries are infantile stigmata.
Fig. 139.—Two small examples of Morel's and Wildermuth's ear.
Some important characteristics are to be noted regarding the handle-shaped ear; all children have ears proportionally larger than those of adults and the handle-shaped form is very frequent in normal children, regardless of the social condition to which they belong. This malformation corrects itself in the course of growth, being far less frequent in adults of the wealthy class and even among the labouring classes; but among the peasantry it remains permanently, almost as though it were a class stigma. Although the mechanical theories are in disrepute as an interpretation of morphological phenomena, nevertheless it is worth while to note the singular frequency of this stigma in peasants, in connection with the habit of straining the ear to catch the faintest sounds, distant voices, echoes, etc., for which the senses of peasants are extremely acute.
The greater frequency of prominent superciliary arches in adult peasants and labourers may also be considered in relation to a defective cerebral development, connected, perhaps, with illiteracy, etc.; furthermore, the superciliary arches, together with a more than normal development of the jaw bones, are stigmata which usually occur together as determining factors of an inferior morphological type. The fact also that an excessive development of the mandible, unlike other malformations, is found with the same frequency among adults of the peasantry and the labouring class, gives to this anomaly the significance of a stigma of the poorer classes. It should be remembered that children of inferior intelligence have a deeper mandible.
What is quite interesting to know, in addition to the frequency of stigmata at various ages and in the various social conditions, is the number of them that may coexist in the same individual. It was already asserted by Lombroso that a single undoubted malformation was not enough to prove degeneracy, but that it depended upon the number of stigmata existing simultaneously in the same individual. Now, confining our attention to normal individuals, we find, according to Rossi, that the individual number is less among the well-to-do than among the poor; and that it is less among the peasantry than among the working class. The working class in the cities are accordingly in the worst condition of physical development. Furthermore, children always show a greater number of individual malformations than adults.
INDIVIDUAL NUMBER OF MORPHOLOGICAL ANOMALIES
| Number of anomalies | Adults: to every 100 individuals | Children: to every 100 individuals | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Labourers | Peasants | Well-to-do | Labourers | Peasants | Well-to-do | |
| ... | 4 | 18 | 14 | ... | ... | 12 |
| 1-2 | 56 | 36 | 68 | 18 | 16 | 44 |
| 3-4 | 31 | 26 | 18 | 52 | 68 | 38 |
| 5-6 | 9 | ... | ... | 27 | 13 | 6 |
From which it appears that only 4 per cent. of the labouring class are without malformations, while the peasantry and the well-to-do have from 18 to 14 per cent. Among normal adults there is a preponderance of persons having 1-2 stigmata; while those having 3-4 stigmata are more frequent than those without any at all.
Excepting for a few labourers, there are no normal persons with 5-6 malformations; in fact, this is the number of coexisting malformations that is held to be the test of degeneration, the sign of an abnormal morphological individuality.
Among children, on the contrary, this individual number of malformations (5-6) occurs, even in the wealthy classes, so that the child and the adult cannot be judged by the same standards.
The prevailing number of stigmata among children is 3-4. Therefore, in the course of growth, many of these malformations are eliminated. It should be noted that children without malformations are found only among the prosperous classes and in a rather small percentage (12 per cent.).
Accordingly, social conditions bring about a difference not only in robustness, stature, etc., but also in the degree of beauty which the individual is likely to attain. The social ideal of the establishment of justice for all mankind is consequently at the same time a moral and æsthetic ideal.
Another parallel that it is interesting to draw is that between the most unfortunate social class (the working class) and the degenerates. We have seen that the working class has the highest individual number of stigmata. Rossi compares them with two other categories of persons who are strongly suspected of being degenerates, or who at least must include a notable proportion of degenerates among their number, namely, beggars, as regards the adults, and orphans, as regards the children.
These classes differ in the general frequency of malformations; in fact, the chronic anomalies, taken collectively, give 17 per cent. for the labouring class and 25 per cent. for beggars. But the difference becomes strikingly apparent when we come to consider the individual number of stigmata.
| Anomalies | Labourers (per cent.) | Beggars (per cent.) |
|---|---|---|
| 3-4 | 31 | 41 |
| 5-6 | 9 | 21.3 |
And still greater is the difference between the children of labourers and the orphan children.
FREQUENCY OF ANOMALIES IN CHILDREN (PERCENTAGE)
| Anomalies | Labouring class, pauperism | Orphans, degeneration |
|---|---|---|
| Cranial anomalies in general | 32 | 39 |
| Forehead very low | 16 | 20.8 |
| Alveolar prognathism | 4 | 10 |
| Enlarged mandible | 20 | 25 |
| Plagiocephaly | 16 | 45.8 |
| Prominent cheek-bones | 16 | 41.6 |
| Facial asymmetry | 28 | 35.4 |
| Anomalies of teeth | 24 | 37.5 |
We see therefore that degeneration exerts a most notable influence upon morphological anomalies; it is far more serious than external (social) conditions.
Dr. Ales Hrdlicka, studying the distribution of malformations and deformations among poor children who were inmates of a large New York orphan asylum (634 males and 274 females) distinguishes the morphological anomalies into three categories: Those that are congenital (degeneration); those acquired through pathological causes (diseases), and those acquired through the circumstances of social adaptment, or, as the author expresses it, through habit. And to these he adds still another category of stigmata the causes of which remain uncertain.
If we examine the following extremely interesting table, we see at once that in the case of children the anomalies of form are associated with degeneration and with disease, because the anomalies acquired individually by the child as the result of personal habits are comparatively so few in number as to be quite negligible, and all of them are exclusively in reference to the trunk; in other words, a result of the position assumed on school benches.
As between degeneration and disease, the proportion of anomalies caused by the former is considerably more than double. Hence, the great majority of malformations have their origin, so to speak, outside of the individual, the responsibility resting on the parents.
| Organs regard to which the anomalies occur | Anomalies | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Males | Females | |||||||
| Congenital | Pathological | Acquired through habit | Cause uncertain | Congenital | Pathological | Acquired through habit | Cause uncertain | |
| Head | 74 | 15 | 26 | 10 | ||||
| Periosteum | 1 | |||||||
| Hair | 26 | 2 | 1 | 17 | ||||
| Forehead | 15 | 25 | 1 | 1 | 8 | 1 | ||
| Face | 51 | 68 | 10 | 11 | 17 | 4 | ||
| Eyes | 15 | 6 | ||||||
| Ears | 221 | 88 | ||||||
| Teeth | 67 | 20 | 37 | 19 | 4 | 27 | ||
| Gums | 51 | 7 | 104 | 41 | 3 | 23 | ||
| Palate | 88 | 59 | 81 | 30 | 40 | 44 | ||
| Uvula | 14 | 112 | 6 | 54 | ||||
| Body (bust) | 5 | 54 | 72 | 2 | 3 | 18 | 9 | 1 |
| Limbs | 60 | 14 | 11 | 39 | 4 | 3 | ||
| Genital organs | 275 | 1 | 1 | |||||
| Totals | 873 | 324 | 72 | 390 | 256 | 120 | 9 | 173 |
| Percentage | 40 | 10 | 4 | 18 | 45 | 21 | 1 | 30 |
The greatest number of anomalies due to degeneration occur in connection with the ear, and the genital organs, and next in order come those of the palate, the teeth and the limbs. The maximum number of anomalies due to pathological causes are in connection with the head, and principally with the face; after that, with the palate, and then with the bust.
The anomalies most difficult to diagnose seem to be those relating to the gums, the palate and the uvula, in regard to which it is not easy to determine whether they are due to degeneration or to disease.
In order that we may have a clear understanding regarding malformations, it is well to insist upon still another point: Malformation does not signify deviation from a type of ideal beauty, but from normality.
Now, there are normal forms which are very far from beautiful and which are associated with race. For instance, prognathism, ultra-dolichocephaly, a certain degree of flat-foot, prominent cheek-bones, the Mongolian eye, etc., are all of them characteristics which are regarded by us as the opposite of beautiful, but they are normal in certain races (therefore practical experience is indispensable). These principles which, when thus announced, are perfectly clear, must be extended far enough to include that sum total of individuals whom we are in the habit of calling our race. That we are hybrids, still showing more or less trace of the racial stocks which originally concurred in our formation, is well known, but not clearly enough. The primitive races are more or less evident in different centres of population; for instance, in the large and promiscuous cities, hybridism tends more or less completely, to mask the types of race, producing individual uniformity through an intermixture of characteristics that renders all the people very much alike (civilised races). These are the individuals who form the majority of the population, and whom we are in the habit of regarding as being normally formed. But when we get away from the big centres it may happen, and indeed does happen, that the primitive racial forms or types become more apparent; thus, for example, I found in Latium almost pure racial types at Castelli Romani (dolichocephalics, brunette type, short stature), and at Orte (brachycephalics, blond type, tall stature); the nuclei of population at Castelli were especially pure. Now, as a result of a highly particularised series of observations I found normal forms that were not beautiful in each of these races; thus, for example, in the brunette race, while the face is extremely beautiful and delicate, the hands are coarse, the feet show a tendency toward flat-foot, the breasts are pear-shaped, pendent and abundantly hairy; in the blond type, on the contrary, while the facial lineaments are coarse and quite imperfect, the hands, feet and breasts are marvellously beautiful.
Accordingly, the marks of beauty are distributed in nature among the different races; there is no race in existence that is wholly beautiful, just as there is no individual in existence who is perfect in all his parts.
Furthermore, since there is for every separate characteristic a long series of individual variations, both above and below (see chapters on Biometry and Statistical Methodology), it is very easy to assume that we are on the track of a malformation, when it is really a matter of racial characteristic. And this is all the more likely to constitute a source of error, because the school of Lombroso promulgated the morphological doctrine that a degenerate sometimes shows an exaggeration of ethnical characteristics.
Thus, for example, we meet with ultra-brachycephalics and ultra-dolichocephalics among the criminal classes.
Let us suppose that a teacher who has made a study of anthropology receives an appointment in one or another of the Castelli Romani. Among the normal individuals studied by me, certain ones showed a cephalic index of 70. Now, a teacher accustomed to examine the crania of city children and to find that the limits range more or less closely around mesaticephaly, would be led to assume that he was in the presence of an abnormal individual.
Now, in the places where morphological characteristics of race are most persistent, the social forms are primitive, and so also are the sentiments, the customs and the ethical level, because purity of race means an absence of hybridism, i.e., an absence of intimate communication with human society evolving in the flood-tide of civilisation. Consequently, in addition to the above-mentioned characteristic (ultra-dolichocephaly), the individual would probably show an intellectual inferiority, an inferiority of the ethical tense, etc., and this would serve to strengthen the teacher's first impression. But the normal limits of growth for a given age, the absence of real and actual malformations (for instance, in this case there is probability of facial beauty, etc.), would cause him very quickly to correct his first judgment with a more thoughtful diagnosis. Therefore a study of local ethnical characteristics would be very useful as a basis for pedagogical anthropology, as I have tried to show in one of my works (Importanza della etnologia regionale nell'antropologia pedagogica, "The importance of regional ethnology in pedagogical anthropology").
And this also holds good for the interpretation of true malformations.
We have hitherto been guided in our observation of so-called stigmata by analytical criteria, that is, we have been content with determining the single or manifold malformations in the individual without troubling ourselves to determine their morphological genesis or their genesis of combination.
For example, the ogival palate is a well-known anomaly of form, but in all probability it will occur in an individual whose family has the high and narrow palate that is met with, for instance, as the normal type among the dolichocephalics of Latium; the same may be said in regard to flat-foot, etc. Multifold diastemata and macrodontia will, on the contrary, be more easily met with in families whose palate is wide and low (brachycephalics). And just as certain normal forms or characteristics are found in combination in a single individual (for instance, brachycephaly, fair hair, tall stature, etc.), so it is also in the case of stigmata, which will be found occurring together in one individual, not by chance, but according to the laws of morphological combination, and probably as an exaggeration of (unlovely) characteristics which belong, as normal forms, to the family or race.
There are already a number of authorities on neuropathology, De Sanctis among others, who have noted that there is an ugly family type which sometimes reproduces itself in a sickly member of the family, in such a way as to exaggerate pathologically the unlovely but normal characteristics of the other members, and furthermore, that an exaggeration of unlovely characteristics may increase from generation to generation, accompanied by a disintegration of the psychic personality.
Consequently, a knowledge of the morphological characteristics which in all probability belong to the races from which the subjects to be examined are derived, has a number of important aspects. The literature of anthropology is certainly not rich in racial studies, consequently, I feel that it will not be unprofitable to summarise in the following table the characteristics that distinguish the two racial types encountered by me among the female population of Latium.
TABLE OF THE DIFFERENTIAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE TWO RACIAL TYPES
Brunette Dolichocephalics and Blond Brachycephalics
| Organs to which the characteristics refer | Dolichocephalic, brunette type of low stature | Brachycephalic, blond type of tall stature |
|---|---|---|
| Visage. | Elongated ellipsoidal or ovoidal; fine, delicate lineaments, rounded curves, softly modeled. | Rounded, broad; coarse features; contour frequently angular, especially around the cheek-bones. |
| Eyes. | Large, usually almond-shaped; pigmentation brown, shading from black to chestnut. | Not so large, the form frequently tending to the oblique; the contours of the inner angle of the eye less clear-cut, owing to the plica epicantica. Pigmentation light gray, blue. |
| Nose. | Very leptorrhine; nostrils delicate and mobile. | Leptorrhine, tending toward mesorrhine; sometimes the nose is fleshy, nostrils thick and slightly movable only. |
| Mouth. | Labial aperture small, lips finely modeled and very red. | Labial aperture wide, lips frequently fleshy, and not well modeled. |
| Teeth. | Small, with curved surface, gleaming, almost as wide as long, not greatly dissimilar, "like equal pearls." | Teeth large and flat, enamel dull; difference between incisors, canines, etc., sharply marked. |
| Palate. | Very high and narrow (ogival). | Flat and wide. |
| Profile. | Proopic. | Platyopic. |
| Ear. | Finely modeled, small, delicate. | Often irregular, large, thick. |
| Frontal line of roots of hair. | Very distinct; forehead small. | Indistinct; forehead protuberant. |
| Neck. | Long and slender, flexible. | Short, more or less stocky. |
| Thorax. | Flattened in antero-posterior direction. | Projecting forward. |
| Breasts. | Position low, form tending to pear-shape; nipples slightly raised, aureole broad; often hairy between the breasts. | Position high, breasts round; nipple prominent, aureole small and rose-colored; always hairless. |
| Pelvis and abdomen. | High and narrow; the abdomen becomes prominent toward the thirtieth year, even in unmarried women. | Low and broad; the abdomen does not become prominent. |
| Lumbar curve. | Slightly pronounced; position of buttocks low. | Quite pronounced; position of buttocks high. |
| Limbs. | Distal portion slightly shorter (as compared with the proximal) limbs slender. | Distal portion slightly longer (as compared with the proximal); limbs well endowed with muscles. |
| Hands. | Coarse; palm long and narrow; fingers short. | Delicate, palm broad, fingers long. |
| Fingers. | Short, thick, with flattened extremities; nails flat, not very pink nor very transparent. | Long, tapering; nails with deep placed quicks, rosy and shinning. |
| Palmar and digital papillæ | Coarse; frequently with geometric figures on the finger tips; pallid. | Very fine, rosy and with open designs. |
| Feet. | Big; form tending to flatness. | Small, much arched. |
| Body as a whole. | Slender; slight muscularity. Tendency toward stoutness in old age with deformation of the body. | Beautiful; strong muscle. No tendency toward too much flesh. Furthermore, the body preserves its contours. |
| Complexion. | Brunette and dark. | White. |
| Color of hair. | Black to chestnut. | Blond. |
| Form of hair. | Short, always wavy or curly, fine with ellipsoidal section. | Long, straight, section slightly elliptical and sometimes almost round. |
| Hair on body. | Growth of hair sometimes found on thorax and on the found on thorax and on the legs. | The surface of the body is hairless. |
The Origin of Malformations during Development.—Malformations are a morphological index, and we have already shown that there is a relation between the physical and the psychical personality. A defective physical development tells us that the psychic personality must also have its defects (especially in regard to the intelligence).
Not only degenerates, but even we normal beings, in the conflict of social life, and because of our congenital weaknesses, have felt that we were losing, or that we were failing to acquire the rich possibilities latent in our consciousness, and that vainly formed the height of our ambition. And when this occurred, the body also lost something of the beauty which it might have attained, or rather, it lacked the power to develop it. In the words of Rousseau, "Our intellectual gifts, our vices, our virtues, and consequently our characters, are all dependent upon our organism."
Nevertheless, this interrelation must be understood in a very wide sense, and is modified according to the period of embryonal or extrauterine life at which a lesion or a radical disturbance in development chances to occur. In a treatise entitled The Problems of Degeneration, in which the most modern ideas regarding degeneration are summed up, and new standards of social morality advocated, Brugia gives a most graphic diagram, which I take the liberty of reproducing.
- A fertilized ovum
- B embryo
- C fœtus and new-born child
- D child
From the little black point to the big circle are represented the different stages of embryonal and fœtal development, until we reach the child. In A we have the fertilized ovum. Here it may be said that the new individual does not yet exist; we are at a transition point between two adults (the parents) and a new organism, which is about to develop. Now comes the embryo, which may be called the new individual in a potential state; then the fœtus, in which the human form is at last attained; and lastly the child, which will proceed onward toward the physical and spiritual conquests of human life. But so long as an individual has not completely developed, deviations may occur in his development; but these will be just so much the graver, in proportion as the individual is in a more plastic state.
We should reserve the term degeneration, real and actual, to that which presupposes an alteration at A, i.e., at the time of conception. An alteration all the graver if it antedates A, that is to say, if it preexisted in the ovum and in the fertilizing spermatozoon, i.e., in the parents. In this case, there is no use in talking of a direct educative and prophylactic intervention on behalf of the individual resulting from this conception; the intervention must be directed toward all adult individuals who have attained the power of procreation. And in this consists the greatest moral problem of our times—sexual education and the sentiment of responsibility toward the species. All mankind ought to feel the responsibility toward the posterity which they are preparing to procreate and they ought to lead a life that is hygienic, sober, virtuous, and serene, such as is calculated to preserve intact the treasures of the immortality of the species. There exist whole families of degenerates, whose offspring are precondemned to swell the ranks of moral monsters. These individuals, who result from a wrongful conception, carry within them malformations of the kind known as degenerative, and together with them alterations of the moral sense that are characteristic of degenerates, that is to say, they will be unbalanced (through inheritance) in their entire personality.
Something similar will happen if such a lesion befalls the embryo, i.e., while the individual is still in the potential state (lacking human form). In the fœtus, on the contrary, i.e., the individual who has attained the human form but is still in the course of intrauterine development, any possible lesion, and more especially those due to pathological causes, while they cannot alter the entire personality, may injure that which is already formed, and in so violent a manner as to produce a physical monster, whose deformities may even be incompatible with life (e.g., cleft spine or palate, hydrocephaly, Little's disease, which is a form of paralysis of fœtal origin, and all the teratological (i.e., monstrous) alterations). That is to say, in going from A to C we pass from malformations to deformations; from simple physical alterations of an æsthetic nature to physical monstrosities sometimes incompatible with life itself; while in regard to the psychic life, we find that the remoter lesions (in A) result for the most part in anomalies of the moral sense, while those occurring later (B, C) result for the most part in anomalies of the intellect. So that at one extreme we may have moral monsters, with malformations whose significance can be revealed only through observation guided by science and at the other extreme, physical monsters, whose moral sense is altered only slightly or not at all. Those who suffer injury at A may be intelligent, and employ their intelligence to the malevolent ends inspired by moral madness; those who suffer injury at C or D are harmless monsters, often idiots, or even foredoomed to die. The peril to society steadily diminishes from A to C, while the peril to the individual steadily augments.
Over all these periods so full of peril to human development and so highly important for the future of the species, we may place one single word:
Woman.—Throughout the period that is most decisive for its future, humanity is wholly dependent upon woman. Upon her rests not only the responsibility of preserving the integrity of the germ, but also that of the embryonal and fœtal development of man.
The respect and protection of woman and of maternity should be raised to the position of an inalienable social duty and should become one of the principles of human morality.
To-day we are altogether lacking in a sense of moral obligation toward the species, and hence lacking in a moral sense such as would lead to respect for woman and maternity—so much so, indeed, that we have invented a form of modesty which consists in concealing maternity, in not speaking of maternity! And yet at the same time there are sins against the species that go unpunished, and offenses to the dignity of woman that are tolerated and protected by law!
But even after the child is born and has reached the period of lactation, we should still write across it the words Woman and Mother. The education and the responsibility of woman and of society must be modified, if we are to assure the triumph of the species. And the teachers who receive the child into the school, after its transit through society (in the form of its parents' germs) and through the mother, cannot fail to be interested in raising the social standards of education and morality. Like a priesthood of the new humanity, they should feel it their duty to be practitioners of all those virtues which assure the survival of the human species.
Moral and Pedagogic Problems within the School.—Children when they first come to school have a personality already outlined. From the unmoral, the sickly, the intellectually defective to the robust and healthy children, the intelligent, and those in whom are hidden the glorious germs of genius; from those who sigh over the discomforts of wretchedness and poverty to those who thoughtlessly enjoy the luxuries of life; from the lonely hearted orphan to the child pampered by the jealous love of mother and grandmother:—they all meet together in the same school.
It is quite certain that neither the spark of genius nor the blackness of crime originated in the school or in the pedagogic method! More than that, it is exceedingly probable that the extreme opposite types passed unnoticed, or nearly so, in that environment whose duty it is to prepare the new generations for social adaptation. From this degree of blindness and unconsciousness the school will certainly be rescued by means of the scientific trend which pedagogy is to-day acquiring through the study of the pupil. That the teacher must assume the new task of repairing what is wrong with the child, through the aid of the physician, and of protecting the normal child from the dangers of enfeeblement and deformation that constantly overhang him, thus laying the foundations for a splendid human race, free to attain its foreordained development—all this we have already pointed out, and space does not permit us to expand the argument further.
But, in conclusion, there is one more point over which I wish to pause. If the Lombrosian theory rests upon a basis of truth, what attitude should we pedagogists take on the question of moral education? We are impotent in the face of the fact of the interrelation between physical and moral deformity. Is it then no longer a sin to do evil and no longer a merit to do good? No. But we have only to alter the interpretation of the facts, and the result is a high moral progress pointing a new path in pedagogy. There are, for example, certain individuals who feel themselves irresistibly attracted toward evil, who become inebriated with blood; there are others, on the contrary, who faint at the mere sight of blood and have a horror of evil. There are some who feel themselves naturally impelled to do good, and they do it in order to satisfy a personal desire (many philanthropists) thus deriving that pleasure which springs from the satisfaction of any natural need. In our eyes, all these individuals who act instinctively, though in opposite ways, deserve neither praise nor blame; they were born that way; one of them is physiologically a proletarian, the other is a capitalist of normal human ability. It is a question of birth. When the educator praised the one and punished the other, he was sanctioning the necessary effects of causes that were unknown to him:
"But still, whence cometh the intelligence
Of the first notions man is ignorant,
And the affection of the first allurements
Which are in you as instinct in the bee
To make its honey; and this first desire
Merit of praise or blame containeth not."
(Dante, Longfellow's Translation.)
The instinctive malefactor is not to blame, the blame should rest rather upon his parents who gave him a bad heredity; but these parents were in their turn victims of the social causes of degeneration. The same thing may be said if a pathological cause comes up for consideration in relation, for instance, to certain anomalies of character.
Analogously, he who is born good and instinctively does good deeds, deriving pleasure from them, deserves no praise. There is no vainer sight than is afforded by a person of this sort, living complacently in the contemplation of himself, praised by everyone, and to all practical intent, held up as a contrast to the evil actions of the degenerate and the diseased who act from instinct no more nor less than he does himself. The man who is born physiologically a capitalist assumes high moral obligations; he ought to discipline his nature as a normal man in order to make it serve the general good. And this is not to be accomplished through an instinct to do good, which acts at haphazard, but through the deliberate will to do good, even if the requisite actions bring no immediate satisfaction, but even involve a sacrifice. Society will be ameliorated and rendered moral through the harmonious efforts of good men, trained for the social welfare. Man will become good only when his goodness costs him a voluntary effort.
Hence it will be necessary not to limit ourselves, as has been done in the past, to admiring the man who is born good, but to educate him so as to render him thoughtful, strong and useful; not to condemn the sinner, but to redeem him through education and through a sense of fellowship in the common fault, which is the scientific form of pardon. The degenerate, who succeeds in conquering his sinful instinct and in ceasing to do harm, the normal man who renders himself morally sublime by dedicating his splendid physiological inheritance to the collective good, will be equally meritorious. But what a moral abyss gapes open to divide them! Because it is a short stride at best that the physiological proletariat can take, while for the soul of the normal man an untrammelled pathway lies open toward perfection.
Accordingly the new task of the teacher of the future is a multifold one. He is the artificer of human beauty, the new modeler of created things, just as the sublime chisel of Greek art was the modeler of marbles. And he prepares for greater utilisation the physiological and intellectual forces of the new man, like a Greek deity scattering broadcast his prolific riches.
But above all he prepares the souls for the sublime sentiment which awaits the humanity of the future, glorying in the attainment of peace, and then indeed he becomes almost a redeemer of mankind.