In short, the idea of wrong, of which the idea of degeneracy is a phase, partakes of the same uncertainty that belongs to its antithesis, the idea of right. Both are expressions of an ever-developing, always selective life, and share in the indeterminateness that necessarily goes with growth. They assume forms definite enough for the performance of their momentous practical functions, but always remain essentially plastic and variable.
Concerning the causation of degeneracy, we may say, as of every aspect of personality, that its roots are to be looked for somewhere in the mingling of hereditary and social factors from which the individual life springs. Both of these factors exhibit marked variation; men differ in their natural traits very much as other animals do, and they also find themselves subject to the varying influences of a diversified social order. The actual divergences of character and conduct which they exhibit are due to the composition of these two variables into a third variable, the man himself.
In some cases the hereditary factor is so clearly deficient as to make it natural and justifiable to regard heredity as the cause; in a much larger number of cases there is good reason to think that social conditions are more particularly to blame, and that the original hereditary outfit was fairly good. In a third class, the largest, perhaps, of all, it is practically impossible to discriminate between them. Indeed, it is always a loose way of speaking to set heredity and environment over against each other as separable forces, or to say that either one is the cause of character or of any personal trait. They have no separate existence after personal development is under way; each reacts upon the other, and every trait is due to their intimate union and co-operation. All we are justified in saying is that one or the other may be so aberrant as to demand our special attention.
Congenital idiocy is regarded as hereditary degeneracy, because it is obvious that no social environment can make the individual other than deficient, and we must work upon heredity if we wish to prevent it. On the other hand, when we find that certain conditions, like residence in crowded parts of a city, are accompanied by the appearance of a large per cent. of criminality, among a population whom there is no reason to suppose naturally deficient, we are justified in saying that the causes of this degeneracy are social rather than hereditary. The fact probably is, in the latter case, that the criminality is due to the conjunction of degrading surroundings with a degree of hereditary deficiency that a better training would have rendered harmless, or at least inconspicuous; but, practically, if we wish to diminish this sort of degeneracy, we must work upon social conditions.
A sound mental heredity consists essentially in teachability, a capacity to learn the things required by the social order; and the congenital idiot is degenerate by the hereditary factor alone, because he is incapable of learning these things. But a sound heredity is no safeguard against personal degeneracy; if we have teachability all turns upon what is taught, and this depends upon the social environment. The very faculties that lead a child to become good or moral in a good environment may cause him to become criminal in a criminal environment; it is all a question of what he finds to learn. It may be said, then, that of the four possible combinations between good and bad heredity and good and bad environment, three—bad heredity with bad or good environment, and good heredity with bad environment—lead to degeneracy. Only when both elements are favorable can we have a good result. Of course, by bad environment in this connection must be understood bad in its action upon this particular individual, not as judged by some other standard.
As the social surroundings of a person can be changed, and his hereditary bias cannot, it is expedient, in that vast majority of cases in which causation is obscure, to assume as a working hypothesis that the social factor is at fault, and to try by altering it to alter the person. This is more and more coming to be done in all intelligent treatment of degeneracy.
As a mental trait, marking a person off as, in some sense, worse than others in the same social group, degeneracy appears to consist in some lack in the higher organization of thought. It is not that one has the normal mental outfit plus something additional, called wrong, crime, sin, madness, or the like, but that he is in some way deficient in the mental activity by which sympathy is created and by which all impulses are unified with reference to a general life. The criminal impulses, rage, fear, lust, pride, vanity, covetousness, and so on, are the same in general type as those of the normal person; the main difference is that the criminal lacks, in one way or another, the higher mental organization—a phase of the social organization—to which these impulses should be subordinate. It would not be very difficult to take the seven deadly sins—Pride, Envy, Anger, Sloth, Covetousness, Gluttony, and Lust—and show that each may be regarded as the undisciplined manifestation of a normal or functional tendency. Indeed, as regards anger this was attempted in a previous chapter.
“To describe in detail the different varieties of degeneracy that are met with,” says Dr. Maudsley, “would be an endless and barren labor. It would be as tedious as to attempt to describe particularly the exact character of the ruins of each house in a city that had been destroyed by an earthquake: in one place a great part of the house may be left standing, in another place a wall or two, and in another the ruin is so great that scarcely one stone is left upon another.”[[105]]
In the lowest phases mental organization can hardly be said to exist at all: an idiot has no character, no consistent or effective individuality. There is no unification, and so no self-control or stable will; action simply reflects the particular animal impulse that is ascendent. Hunger, sexual lust, rage, dread, and, in somewhat higher grades, a crude, naïve kindliness, are each felt and expressed in the simplest manner possible. There can, of course, be little or no true sympathy, and the unconsciousness of what is going on in the minds of other persons prevents any sense of decency or attempt to conform to social standards.
In the higher grades we may make the distinction, already suggested in speaking of egotism, between the unstable and the rigid varieties. Indeed, as was intimated, selfishness and degeneracy are of the same general character; both being defined socially by a falling short of accepted standards of conduct, and mentally by some lack in the scope and organization of the mind.