Hath nature that in time would venom breed.
An illustration of the policy at least (we do not say the justice) of preventive measures in such cases, is shown in the case of a woman in America, of whom the world may fairly say what Father Paul remarked to gentle Alice Brown; it 'never knew so criminal a family as hers.' A young woman of remarkably depraved character, infested, some seventy years since, the district of the Upper Hudson. At one stage of her youth she narrowly, and somewhat unfortunately, escaped death. Surviving, however, she bore many children, who in turn had large families, insomuch that there are now some eighty direct descendants, of whom one-fourth are convicted criminals, whilst the rest are drunkards, lunatics, paupers, and otherwise undesirable members of the community.
With facts such as these before us, we cannot doubt that in whatever degree variability may eliminate after awhile peculiar mental or moral tendencies, these are often transmitted for many generations before they die out. If it be unsafe to argue that the responsibility of those inheriting special characteristics is diminished, the duties of others towards them may justly be considered to be modified. Other duties than the mere personal control of tendencies which men may recognise in themselves are also introduced. If a man finds within himself an inherent tendency towards some sin, which yet he utterly detests, insomuch that while the spirit is willing the flesh is weak or perchance utterly powerless, he must recognise in his own life a struggle too painful and too hopeless to be handed down to others. As regards our relations to families in which criminal tendencies have been developed, either through the negligence of those around (as in certain dens in London where for centuries crime has swarmed and multiplied), or by unfortunate alliances, we may 'perceive here a divided duty.' It has been remarked that 'we do not set ourselves to train tigers and wolves into peaceful domestic animals; we seek to extirpate them,' and the question has been asked, 'why should we act otherwise with beings, who, if human in form, are worse than wild beasts?' 'To educate the son of a garotter or a "corner-man" into an average Englishman,' may be 'about as promising a task as to train one of the latter into a Newton or a Milton.' But we must not too quickly despair of a task which may be regarded as a duty inherited from those who in past generations neglected it. There is no hope of the reversion of tiger or wolf to less savage types, for, far back as we can trace their ancestry, we find them savage of nature. With our criminal families the case is not so utterly hopeless. Extirpation being impossible (though easily talked of) without injustice which would be the parent of far greater troubles even than our criminal classes bring upon us, we should consider the elements of hope which the problem unquestionably affords. By making it the manifest interest of our criminal population to scatter, or, failing that, by leaving them no choice in the matter, the poison in their blood may before many generations be eradicated, not by wide-spreading merely, but because of the circumstance that only the better sort among them would have (when scattered) much chance of rearing families as well as of escaping imprisonment.
FOOTNOTES:
[15] It is said by Ribot that of all the features the nose is the one which heredity preserves best.
[16] Shakspeare, who was bald young (and, so far as one can judge from his portraits, had a good set of teeth), suggests a correlation between hairiness and want of wit, which is at least likely to be regarded by those who 'wear his baldness while they're young' as a sound theory. 'Why,' asks Antipholus of Syracuse, 'is Time such a niggard of hair, being, as it is, so plentiful an excrement?' 'Because,' says Dromio of Syracuse, 'it is a blessing that he bestows on beasts; and what he hath scanted men in hair he hath given them in wit.'
[17] While penning the above lines I have been reminded of an experience of my own, which I had never before thought of as connected with the subject of heredity; yet it seems not unlikely that it may be regarded as a case in point. During the infancy of my eldest son it so chanced that the question of rest at night, and consequently the question of finding some convenient way of keeping the child quiet, became one of considerable interest to me. Cradle-rocking was effective but carried on in the usual way prevented my own sleep, though causing the child to sleep. I devised, however, a way of rocking the cradle with the foot, which could be carried on in my sleep, after a few nights' practice. Now it is an odd coincidence (only, perhaps) that the writer's next child, a girl, had while still an infant a trick which I have noticed in no other case. She would rock herself in the cradle by throwing the right leg over the left at regular intervals, the swing of the cradle being steadily kept up for many minutes, and being quite as wide in range as a nurse could have given. It was often continued when the child was asleep.
Since writing the above, I have learned from my eldest daughter, the girl who as a child had the habit described, that a recent little brother of hers, one of twins, and remarkably like her, had the same habit, rocking his own cradle so vigorously as to disturb her in the next room with the noise. These two only of twelve children have had this curious habit; but as this child is thirteen years younger than she is, the force of the coincidence in point of time is to some degree impaired.
[18] See my Science Byeways, p. 337 et seq.