If the atavist is "wicked," the shark, and the wolf, and the adder are "wicked."
To say that the atavistic man has "reason" is no answer; he has not the kind of reason that makes for peace and order. His misfortune just lies in the fact that he is "bred back" to the kind of reason which, amongst the cave-men, perhaps, made a man a leader, or a hero, but amongst civilised Western people makes him a "born criminal."
I said before, that to blame a Spaniard for being proud is to blame him for being born of Spanish parents. It is just as true to say that to blame a man for being a "born criminal" is to blame him because some of his baser ancestors have accidentally passed on to him the traits of their lower natures.
Indeed, it is plainly absurd to blame a man for being "born" anything, since he had no hand nor part in his birth.
All we can do with regard to the "born criminal" is to pity him for his unhappy inheritance, and try to make the best of him. So far we have never tried to make the best of him; but have usually made almost the worst of him, by meeting his hate with our hate, his ignorance with our ignorance, his ferocity with our ferocity. Nature, or God, having cursed the poor wretch with a heritage of shame, we have come forward, in the name of humanity and justice, to punish and execrate him for his fatal mischoice of ancestors. It is as though we should flog a gorilla or a hyæna for having wickedly refused to be born a Canon of St. Paul's, or a Primitive Methodist Sunday school teacher.
But some will suppose that the "born criminal" might be a sober, law-abiding, and God-fearing man, "if he would try"; and they do not understand that the man with the atavistic brain cannot try.
He has not got the kind of brain that can try to be what we think he ought to be. We do not expect the bear to "try" to be polite, nor the hog to "try" to be cleanly. We know they cannot try to be either of those things. Neither can the atavistic man try to be something for which his nature was not made.
What is sauce for the atavist is sauce for the degenerate. He also is the victim of cruel fate. He also inherits misfortune, or shame, or disaster from his fathers. His nature is not a casting back to an ancient type: it is a nature poisoned, maimed, perverted, or spoiled through the vices or the diseases of those who brought him into the world.
The degenerate may inherit from a diseased or drunken parent an imperfect mind or an imperfect body. He may be born with a weak moral sense, or with weak lungs, or with an ill-balanced brain.
Proneness to crime or proneness to disease may be born in him through no fault of his own. The cause is the same in both cases: the vice or disease of a parent.