"True, but I suppose you are leading to something else?"
"Yes! The introduction is necessary. Given then these two divisions of human life, and, I submit it to you, is it not curious that the physical has received a hundred times as much study as has the psychical? With myself it has been different. I have studied both together, because I have ever found them together. I argued that I could never fully comprehend the one, without an equal knowledge of the other. So I know as much about the psychical side of life as I do of the physical."
"Then you must know a great deal!"
"I do! In the beginning of my career I grasped one truth, which seems to have escaped the majority. The secrets of Nature are simple. We do not discover the mysteries, because we think them more mysterious than they are. The key to the knowledge of Nature's methods is in her analogies. All natural laws operate on parallel lines, because the aim of all is the same; evolution towards perfection. Thus, in studying the psychical, I had but to master the physical and then discover the analogy which exists between the two."
"And you claim to have done this?"
"In a great measure. Leon, before he dies, will achieve more than I, because he will begin where I shall be compelled to abandon my work. But I have accomplished more than any other mortal man, and that is a gratifying thought, to an egotist. There is but one phase of this subject which I wish to submit to you. I have explained the germ theory of disease. I will now announce to you the germ theory of crime."
"The germ theory of crime?" asked the Judge, utterly amazed. "Do you mean that crime is produced by bacteria? As a jurist, I certainly will be interested in your new doctrine."
"You do not yet grasp my meaning. It is manifestly impossible that bacteria, which are living parasites, could affect the moral side of a man. I have said that the secret is in analogy; the two germs, the physical and the psychical, are not identical. But I will start your thought in the right direction, when I say that all forms of vice and crime are diseases, as much as scarlet fever or small-pox. It is a curious fact that many great secrets which have escaped the individual have been recognized by the multitude. Many expressions in the language, which are counted as metaphorical, are truly exponents of unrecorded facts. One says that a girl has died of a 'broken heart,' without suspecting that disappointed love has been known to cause an actual heart rupture, demonstrable by post-mortem examination. So, to return to my subject, people say that an immoral man has 'a diseased imagination,' without realizing that they state the exact condition from which he suffers."
"Why, if such were the case, it would be improper to punish criminals!" Such an idea seemed rank heresy to the Judge.
"It is entirely wrong to punish criminals. We should however imprison them, because they are dangerous to the community. But their incarceration should be precisely similar to the forcible confinement of individuals suffering with diseases which threaten to become epidemic, and for very similar reasons. First, to endeavor to effect their cure, and second, and most important, to prevent the spread of the malady."