For threatened retrogression none are more responsible than those who have known better, but who, willy-nilly for a price, have shunted public thought from facing actual conditions, to an abiding faith in the reverse of all of human experience. Hence the drifting with the flood tide of those conditions; and hence the miserable mix of the moment.
Take just one more gem, illustrative of the kind of self-contradictory stuff which the public has purblindly swallowed. It is out of the scrambled brain of one who assumes to see reformatively from “the hill of vision.”
(1) Pro: “If other men, living under the same conditions, succeed in maintaining their integrity, what excuse can the criminal claim for his failure to do the same?”
(2) Con: “In conclusion, the criminal is a man whose faculties are not well balanced. ‘Just as the twig is bent, the tree’s inclined.’”
Broadly speaking, the “conclusion” is correct; but observe that it fights the companion question, tooth and nail. First off, the average man does not carry the handicap of congenital predisposition to thieve, as do most of instinctive thieves. As a “twig,” he was not “bent” and “inclined” that way. Secondly, “other men” had not “lived under the same conditions”; so the positive case is at once cleared of the cardinal hypothesis. And thirdly, since the criminal of the class indicated “is a man whose faculties are not well balanced”; and since “Just as the twig is bent the tree’s inclined,” he has at least two-fold limited excuse for his oblique thoughts and deeds, likewise claim upon our commiseration.
Examples of the kind given could be multiplied indefinitely; indeed, it is the exception to come upon socio-criminological writing that will stand up, even under large-lens analysis.
Thoughtless plungers, with their half-baked opinions, we have a’plenty; idiosyncratics are, of course, irrepressible, since like the true criminal, “their faculties are not well balanced”; the self-seeking advertiser never misses a throw no matter how cheap; purse-packing politicians play the penological game for the “rake off”; hectic emotionalists berate those who do not see with eyes blind to the wide-open machinations of criminal malingerers; kindergarten panaceas are seriously advanced as means by which to stop death-dealing bandits; and a dash of the seasoning of the conglomerate mess is done by every dilettante who has worried through the like of Freud’s “dream” stuff.
It wouldn’t occur to a bookkeeper that he could remove his coat and weld a better joint than can a blacksmith; nor to a lawyer that he could lay brick to line with a journeyman mason; but any man or woman who has fondled a fetich of reform, backed by the most casual knowledge of, and contact with criminals, has been cock sure of call to draw plans and specifications for seasoned criminologists to follow.
Therefore the game of penology has attracted and held very few big men, who have refused a vocation in which one must constantly adjust, then readjust, to the dissonant tinkling of little bells, rung by individuals who cannot be brought to listen for the fundamental tones of reform. And therefore puerile, patch-quilt prison methods, with rivalry between single-seeing cults as to which could place the greatest emphasis on bizarre banalities.
“All of true force is silent.” If you know baseball to its vitals, sit in the grand stand and test out that truism; observe there how the mouthy “fan” will miscall the turn, both on the player and the play. Observe, also, how the real student of the game is too busy following the finesse of the general play around the whole circuit, to be led into a Dervish dance over outstanding features. And observe that while “stars” may “twinkle,” it is the evenly-balanced team, and team work that nails the pennant to the staff.