6. The intermarried branches show a preponderance of females.
7. The illegitimate branches produced a preponderance of males.
8. The apparent anomaly presents itself that the illegitimate criminal branches show collateral branches which are honest and industrious.
We here find a most curious and interesting history and an epitome of conclusions which challenges serious consideration. That the family of the “Jukes” was more vicious than their neighbors whose surroundings were similar cannot be disputed, and the question arises, What was there peculiar and exceptional in their case that made the fact to be such? The habits of life of the immediate descendants of Max were bad in the extreme, but partly forced upon them by environments. These people dwelt in mud-built cabins, with but one apartment, which served all the purpose of a tenement. Here they slept and ate, and of course privacy was rendered entirely impossible. Decency and modesty were out of the question, and the anomaly of whole families utterly bereft of all regard for domestic morals began to exhibit itself. We will now lay down a fundamental principle, by the light of which we hope to be able to solve the knotty question of this intense perversity of a series of blood-related generations, and Mr. Dugdale himself will furnish the proofs.
Early impurity beyond all other causes warps the moral sense, blunts the delicacy of womanly modesty, dims the perception of the difference between right and wrong—in a word, is quickest to sear the conscience. Crimes of violence, crimes of any sort, which are not traceable to this origin are outbursts of momentary distemper; but impurity of the sort mentioned lays the foundation of an habitual aptitude to commit the worst crimes, as though the tendency to do so were inborn and natural. Let us examine the facts as exhibited in the history of the Jukes family. Throughout the six generations studied by Mr. Dugdale he found 162 marriageable women, including, as facts required him to do, some of very tender years. Of these 84 had lapsed from virtue at some time or other. This is an enormous percentage compared with the police returns of our most crowded seaboard cities. Among the Jukes women 52.40 per cent. were fallen women. In New York, London, Paris, and Liverpool the highest calculation does not exceed 1.80. If such was the moral status of the female portion of the family, it is not difficult to conceive what a low ebb morals among the males must have reached. The more closely we look into the facts recorded by Mr. Dugdale, the more irresistible becomes the conclusion that these moral pariahs yielded themselves up without restraint to every excess from the moment sexual life dawned upon them, and blushed not to commit crimes which do not bear mention. In the record of their lives we meet at every line expressions which brand these people as the modern representatives of the wicked ones who 3,700 years ago shrivelled in the fire of God’s anger on the plains of the Dead Sea. Indeed, the fact that the infamous practices which made the “Jukes” family notorious are the beginning of an utter loss of conscience has been long recognized by Catholic theologians, who, while admitting that loss of faith is a more serious loss than that of purity, contend that the latter is more degrading, more profoundly disturbs the moral nature of man, and speedily blinds him to the perception of every virtue. Many more facts might be adduced in support of this proposition, both from the pages of Mr. Dugdale and the various reports of our reformatory and punitive institutions, but what has been said will no doubt be deemed sufficient.
If, then, it be admitted that a corrupt life begun in early youth and continued for a long time is the broadest highroad to crime, it is interesting to enquire how far so-called criminal heredity is influenced by the transmission of impure propensities. It has become the fashion of late days to allow to hereditary influence a vast importance in the discussion and management of crime, so that there is danger even that the criminal will be led to look upon himself as naturally, and consequently unavoidably, vicious, and that society ought not to visit upon him the penalty of his misdeeds any more than it should punish the freaks of a madman. Dr. Henry Maudsley, in his recent work entitled Responsibility in Mental Disease, holds language startling enough to make every inmate of Sing Sing to-day regard himself as one against whom the grossest injustice had been done. He says:
“It is certain, however, that lunatics and criminals are as much manufactured articles as are steam-engines and calico-printing machines, only the processes of the organic manufactory are so complete that we are not able to follow them. They are neither accidents nor anomalies in the world, in the universe, but come by law and testify to causality; and it is the business of science to find out what the causes are and by what laws they work. There is nothing accidental, nothing supernatural, in the impulse to do right or in the impulse to do wrong—both come by inheritance or by education; and science can no more rest content with the explanation which attributes one to the grace of heaven and the other to the malice of the devil than it could rest content with the explanation of insanity as a possession by the devil. The few and imperfect investigations of the personal and family histories of criminals which have yet been made are sufficient to excite some serious reflections. One fact which is brought strongly out by these inquiries is that crime is often hereditary; that just as a man may inherit the stamp of the bodily features and characters of his parents, so he may also inherit the impress of their evil passions and propensities; of the true thief, as of the true poet, it may indeed be said that he is born, not made. That is what observation of the phenomena of hereditary [sic] would lead us to expect; and although certain theologians, who are prone to square the order of nature to their notions of what it should be, may repel such doctrine as the heritage of an immoral in place of a moral sense, they will in the end find it impossible in this matter, as they have done in other matters, to contend against facts.”
We have quoted the words of Dr. Maudsley at some length, in order to show to what unjustifiable lengths the recent advocates of heredity are inclined to go.
The argument employed by Dr. Maudsley is very weak—happily so, indeed; for were his conclusions correct man’s misdeeds would be neither punishable nor corrigible, any more than the blast of the tempest which strews the shore with wrecks and desolation. They would be the necessary outcome of his constitution. The trouble is that Dr. Maudsley pushes to excess a doctrine which has in it much that is true. We do not deny the doctrine of hereditary impulses; we know that some are more prone to evil than others, that the moral lineaments are often transmitted from parent to child to no less an extent than physical traits and resemblances; but we know that free will remains throughout, and that, no matter how strong the impulse to do a certain act may be, the power to resist is unquestionable. Habit and association may render the will practically powerless, but, unless a man has lost the attributes of his race, he never becomes absolutely irreclaimable. The allusion to grace and diabolical temptation is, to say the least, stupid. Dr. Maudsley knows as much about the matter, to all appearances, as the inhabitants of Patagonia. No theologian deserving the name ever asserted that man is swayed to good by grace alone, or equally moved to evil by the spirit of darkness, without any will-activity. The doctrine would be just as subversive of free-will and moral order as Dr. Maudsley’s, and consequently as absurd. The truth is that man’s will has been weakened by his fall (labefactata ac debilitata), is weaker in some than in others, but never becomes extinct, unless where the abnormal condition of insanity occurs. We regret that Mr. Dugdale accepts Dr. Maudsley as an authority and quotes approvingly the following words:
“Instead of mind being a wondrous entity, the independent source of power and self-sufficient cause of causes, an honest observation proves incontestably that it is the most dependent of all natural forces. It is the highest development of force, and to its existence all the lower natural forces are indispensably prerequisite.”