This is simply scientific jargon. It conveys no meaning, and in reality substitutes new and more obscure terms for old and well-understood ones. We are told to reject the “wondrous entity” mind, and to consider instead all so-called mental operations as the outcome of force. In a previous article[[9]] we pointed out the great diversity of meanings annexed to the word force, and proved that none of those who so glibly use it have a clear conception of what it signifies. Mr. Dugdale further accepts the recent materialistic doctrine of Hammond, Vogel, and the so-called modern school of physiologists, who make will a mere matter of cerebral activity and cell-development.
His system of psychology is exceedingly brief and meaningless, and invites the social reformer to deal with the criminal as the watchmaker would deal with a chronometer out of repair, or as a ship-calker would attend to a vessel that had felt and suffered from the hard buffets of the ocean. Now, while we utterly repudiate the doctrine which views the criminal as a mere machine, we do not wish to reject any doctrine or theory which facts sustain, and we accept the doctrine of heredity in the sense we shall shortly mention, and contend that the facts justify its acceptance to no further extent.
In the first place, most people of good sense will admit that environment is a far more potent criminal factor than heredity, and that the constant similarity of environments where heredity exists disqualifies the observer for ascertaining the exact extent to which the latter operates. The children of the vicious for the most part grow up amid the surroundings which made their parents bad, and no child born of the most depraved mother will fail to respond to healthful influences early brought into play, unless an obviously abnormal condition exists. The advocates of heredity in the ordinary sense point to the vast army of criminals propagated from one stock, and claim this to be an incontestable proof of their doctrine. But right in the way of this argument is the fact that it ignores similarity of environment, and that it overlooks the diversity of crimes. If the law of heredity were strictly as stated by many writers, then the burglar would beget children with burglarious instincts, the pickpocket ditto, and so throughout the whole range of crime. But nothing of this sort is the case. The vicious descendant of a sneak-thief is as likely to be a highwayman or a housebreaker as to follow the safer paternal pursuits. No special propensities to commit crime are transmitted, but appetites are transmitted, and appetites beget tendencies and habits. Now, the two appetites which prove to be of most frequent transmission are the erotic and the alcoholic. The erotic precedes the alcoholic, and, indeed, excites it to action. Mr. Dugdale says (p. 37): “The law shadowed forth by this scanty evidence is that licentiousness has preceded the use of ardent spirits, and caused a physical exhaustion that made stimulants grateful. In other words, that intemperance itself is only a secondary cause.” And again: “If this view should prove correct, one of the great points in the training of pauper and criminal children will be to pay special attention to sexual training.”
It would appear, then, from this that heredity chiefly affects the erotic appetite, and through it the entire character. The impure beget the impure, subject to improvement through grace and will-power, and, despite of changed environments, the diseased appetite of the progenitor is apt to assert itself in the descendant, though it is not, of course, so apparent in the matter of the erotic passion as in the alcoholic. These are the facts so far as they justify the view of crime as a neurosis. This conclusion, while harmonizing with the data of observation, renders the solution of the question, What shall we do with criminals? comparatively easy, and points to the best mode of treatment. Until society holds that the virtue of purity is at the bottom of public morality, and that the custom to look indulgently on the wicked courses of young men is essentially pernicious, we cannot hope to begin the work of reform on a sound basis. Corrumpere et corrumpi sœclum vocatur is as true to-day as eighteen hundred years ago, only now we call it “sowing wild oats.” And how is this change to be wrought? By education? Yes, by education, which develops man’s moral character—by that education which gives to the community a Christian scholar, and not a mere intellectual machine. Mr. Richard Vaux, ex-mayor of Philadelphia, who is a believer in Maudsley, and consequently an unsuspected authority, speaks in these significant terms:
“Without attempting to discuss the value of popular instruction for the youth, or to criticise any system of public or private education, we venture to assert that there are crimes which arise directly out of these influences, and which require knowledge so obtained to perpetrate. If the former suggestion be true, that the compression of the social forces induces to crime, then those offences which come from education are only the more easily forced into society by the possessed ability to commit such crimes. If facts warrant this suggestion, then education—meaning that instruction imparted by school-training—is an agent in developing crime-cause.... It is worthy of notice that a far larger number of offenders are recorded as having attended ‘public schools’ than those who ‘never went to school.’”[[10]]
This is a startling exhibit, upheld, it seems, by undeniable figures. Is it possible that the state is engaged in “developing crime-cause,” and that it is for this purpose oppressive school-taxes are imposed? Alas! it is too true. The majority of those who get a knowledge of the three “Rs” in our public schools come forth with no other knowledge. God is to them a distant echo, morality a sham, and they finish their education by gloating over the blood-curdling adventures of pirates and cracksmen in the pages of our weekly papers. Mr. Dugdale proposes some excellent means for the reclamation and reformation of the criminal, but they come tainted, and consequently much impaired, by his peculiar psychical theories. On page 48 he says:
“Now, this line of facts points to two main lessons: the value of labor as an element of reform, especially when we consider that the majority of the individuals of the Juke blood, when they work at all, are given to intermittent industries. The element of continuity is lacking in their character; enforced labor, in some cases, seems to have the effect of supplying this deficiency. But the fact, which is quite as important but less obvious, is that crime and honesty run in the lines of greatest vitality, and that the qualities which make contrivers of crime are substantially the same as will make men successful in honest pursuits.”
These remarks are full of significance and point unmistakably to the necessity of supplying work to the vicious. Hard work is the panacea for crime where healthful moral restraints are absent. The laborer expends will-force and muscular force on his work, and has no inclination for deeds of violence or criminal cunning. But how absurd it is to suppose that, as an educational process, its whole effect consists in the changed development of cerebral cells, and not, as is obviously true, in the fatigue which it engenders! Mr. Dugdale thus sets forth the philosophy of his educational scheme for the reformation of the criminal (p. 49):
“It must be clearly understood, and practically accepted, that the whole question of crime, vice, and pauperism rests strictly and fundamentally upon a physiological basis, and not upon a sentimental or a metaphysical one. These phenomena take place, not because there is any aberration in the laws of nature, but in consequence of the operation of these laws; because disease, because unsanitary conditions, because educational neglects, produce arrest of cerebral development at some point, so that the individual fails to meet the exigencies of civilization in which he finds himself placed, and that the cure for unbalanced lives is a training which will affect the cerebral tissue, producing a corresponding change of career.”
This is downright materialism, and is the result of Mr. Dugdale’s hasty acceptance of certain views put forward by a school of physiologists who imagine that their science is the measure of man in his totality. We admit that crime is closely connected with cerebral conditions, that the brain is the organ of manifestation which the mind employs, and that those manifestations are modified to a considerable extent by the condition of the organ. But this does not interfere with the character of the mind viewed as a distinct entity; indeed, it rather harmonizes with the facts as admitted by the universal sentiment of mankind. Mr. Dugdale makes a fatal mistake when he supposes that a changed cerebral state may be accompanied by a change in the moral character; for it is possible that a chemist may one day discover some substance or combination of substances which might supply the missing cells or stimulate the arrested growth. Man is not a machine; neither is he a mere physiological being. He is a rational animal, consisting of a soul and a body, two distinct substances hypostatically united; and until this truth is recognized no reform can be wrought in the ranks of the criminal classes by even greater men than Mr. Dugdale. If the “whole process of education is the building up of cerebral cells,” admonitions, instructions, and example are thrown away on the vicious. There is naught to do but to “build up cells” and stimulate “arrested cerebral development.” How false is this daily experience proves; for we know that a salutary change of prison discipline often converts brutal and hardened criminals into comparatively good men. Take as an instance what occurred in the Maison de Correction de Nîmes in 1839. This prison was in charge of certain political favorites who were fitter to be inmates than officials. Mismanagement reigned supreme, and the excesses committed by the prisoners can scarcely be believed. The most revolting crimes were done in broad daylight, not only with the connivance but at the instigation of the keepers. At last things had come to such a pass that the government was compelled to interfere, and, having expelled the unworthy men in charge, substituted for them a small band of Christian Brothers under the control of the late venerable Brother Facile, when an amazing change soon ensued. There was no question with the brothers of studying the increase of cerebral cells or stimulating arrested development. They changed the dietary for the better; they separated the most depraved from those younger in crime; they punished with discrimination; they encouraged good conduct by rewards; they set before the convict the example of self-sacrificing, laborious, and mortified lives; and in three weeks they converted this pandemonium into the model prison of France.