But when all is said and done, when the main sources of crime are recognized and controlled, when sound sociology unites with Christianity as the basis of management in every prison, when the "criminal type" of Lombroso has been finally consigned to the limbo of exploded theories, crime will still be with us, simply because human nature is human nature; and whatever else human nature may be it is a violent explosive, whether we agree with Saint Paul as to "the old Adam" or believe with the evolutionist that we are slowly emerging from the brute and that the beast of prey still sleeps within us—not sleeping but rampant in men and women allied in white-slave traffic and in those responsible for the wholesale slaughter of mankind and the destruction of property caused by war. Nothing short of the complete regeneration of human nature can banish crime; and after we who call ourselves "society" have done our best human nature will continue to break out in lawless acts. As long as we have poverty in our midst desperate want will revolt in desperate deeds, and poverty we shall have until the race has reached a higher average of thrift and efficiency, and industrial conditions are developed on a basis of fairness to all; and where there is a weak link in the moral nature of a man undue pressure of temptation, brought to bear on that link, will cause it to break, even while in his heart the man may be hungering and thirsting for righteousness. When the science of eugenics has given its helping hand it will still be baffled by the appearance of the proverbial black sheep in folds where heredity and environment logically should have produced snowy fleece; and who among us dare assert that no infusion of bad blood discolors his own tangled ancestry?
All the evils of poverty, vice, and crime are but expressions of imperfection of the human nature common to us all. The warp of the fabric is the same, various as are the colors and tones, and the strength of the threads of which the individual lives are woven. Whether or not we realize it, all our efforts toward social reform indicate a growing consciousness of the oneness of humanity.
With all our imperfections, is not human nature sound at heart? Do we not love that which seems to us good and hate the apparent evil? We do not realize the insidious working of evil in ourselves; but when it is revealed to us objectively, when it is thrown into relief by an outbreak of evil deeds in others, our healthy instinctive impulse is to crush it. Surely back of the religious and the legal persecutions has been the desire to exterminate apparent evil; that desire is still with us but we are learning better methods of handling it than to unleash the bloodhounds of cruelty. We are beginning to understand that evil can be conquered only by good.
As the words of the Founder of Christianity first led me into my prison experience, after all these years of study of the subject I find myself coming out at the same door wherein I went, and believing that every theory of social reform, including all the 'ologies, resolves itself in the last analysis to a wise conformity to the Golden Rule. On the fly-leaf of a little note-book which I carried when visiting the penitentiary were pencilled these words: "The Christian religion is the ministry of love and common sense," and I have lived to see the teaching of Christianity forming the basis of prison reform, and science clasping the hand of religion in this relation of man to man. Henceforth I shall believe that nothing is too good to be true, not even the coming of universal peace.
FOOTNOTE:
[16] The relation of the criminal to the defective and the insane had been clear to me for many years, and I could not understand the disregard of the courts to any fact so obvious to the student of the three classes. But most valuable work in this line is now being done by Dr. J. M. Hickson, of the psychological laboratory operated in connection with the Chicago municipal court, and the results of his tests of the mentality of young criminals are now commanding attention. Dr. Hickson unhesitatingly declares the need of reform in our laws and our courts. The existence of this psychopathic laboratory is largely due to Judge Olson, of Chicago, a man of most advanced views on penology, and a practical humanitarian.