Although I have been connected with the board but a short time, I know that he has shot some hard shots at some opinions that leading thinkers have entertained. Take the matter of heredity-I am quite sure if the gentlemen here, or the ladies, were to express themselves as they think, we could get up some argument among ourselves as to whether or not we inherit mental and physical traits from our ancestors. That is a big subject.

I had the pleasure of attending the National Prison Congress, at Jacksonville, Florida, a short time ago and my recollection is that the speakers emphasized the fact that we are not always to blame for our mental condition that we inherit our mental condition to a certain extent from our parents. One theory that Father Powers talked about that impressed me quite a little-we hear the criticism frequently nowadays-is the seeming failure of our courts to mete out justice to all alike. He suggested (if I understood him correctly) that the rich man sometimes gets better treatment from our courts than the poor man-that justice favors the rich, and he calls our attention to the case of Harry Thaw and others. Thaw, after many different kinds of trials and investigations, was given his liberty. For many years past, he has been an inmate of either a private or a public hospital for the insane and there is no doubt but what he was insane when he committed the act for which he was committed.

A short time ago in Chicago, a party by the name of Jean Geary, shot a man. Geary was a hard character and he evidently shot the man without any cause, as he did not know him. A commission of competent men found Geary to be insane. The Chicago Tribune and other papers criticised the failure of justice in that case.

It is fair to assume that both of these men were mentally unbalanced when they committed the crimes they did commit. One was a rich man and one was a poor man, and in my judgment the courts held aright in both cases. Criticism of the judgments of our courts leads to unrest sometimes and probably at times, to crime.

This a big world. We are in troublesome times and the only wonder is that there are not more insane people than there are. I think we ought to be very careful about criticising the processes or judgments of our courts, especially where the criticism may be

read by a large number of people. That is one of the things that may lead to social unrest and help to keep society in a disturbed condition.

Superintendent Witte: I hoped that someone else would keep the discussion alive on this most admirable paper. I have listened with much pleasure to Father Powers' scholarly essay. It, like all great things, is large in suggestion. A great thing, be it a book, or a song, or a bit of music, a painting, or a work of the sculptor's art, is great in what it suggests rather than in what it expresses, and this admirable discussion is full of this. Although I cannot agree with all the ideas expressed, I can but admire the writer of the paper, and his humane, charitable attitude towards a weak and faulty portion of our common humanity.

I had a friend, a member of the first circle of heads of institutions, meeting here at the capitol in conference assembled with the board of control in December, just 23 years ago. Geographically he was my neighbor, and personally he was my friend. I knew him perhaps as well as anybody could. During my association with him, I never heard him say an unkind word of a human being. If anyone was criticising or finding fault with another, he said "Hush! if we knew all as the all-knowing one does, and saw all things as the all-seeing one does, we would have more charity." And this is true. You have all read the story by Mr. Stevenson of Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde. In one body were contained two personalities, the one spiritual and saintly, made in the image of his maker; the other a brute and direct descendant of the "cave man." Now it is a fact that in each of us resides a Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde. It is the cave man in us; Father Powers would say, the "old Adam," struggling with the one made in the image of his maker to prevent him coming to the surface. It does not take very much of a scratch to remove enough spiritual cuticle, metaphorically speaking, to have the cave man come to the surface. This we have seen only too abundantly during the last six or seven years. Conditions have been such that the cave man has had his inning, and it is the other one, made in the image of the Almighty one, who is to hold the restraining hand to keep him down. It is a matter of fact that contrary to an ancient and honorable document, all men

are not born free and equal. Of course the language of the Declaration of Independence to which I refer and the sentiment expressed is admirable; nevertheless we are not alike in the things which have come to us by inheritance any more than we are alike in face. Though we may be constitutionally opposed to view all as "determinism," philosophically speaking, or theologically favor free will or predestination, which I have not the time or inclination to discuss intensively, yet we cannot set aside the fact that we are gifted as well as limited in our mental as well as in our bodily makeup by the influences that have come down to us by inheritance from our native stock. This is not a matter of theory, but of fact, and the material basis for it can be demonstrated by the microscope. The great miracle of the universe is not any larger than that of every new coming into existence of a human being. It is demonstrated that material bearers of influence towards greatness and towards failure meet and commingle from the ancestral stocks entering into this makeup of the individual being. We also know that a considerable portion of the human family do not grow up mentally. They are arrested at a certain stage of their development; whereas the development of the normal human being is completed about the sixteenth year; by education and training it can be improved, increased and expanded, or at least enriched, until the end of life. This under suitable and favoring conditions. Yet perhaps the normal expansion of the individual mentally as well as physically does not proceed much beyond twenty-five or thirty years on an average. What we are to make of it afterwards, that is after adult age, in a great measure remains with us. We can develop and expand the possibilities born with us, but we are hindered and misdirected by the limitations also innate. Now, we know that some people do not grow up to the normal standard attained, say from sixteen to twenty years. These people are arrested in their mental growth sometime prior to and before attaining a normal standard. Say this individual keeps on growing physically, but ceases to develop mentally at nine, ten, eleven, or twelve years-in some the development is arrested before that time. Now this individual, so-called moron, of the higher development, or imbecile of the lower, generally speaking, feebleminded, (I am sure Father Powers has many of them in his

congregation-at least I have observed some of them), has never attained full stature mentally, has never come to full intelligence and the ability to restrain the old Adam, the cave man. This defective individual was born with all his passions and great desires, but without the ability to restrain and control; never had the ability to develop as Dr. Jekyl. He is particularly lacking in judgment in the higher realms of intelligence and in moral sense, and especially lacking in self-control or ability to restrain the old Adam, and he should be judged accordingly.

I do not wish to take up the subject of heredity versus environment, but the fact remains that favorable environment can only bring out and develop the potentialities and tendencies for good-it cannot add one thing to the potentiality itself; evil environment will bring down to collapse the personality for good and develop evil. I look on criminality as one phase of the defective strain which is brought down from defective ancestors, whether they be insane, epileptic, feebleminded or constitutionally inefficient, and which is transmissible from parent so constitutionally laden to his or her offspring. This constitutional weakness of nervous organization is known as degeneracy. It has many expressions occurring, and chronic criminality is one of them. One man so encumbered may go out and shoot another for insufficient or no reason, and think he is justified. He shows an inadequate appreciation of the duties or responsibilities he owes his neighbors. He simply follows his own inclinations and drifts along the lines of least resistance, which tend toward the fulfilment of carnal desire. He is a man without the sense of moral responsibility, because mentally he is undeveloped, though physically he may be in excellent condition.

I think Doctor Mogridge can tell us something about the moral defective who to all intents and purposes appears like the normal individual, and who shows not much difference to the casual observer, but he is defective in the development of the ethical sense or sense of responsibility and duties which he owes his fellows. He does not have the sense of what is right and wrong. He is not able to restrain himself, and he is also lacking in higher motives and ideals, his judgments are of the low order, and he is unable to learn or profit by the experiences of himself or others. He only follows his own inclinations toward pleasure

of the lower order. All of us, you and I, in ninety-nine times out of one hundred, do or want to do the thing we like, and we refrain from doing it because we do not like to do so. It is our feelings for or against the matter of doing or conduct that is involved. It is only in the exceptional instances that we enlist reason, reflection, and the higher elements that make up character in the matter of conduct. The moron, to say nothing of the one still more defective, follows his own inclination; higher judgment does not act as a restraining factor, since he has none. He follows his impulses, when our judgment would stop us from committing an overt or criminal act.

As to the subject of the pair of twins who were so very different in makeup and disposition, it is easily explained by the laws of inheritance as found and developed by the monk, Gregory Mendel, Abbott of Brunn, and which bear his name today. While we do not know all that is to be known about the subject, but perhaps only a small part contained in these laws of inheritance; yet we do know something, and this positively— we know that the individual which tends to Dr. Jekyl is dominant. Everything else being equal, the world is getting better, and the tendency upward in those who have a trend toward evil is also becoming better. And therein lies their hope. In spite of the turmoil and upheaval in the physical and spiritual world of late years, it remains true that that part of man which resembles Mr. Hyde is under the sway of reason and of the elevating and regenerating influence of the saintly part of Dr. Jekyl. It is only under exceptional unfavorable conditions that the cave man may come to the surface. Some day the defective strain, which is "recessive," must run out, defectiveness being used as a general· term for degeneracy. To be openly defective, conditions must be about as follows: It must come from both sides of families, the mothers and the fathers. Then in a family so encumbered by constitutional inheritable instability of the nervous system, on an average one out of four can become openly defective, insane epileptic, feebleminded or delinquent, or have some other form of nervous inadequacy. In a family where the ability to transmit the defective strain exists in the father and the mother, in four children, one will be apparently normal and incapable of