have been accustomed to familiarity with merely animal conduct of parents and companions, who have never been trained to modesty, and who are corrupted by all they see from infancy, should yield to the powerful impulse of the race? There is no mystery in the origin of licentiousness, secret vice, and prostitution when we know the early surroundings of many juvenile offenders.

Deep in us all, and the foundation of all worthy ambition, is the elementary desire to be respected, honored, esteemed. The appreciation of onlookers keeps alive the "infirmity of noble minds," and even the saint looks forward with yearning and hope to the plaudit "well done." This same desire, in excess, or ignorantly directed, becomes vanity, or ambition to gain distinction among desperadoes.

Resentment and the sense of justice have a part to play in holding men to duty. In its perversion these same instinctive reactions against those who hurt and threaten us, or balk our satisfactions, become hate and revenge.

What Ferriani calls "egoism" is not any one particular vice, but simply the natural impulse of self-assertion and self-gratification unbalanced by cultivated affections, sympathies, and social justice.

Deceit, lying in all its forms, is the means by which the selfish hopes to remove obstacles in the way of his satisfactions, or ward off pains and punishments, or secure the means of pleasure.

From these elementary, undisciplined, and perverted passions come assaults on women and girls, poisoning or stabbing of rivals, theft, robbery, fraud.

Conditions. If we look at those youths who find their way to industrial and reform schools in consequence of committing violations of the criminal code, we may learn from measurements and other tests that they are, on the average, physically and mentally inferior to other children. In weight, stature, vital force, muscular energy, intellectual ability, and moral development they fall below the average of children of the same neighborhood and industrial group.

If we go into their homes, we discover that, on the average, their

surroundings have been defective, physically and morally. The parents seem to be feeble, lack self-control and power to restrain and direct their children. Hereditary weakness is further shown in the average early death of parents, and thus the children are thrown upon the world, inferior in strength and without direction.

If we extend our investigations to their neighborhood, we find that it has, on the average, exerted an unwholesome influence. The slums of cities breed juvenile offenders.

Inquiring into their educational opportunities, we find that, in the main, they are without physical and technical training. They have no industrial habits, have not been accustomed to steady labor, and hence are unfit for competing with the strong and disciplined.

Illegitimate children are at a special disadvantage, since they are not only exposed to all the unfavorable conditions attending birth, but lack parental care and affection.

Orphans are frequent in a population of reform schools, and their waywardness may often be traced to early neglect and poverty, with consequent temptations to theft or prostitution.

Statistics indicate that the foster-care of step-mothers is deficient in affection, tact, and patience, and that demoralization and vagrancy follow the loss of the real mother. Deserted children and the offspring of habitual criminals have imperfect chance in life and tend to drift into the ways of vice.

Economic conditions are unfavorable with this class. The parents are ill fed, and the children are deprived of proper nourishment, clothing, and shelter. The waifs, newsvenders, bootblacks, telegraph messengers and others engaged in irregular employments, with the street for their school, naturally furnish a heavy contingent to the army of juvenile offenders. They grow up without education and without trades, until they are too old to learn, and then they are cast adrift.

Turn now to the second generation of the family. The diseased, the vicious, the criminal have children, and the parents influence the fortunes of their offspring in two ways: by heredi

tary transmission of weakness, bias, disposition; and also by evil example, instruction, and training. The children of a base environment and defective stock have a fatuous attraction for each other, tend to intermarry, and thus accumulate upon the heads of their doomed descendants all their traits and tendencies. Degeneration takes place not only in the individual, but in the family.

6. Hypnotism in Relation to Crime. One question of some interest in this discussion of causes is: Can a person of normal nature and moral character be induced to perform criminal acts under the suggestive power of an unscrupulous man? The matter is much debated, and as yet we have no results of a decisive character. The courts thus far do not seem to recognize hypnotism as a probable explanation of a criminal act. But the influence of suggestion over susceptible persons, both by good and evil men of strong personality, is too obvious to ignore, and the whole subject merits the deep and general interest which it has awakened among the investigators of psychology.

CHAPTER III.

THE CRIMINAL BEFORE THE LAW.

1. The Relation of Criminal Law to Sociology. - Sociology formulates the conditions of social welfare. Life itself, the nature of the universe, ultimately determines what is good for mankind ; but the sociologist surveys the totality of human relations and conditions, and thus determines what is to be declared good, what is to be sought by all available means. The race-preserving instincts and the ethical impulses are the earlier formulations of duty, and sometimes these are wiser than the results of elaborate calculation. But all reflective men seek to consider the sum of forces and relations with reference to the best possible arrangement in a community, at least the conduct which is tolerable and consistent with general order and happiness. All this lies deeper than legislation. The conduct which becomes illegal must first be recognized as evil or hurtful to the people. Social conditions are changing; there are new standards, new evils, new methods of business, which must affect the statute books and decisions of courts. The discovery of the novel factors in life is made by direct study of society, not by study of law books.

Thus sociology rationally formulates standards for defining and judging antisocial conduct. Ordinarily the more thoughtful men of experience do this work of criticism without consideration of any particular science, simply by applying traditional moral maxims to the situation. But there is need of an intermediate stage of reflection; there is need of a science of society which will test even the ethical sentiments themselves by the standard of facts, at the points where those sentiments seem to demand concrete actions, habits, or customs.

Sociology, having made a general survey of the customs and institutions of society, assigns the task of each institution. The reaction of a community against antisocial persons and its system of defence are far wider than the mechanism of penal law. Many of the arrangements and devices of business and industry are made to check egoistic conduct, as books, accounts, auditors, securities, private watchmen, detectives, supervisors, and foremen. In every residence the citizen introduces protective devices, as bolts, bars, locks. There is social censorship, ostracism, repulsion, and a thousand nameless ways of inflicting punishment on disagreeable and selfish or cruel men. There are voluntary associations which act with and even before criminal law, as citizens' leagues, to secure improved legislation, to enforce laws, and bring offenders to justice, to educate public sentiment, to study the phenomena of crime and vice, and apply the teachings of science to institutions of law.

Government naturally assumes the most obvious and conscious functions in relation to crime; but family, church, school, and many other forms of association must carry part of the burden, and do for the community what the ponderous machinery of government cannot accomplish.

Criminal law is a branch of jurisprudence, and to it must be assigned the duty of working out for each age a detailed and adequate treatment of the social mechanism which is constructed for the purpose of social protection.

In this chapter we shall attempt to sketch, with special reference to the United States, the institutional mechanism for the treatment of antisocial classes, and indicate the bearing of criminal sociology on criminal law. Criminal sociology is constantly discovering the effects of the legal system on the criminal and on the community, and has a right to criticise codes and procedure in the light of these consequences, general and specific. But the task of reshaping the law itself belongs to legislators and courts.

2. The Sources of Criminal Law. -The ultimate human source is the conviction and will of the community—a social belief that