save one's soul. If I save mine, I care for nothing else."

The occasional glimpse of some finer feeling in the hardened criminal is apt to receive from the philanthropist an exaggerated recognition; but such display of sentiment rarely gives reasonable ground for the belief that the man may be reformed. A man murdered his sweetheart in a most cruel manner, then returned to the house to let out a canary, lest it should suffer for want of food.' Another killed a woman, then remained to feed her child which cried. A man committed a murder, and on the same day risked his own life to save that of a A poisoner," dreaded, disliked, and shunned by everybody," was very fond of cats; his only companion was a cat, and for this he appeared to have a strong affection. The most unscrupulous scoundrels sometimes manifest a strong love for wife and children; but such affection, like that of the ferocious tiger for its mate and its young, does not render them one whit less dangerous for society.

In his dealings with the defective and criminal, the hopes of the ardent philanthropist almost always find bitter disappointment, and it is not strange that this should be so, for as the base of his reasoning he usually posits the false premiss that given conditions must influence the very weak and the very vicious as they would influence him. Too often the philanthropist has no wide and deep acquaintance with the manifold varieties of human character; or he is so

1 Lombroso, loc. cit., p. 413.

? Havelock Ellis, loc. cit., p. 153.

8 Ibid.

4 Ibid.

imbued with the spirit of charity that he must fain shut his eyes to the innate weakness and foulness of those whom he would befriend, and interpret the faintest glimmer of moral light which he may perceive in them as the dawn of an effulgence such as possesses his own soul. The benevolent idealist, a being of the upper air, can seldom comprehend that those over whom he hovers with dreams of helpfulness are usually mere grimy creatures of earth, to whom no rudiment of wings has been given. He cannot raise them from their element; his aims have thriven if, here and there, he can check their descent into the black ooze.

CHAPTER V

THA

A REMEDY

HAT the methods as yet proposed for the betterment of our human condition are alarmingly inefficient is fast coming to be the general conviction. It is very clear that there are individuals innumerable who are destined, through their lack of development, to be lifelong burdens, whose influence for evil often becomes intensified in succeeding generations; and it is no less evident that there are many criminals who, in their very nature, must be incorrigible. As members of the first class I need mention only the idiots and imbeciles, and as of the second, the moral imbeciles, hysterical and epileptic criminals, and the criminals who are incurably insane. Against these two classes which curse the human race we have as yet no remedy.

But an inspiring idea is unfolding with the knowledge of these recent years. Poverty, disease, and crime are traceable to one fundamental cause,-depraved heredity; they are not a necessary human heritage, but result from our toleration of the weak and vicious. Such base scions of human kind not only vex their own generation, but contaminate posterity, in an ever-widening reach, until whole

nations have partaken of the infection. The weakening and debasing ancestral elements thus transmitted are the ultimate cause with which we must do battle: we may hope to triumph in the degree that we cease to breed strains which are weak or vicious.

We must learn from nature's method for the preservation and elevation of races,-the selection of the fittest and the rejection of the unfit. The life of each organism waits upon nature's approval: if deemed unworthy, the creature is quickly resolved into its constituent atoms, usually before it has had opportunity to multiply its kind. I believe that our true progress as a people depends upon our application of this natural method.

The root of all our evil lying in human nature, if we can change that, we may hope to do away, at least in great measure, with such elements as clog the progress of our race toward perfection and happiness. Plans innumerable have been devised for the reformation of humanity, but they all have failed because incompatible with human nature. The application of such plans has always required for even a successful beginning a degree of altruistic feeling which, in the actual man, is seldom or never to be found. Many, doubtless, will shake their heads and raise against the plan here proposed the objection usually so fatal,-the supposed fundamental truth that we can not change human nature.

Let us consider what we mean by this fundamental something which is thought insusceptible of change. By human nature we mean merely the

specific tendency to action which is based upon the aggregate of a human individual's thoughts, feelings, and volitions, and ultimately upon that individual's structure of brain. To change human nature, then, we need merely to change the tendency of our mental life. This can be done to a certain degree by modifying the functions of our brains-stimulating the function of certain quiescent structures and repressing the function of other structures which are unduly active; but if we require a very great modification of inherent tendency, we must wait for another generation, for the building of a new brain. Habit is commonly, and well, said to be second nature, and human nature is really only ancestral habit; we need, then, to effect any required change in the human nature of future men, merely to provide for them the kind of ancestors whose habits we desire to have perpetuated and intensified.

Whether the human mind be regarded as the manifestation merely of brain-function or as the manifestation of an immaterial essence,-a spirit or soul which uses the brain as tool or organ,—all our knowledge bearing upon the matter goes to show, as thoughtful people generally are quite willing to admit, that the character of such manifestation must depend upon the kind of brains which men have, and upon their condition. If, then, the mental or spiritual manifestations of our race are not satisfactory, we are justified in believing that these would improve were we able to supply our offspring with better brains. Until recently, every one believed in the doctrine of "everlasting hills," and in the