Hastings. The ancestors of Terebratuina caput serpentis may have been present at a battle of Ichthyosauria in that part of the sea which, when the chalk was forming, flowed over the site of Hastings. While all around has changed, this Terebratulina has peacefully propagated its species from generation to generation, and stands to this day, as a living testimony to the continuity of the present with the past history of the globe.

Up to this moment I have stated, so far as I know, nothing but well-authenticated facts, and the immediate conclusions which they force upon the mind.

But the mind is so constituted that it does not willingly rest in facts and immediate causes, but seeks always after a knowledge of the remoter links in the chain of causation.

Taking the many changes of any given spot of the earth's surface, from sea to land and from land to sea, as an established fact, we cannot refrain from asking ourselves how these changes have occurred. And when we have explained them as they must be explained-by the alternate slow movements of elevation and depression which have affected the crust of the earth, we go still further back, and ask, Why these movements?

I am not certain that any one can give you a satisfactory answer to that question. Assuredly I cannot. All that can be said, for certain, is, that such movements are part of the ordinary course of nature, inasmuch as they are going on at the present time. Direct proof may be given, that some parts of the land of the northern hemisphere are at this moment insensibly rising and others insensibly sinking; and there is indirect, but perfectly satisfactory, proof, that an enormous area now covered by the Pacific has been deepened thousands of feet, since the present inhabitants of that sea came into exist

ence.

Thus there is not a shadow of a reason for believing that the physical changes of the globe, in past times have been effected by other than natural causes.

Is there any more reason for believing that the concomitant modifications in the forms of the living inhabitants of the globe have been brought about in other ways?

Before attempting to answer this question, let us try to form a distinct mental picture of what has happened in some special case.

The crocodiles are animals which, as a group, have a very vast antiquity. They abounded ages before the chalk was deposited; they throng the rivers in warm climates, at the present day. There is a difference in the form of the joints of the back-bone, and in some minor particulars, between the crocodiles of the present epoch and those which lived before the chalk; but in the cretaceous epoch, as I have already mentioned, the crocodiles had assumed the modern type of structure. Notwithstanding this, the crocodiles of the chalk are not identically the same as those which lived in the times called "older tertiary," which succeeded the cretaceous epoch; and the crocodiles of the older tertiaries are not identical with those of the newer tertiaries, nor are these identical with existing forms. I leave open the question whether particular species may have lived on from epoch to epoch. But each epoch has had its peculiar crocodiles; though all, since the chalk, have belonged to the modern type, and differ simply in their proportions, and in such structural particulars as are discernible only to trained eyes.

How is the existence of this long succession of different species of crocodiles to be accounted for?

Only two suppositions seem to be open to us-Either each species of crocodile has been specially created, or it has arisen out of some pre-existing form by the operation of natural causes.

Choose your hypothesis; I have chosen mine. I can find no warranty for believing in the distinct creation of a score of successive species of crocodiles in the course of countless ages of time. Science gives no countenance to such a wild fancy; nor can even the perverse inge

the boys in a certain reform school tattooed, would have felt it desirable to make an extended examination of the district which supplied the inmates, in order to determine whether that percentage was larger or smaller than the usual average, before drawing any general conclusions. The result might not prove particularly valuable or interesting in itself, but it would at least have the merit of proving something. Your criminologist, on the contrary proceeded upon the assumption that, if he measured all the noses of men in prison and thus determined the average nasal length, he had thereby ascertained, beyond all question, the "criminal nose." The fact that it might be an exact replica of the average nose of law-abiding people outside the prison was not taken into account. The great object was to confine your study to the criminal.

Of course the results of this kind of research are hopelessly vitiated by its initial mistake; they have but little more value than would a monograph on the nature and habits of the polar bear, based exclusively upon examination of a single animal confined in the cage of a menagerie. Nevertheless Lombroso's theory has been widely accepted; it tallies with the popular impression of the criminal; and many penologists have been led astray by it. They talk and write glibly of "the criminal type,"-having in mind certain retreating foreheads and chins, furtive eyes, large, flapping ears, and the style of nose and mouth they personally most dislike.

A few years ago the happy thought occurred to an English physician connected with the Parkhurst prison, Dr. Charles Goring, to investigate the facts of this widely accepted theory. He examined carefully many hundreds of convicts; but also many hundreds of people outside the prison engaged at similar work; also many university graduates. The instructive results are published in a British blue book; and may be summed up in Dr. Goring's own carefully chosen.

words:

In the present investigation we have exhaustively compared, with regard to many physical characters, different kinds of criminals with each other, and criminals, as a class with the law-abiding public. From these comparisons, no evidence has emerged confirming the existence of a physical criminal type, such as Lombroso and his disciples have described. Our data do show that physical differences exist between different kinds of criminals; precisely as they exist between different kinds of law-abiding people. But, when an allowance is made for a certain range of probable variation, and when they are reduced to a common standard of age, stature, intelligence and class, etc., these differences tend entirely to disappear. Our results nowhere confirm the evidence, nor justify the allegations, of criminal anthropologists. They challenge their evidence at almost every point. In fact, both with regard to measurements and the presence of physical anomalies in criminals, our statistics present a startling conformity with similar statistics of the lawabiding classes. The final conclusion we are bound to accept until further evidence, in the train of long series of statistics, may compel us to reject or to modify an apparent certainty -our inevitable conclusion must be that there is no such thing as a physical criminal type.

It should be added that one humorous outcome of Dr. Goring's measurements was to show that there is a wider divergence, physically, between the average Oxford University graduate and the average Cambridge University graduate than between the criminal and either one of them.

When we turn from physical to mental and moral characteristics, we come to matters by no means so easy to chart and determine. From my own personal experience, however, which has given me somewhat unusual chances to study these men at first hand, I have found no more reason for belief in a mental or moral criminal type than Dr. Goring has found for belief in a physical one.

Since September, 1913-for two years and four months, I have lived on terms of close and intimate friendship with a large number of convicts in two of New York's state prisons. At Auburn I have shared in the life of the inmates, both in prison and out in one of the road-building camps; I have worn their uniform, eaten and slept with them, worked and played

with them, witnessed their sufferings and participated in their interests. At Sing Sing I have seen them from a different angle-that of a prison official; but it has still been a relation of sympathetic interest and intimate friendship. I have followed the lives of many of these men after they have left prison. In short, there have been very unusual opportunities for my studying the facts at close quarters; and I have yet to meet one prisoner whom I regarded as anything but a perfectly natural human being, a natural human being often rendered abnormal through inherited weaknesses, more often through the evil influences of unhealthy environment, most often through the stupidity of older people to whose care a precious human life was early entrusted. I believe that the institutions, devised by man for the training of youth, to be most responsible for the inmates in our state prisons. And when we talk about "confirmed criminals" and a "criminal type" and a "criminal class," we are trying to lay upon God the blame which belongs upon ourselves.

For while there is no such thing as a criminal type, there is a "prison type";— the more shame to us who are responsible for it. Forth from our penal institutions year after year, have come large numbers of men, broken in health and spirit, white-faced with the "prison pallor," husky in voice-hoarse from disuse, with restless, shifty eyes and the timidity of beaten dogs. But these are creatures whom we ourselves have fashioned; the finished product of our prison system. These are what we have to show for the millions of dollars wasted and the thousands of lives worse than wasted because of our denial of common-sense and humanity.

When we thus question the very existence of "the criminal" for whom our prisons have been so carefully and expensively constructed and about whose imaginary personality so many dull and useless books have been written, we are in truth calling in question the accepted facts upon which our social reformers

have acted and the whole elaborate and complicated system of legal restraint and punishment is based. It is no wonder, therefore, that those who are engaged in this work of destruction are assailed as "theorists," "cranks," "impractical dreamers." The remarkable thing is that the enemy's vocabulary has been on the whole so restrained.

Readers of Dickens will recall the amazement and righteous indignation exhibited by the worthy Mrs. Gamp when her friend and fellow-worker, Betsy Prig, dared to question the existence of her mythical friend,-Mrs. Harris. You will remember when quoting Mrs. Harris once too often, Sairy Gamp was interrupted by Betsy's historic utterance: "I don't believe there's no sich a person.' At once the very foundation of Mrs. Gamp's carefully built-up social position was threatened;-her veracity, her professional reputation, her whole existence tottered. No wonder that the immortal partnership of Sairy Gamp and Betsy Prig was severed. If it may be allowed to compare small things with great, such a severance is inevitable between the believers in the old and those of the new penology; for whenever they talk to us about "the criminal," we boldly say: We don't believe there's no sich a per

son.

Because I would have you believe that these inmates of our prisons are not "criminals" in the meaning which we read into the term, I would not have you jump to the conclusion that I believe them to be altogether admirable. There is no more reason to be sentimental than to be callous. Let us simply exercise common-sense in the matter. These men have more than their share of the weaknesses, follies and vices of humanity; but they are by no means lacking in the virtues. Some have low ideals and coarse habits; some are passionate; some are brutal; some are selfish and inconsiderate; some are diseased; some are mentally defective; but all men with these evil

'Two old nurses in Martin Chuzzlewit.

characteristics are not in prison. In the world outside we revere simple goodness; we honor truthfulness and sincerity; we love loyalty and the glorious capacity to live and, if necessary, to die for a friend. All these virtues in their intensest form we find inside the prison. It has been my privilege to have many loyal and trusted friends both within and without the walls; but if I should need one who would be faithful unto death, one who would unhesitatingly throw away his life to bring his friend a great joy or a great benefit, I might possibly find such a friend outside; inside the prison, clad in the gray uniform of the convict, I know of more than one.

Some penologists endeavor to find a middle ground in this matter, holding that crime is a disease. This view offers a resting place to the sentimentalist; for it concedes the irresponsible acts of the criminals, while at the same time it holds fast to the idea of their unnatural and dangerous character. The following, from a leading authority on penology, sets forth this view:

The disease of criminality has one absolutely unfailing, positive symptom, which is crime. A person may be afflicted with the disease before it has been detected, but when this symptom has been discovered it is positive evidence of the presence of the disease; and the patient must be at once committed to the care and treatment of skilled doctors. Unless this is done the disease will in almost every case progress in virulence, or become chronic and incurable.

Consider for a moment this statement made so seriously and in such ingenuous good faith: "The disease of criminality has one unfailing, positive symptom, which is crime." It is as if in a standard work on medicine one should read: "Diphtheritic disease has one unfailing, positive symptom, which is the presence of diphtheria."

As a contribution to our scientific knowledge, I can think of nothing to equal this since the valuable discovery which Dr. Crothers gave to the world in

his delightful book: Miss Muffet's Christmas Party. After reminding his readers of the historical fact that

Little Miss Muffet Sat on a tuffet,

the author remarks:

Perhaps some of you would like to know what a tuffet is. I have thought of that myself, and have taken the trouble of asking several learned persons. They assure me that the most complete and satisfactory definition is, a tuffet is the kind of thing that Miss Muffet sat on.

Speaking seriously, however, the disease theory of crime is a mischievous one, for it has a certain amount of superficial plausibility; being to a certain extent true. But it is true only as metaphor; not as literal fact. A man ill physically, which is what is meant when we use the word "ill" without qualification, is sent to hospital for eye, ear or body. A man mentally ill is sent to an asylum-a hospital for the mentally afflicted. But the essential trouble with the criminal is neither physical nor mental; he is spiritually ill; socially ill; ill of selfishness—of a peculiar form of civic egotism, which causes him to be indifferent to the social rights. of other men. The proper hospital for

him is the prison.

In other words, disease is physical; dementia, in its various forms, is mental; crime, in its various forms, is spiritual. The fact that a man may be afflicted in two or all three ways at the same time tends to superficial confusion, but does not alter the fundamental differences. A man may commit crime because he is insane; nevertheless the two things spring from different causes; and to call criminality a disease of which crime is a symptom is to juggle with words-to fall into just the kind of verbal fallacy we have been trying to avoid.

The worst feature of the disease theory is that it cancels the responsibility of the criminal for his acts; and the moment you relieve a man of such personal re