all the newspapers are filled, and particularly those which, by their low price, are intended to be read by the lower classes. If the recital of immoral, criminal acts is not dangerous for individuals of good parts, who from their mental constitution reprobate these acts with horror, who have only an aversion to what is bad, it is incontestable that, for those morally deformed, in whom the tendencies to evil are very powerful, easily excited, or already developed, either by their inherent activity, or by the corrupting influence of immoral surroundings, and in whom the moral sentiments which are antagonistic to the depraved tendencies are feeble or absent—it is incontestable, I say, and I have brought forward numerous facts in evidence thereof, that the publication of criminal acts is very dangerous to public morality and security, because it stimulates in these individuals the same depraved tendencies which had occasioned these crimes, and awakens those sentiments, those penchants, those passions; and the desire to commit similar acts then appears. Now, in such morally-deformed individuals, who form the unfortunate dregs of society, a class which is constantly renewed, and of which the source is never exhausted, the recital of such acts becomes to them a cause of crime, and consequently a cause of danger to society. These individuals, abnormally constructed in the moral part of their nature, real moral idiots, though perhaps very intelligent, physically well developed, and in good bodily condition; these individuals whom the public describe as heartless, whom magistrates, before whom they appear on various charges, accuse of being destitute of human feelings; these individuals in whom criminal tendencies are not commanded by the sentiment of moral duty, by moral perception, by religious feelings, and by other noble instincts of humanity; these individuals who consider their immoral and hideous desires without abhorrence, and whom crime leaves unmoved and without remorse, who, in way of regret, feel only what injures the success of their undertakings at being captured and punished—these individuals, I say, will be tempted to commit crime if an evil desire excited by example becomes more powerful than their other better feelings which, while they predominated, restrained any criminal tendencies which these persons might have experienced. This miserable scum of humanity so dangerous to society, which produces exclusively all the greatest criminals, and to which we have directed too little attention up to the present time, ought to be explored to the bottom.—Journal of Mental Science.
