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than scientific bases, and gives a system of tests and checks which really neither test nor check. And in this the administration of the law is seconded by educational pro visions which further tend to manufacture criminals. For if a more rational and re liable svstem were followed, manv bran-led as criminals would be simply subjects for re formative agencies entirely outside of penal law, while the truly criminal would be found to be a very small fraction to be separated and treated specially. Our first mistake is to overlook and con done certain qualities or acts in our children. Lack of moral traits, instability, or back wardness, we attribute goodnaturedly to the result of being "spoiled" or mischievous or young. Nervous excitability is very marked in young children, with the result that they will most readily turn to what most excites their nerve centres. The child has such strong "sensitive and nutritive needs," as Dr. Moreau has pointed out, that he never thinks of resisting them. He is, even in normal conditions, often a glutton, and a petty thief; at times destructive, spiteful and cruel, pre ferring those games which give trouble or even pain, to others. And because in a criminal act like theft, the child can, in the nature of things, steal articles of small value— we condone the deed. That is a grave mistake; the child will steal fruit or carry off lead-pipe, not because it isn't of much value, but because he can't reach something better. Do you expect him to embezzle bank funds? If we notice such offenses at all, we say "Oh, boys must be boys," and smile. But for the very reason that man in his infancy is under the force of animal life, for the reason that the moral sense is more pli able, our watch should be especially careful and intelligent. If the child has certain tendencies which, if unchecked, will cramp its manhood, and develop the animal life in excess, it is ob vious that a vicious environment will in
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most, if not in all, cases make a bad man of him. The potential delinquent of 5 years of age will at 15, by an overt act, become an actual criminal. Dickens bewailed the fate of those babes who, nursed by drunken mothers, drink into their blood the vice which will eventually land them in jail. Let us, however, leave aside hereditary influences, terrible as they are. We cannot help past mistakes. But the redemption of a child's surroundings is a living possibility. Those of us who stand aside do not know the terrible miseries of certain childhoods; we cannot imagine parents instilling in their children criminal and infamous ideals—-the ideal of becoming great thieves or achieving criminal celebrity—children sent forth into the world with the idea that society is their enemy and it is heroic to fight it; daughters forced to prostitution by the precept and ex ample of their mothers; teachers in criminal practice, "lawyers" learned in the loopholes of penal codes, for the under world has its system of education in crime as the upper world has its institutions for the higher life. Such facts are not easily believed, because they go counter to the generally accepted and convenient belief in the dignity of the human soul and the force of parental affec tion; they escape detection by institutional searchers and the self-styled social observers, because immorality of this kind is a class by itself—in a way independent of outside help, certainly not seeking it; men and wonun who can be attracted neither by churches nor social settlements, distinct from the pauper class because representing in an animal way a stronger element, shrewder in its intelli gence, quicker in its activities and decidedly anti-social, except in some cases towards the members of its own world. The common mistake is to attribute to the criminal the thoughts, reasonings and sentiments of the morally normal. Now, though in the crim inal world many phenomena resemble tho?e of normal life, wrong conclusions will be
