SOCIOLOGISTS have been debating the theory that the impulse to commit
crime is a disease, and the ayes appear to have it--not the impulse but
the decision. It is gratifying and profitable to have the point settled:
we now know "where we are at," and can take our course accordingly.
It has for a number of years been known to all but a few back-number
physicians--survivals from an exhausted _régime_--that all disease is
caused by bacilli, which worm themselves into the organs that secrete
health and enjoin them from the performance of that rite. The
medical conservatives mentioned attempt to whittle away the value and
significances of this theory by affirming its inadequacy to account
for such disorders as broken heads, sunstroke, superfluous toes,
home-sickness, burns and strangulation on the gallows; but against the
testimony of so eminent bacteriologists as Drs. Koch and Pasteur their
carping is as that of the idle angler. The bacillus is not to be denied;
he has brought his blankets and is here to stay until evicted, and
eviction can not be wrought by talking. Doubtless we may confidently
expect his eventual suppression by a fresher and more ingenious
disturber of the physiological peace, but the bacillus is now chief
among ten thousand evils and it is futile to attempt to read him out of
the party.
It follows that in order to deal intelligently with the criminal impulse
in our afflicted fellow-citizens we must discover the bacillus of crime.
To that end I think that the bodies of hanged assassins and such persons
of low degree as have been gathered to their fathers by the cares of
public office or consumed by the rust of inactivity in prison should be
handed over to the microscopists for examination. The bore, too, offers
a fine field for research, and might justly enough be examined alive.
Whether there is one general--or as the ancient and honorable orders
prefer to say, "grand"--bacillus, producing a general (or grand)
criminal impulse covering a multitude of sins, or an infinite number of
well defined and several bacilli, each inciting to a particular crime,
is a question to the determination of which the most distinguished
microscopist might be proud to devote the powers of his eye. If the
latter is the case it will somewhat complicate the treatment, for
clearly the patient afflicted with chronic robbery will require
medicines different from those that might be efficacious in a gentleman
suffering from constitutional theft or the desire to represent his
District in the Assembly. But it is permitted to us to hope that all
crimes, like all arts, are essentially one; that murder, arson and
conservatism are but different symptoms of the same physical disorder,
back of which is a microbe vincible to a single medicament, albeit the
same awaits discovery.
In the fascinating theory of the unity of crime we may not unreasonably
hope to find another evidence of the brotherhood of man, another
spiritual bond tending to draw the various classes of society more
closely together.
From time to time it is said that a "wave" of some kind of crime
is sweeping the country. It is all nonsense about "waves" of crime.
Occasionally occurs some crime notable for its unusual features, or for
the renown of those concerned. It arrests public attention, which for a
time is directed to that particular kind of crane, and the newspapers,
with business-like instinct, give, for a season, unusual prominence to
the record of similar offenses. Then, self-deceived, they talk about a
"wave," or "epidemic" of it. So far is this from the truth that one of
the most noticeable characteristics of crime is the steady and unbroken
monotony of its occurrence in certain forms. There is nothing so dull
and unvarying as this tedious uniformity of repetition. The march of
crime is never retarded, never accelerated. The criminals appear to be
thoroughly well satisfied with their annual average, as shown by the
periodical reports of their secretary, the statistician.
A marked illustration occurs to me. Many years ago in London a
well-known and respectable gentleman was brutally garroted. It was during
the "silly season"--between sessions of Parliament, when the newspapers
are likely to be dull. They at once began to report cases of garroting.
There appeared to be an "epidemic of garroting." The public mind was
terribly excited, and when Parliament met it hastened to pass the
infamous "flogging act"--a distinct reversion to the senseless and
discredited methods of physical torture, so alluring to the half
instructed mind of the average journalist of today. Yet the statistics
published by the Home Secretary under whose administration the act was
passed show that neither at the time of the alarm was there any
material increase of garroting, nor in the period of public tranquillity
succeeding was there any appreciable diminution.