We have here, added by Dr. Potts, another cause of degeneracy: that is,
defective nutrition in early life. In plain words, improper feeding, or
semi-starvation.
Later, when we come to deal with environment, I shall show that there
are many other causes of degeneration and of crime. But here I only
point out that atavism and degeneration account for from thirty to
forty per cent, of the criminals of the present day. That atavism
and degeneration are forced upon the unborn child by heredity; that
therefore these forty per cent, of our criminals are unfortunate victims
of fate, and are no more blameworthy nor wicked than the victims of
a railway accident, or an earthquake, or an epidemic of cholera or
smallpox.
They should, as I claimed before, be pitied, and not blamed; they should
be helped, not punished.
Unhappy, unblest atavistic man, that in lieu of love has only lust, in
lieu of wisdom only cunning, in lieu of power violence; and with a whole
world to walk in, as in a garden fair, lies wallowing hideously in the
foul dungeon of his own unlightened soul.
Unhappy criminal born, most pitiful dreadful of developed creatures;
lonelier and more accursed than banded wolf or solitary tiger: a waif, a
spoil, a pariah "born out of his due time":
A scribe's work writ awry and blurred,
Spoiled music, with no perfect word, a wretched, horrible Ishmael with
his hand against the hand of every man, and every man's hand implacably
against his.
On him, it would appear, has fallen the doom of the prophet, and
instead of sweet spices there is rottenness, instead of a girdle a rope:
branding instead of beauty.
In the barren garden of his mind no flowers will blow, his trees will
bear no fruit All human pleasure is to him a Circe cup; he finds no
pathos in the children's laughter, no beauty in the dawn-shine; no glory
in the constellations.
What are we to do for this wretched desperate brother who will not love
us though we whip him with whips of wire, who will not make friends
of us though we spurn and spit upon him; who, though we preach to him,
cannot understand; who, though we teach him, cannot learn; who, though
we hang him high as, Haman, will "die game," cursing us with his
strangled breath, mocking us with his blinded eyes; and in spite of
all our intellect and righteousness going back from us unbettered and
untamed into the abyss of eternity and the laboratory of evolution,
whence he and we were drawn: going back from us a savage still, and in
his angry heart and baffled mind holding our half-fledged knowledge and
green morality in derision.
Well, he is dead; his stiff neck broken, and his body wrapped in a
winding sheet of lime.
And we? We remain the superior persons we are. We are civilised, and
holy. We punish weakness with blows, and misfortune with chains. We
teach sweet reasonableness with the cat-o'-nine-tails--steeped in brine.
We exemplify gentleness and mercy with the gibbet and the axe. We brand
the blind, and torture the imbecile, and execrate the miserable, and
damn the diseased, and revile the fallen; we set our righteous heel upon
the creeping thing, and thank our anomalous and hypothetical God of Love
and Justice that we are not as those others--our atavistic brother and
his degenerate children.
And our atavistic brother, the criminal born! He does not understand us,
he does not admire us, he cannot love us. We fail, in some inexplicable
way, to charm the deaf adder, charm we never so wisely.
But some day, perhaps, when the superior person has achieved humility,
even the outlawed Bottom Dog may come by some crumbs of sympathy, some
drops of the milk of human kindness, and--then?