864 THE CRIMINAL GROUP 



society has the right to prolong his disability for any indefinite 

 period --for life, if necessary, or until he ceases to be a social peril. 

 This conception of the function of the prison ignores the popular 

 clamor for vengeance; it protects the criminal, while it protects the 

 community; and it accords with the humanitarian tendencies of the 

 present age. The world has shifted its point of view. The material 

 conquests of advancing civilization have been paralleled by moral 

 victories no less signal. The power of intellect, both in the material 

 and the moral world, increasingly takes the place of the grosser, more 

 violent and primitive methods of brute force. 



It is strange that the disbelief in the possibility of amendment on 

 the part of the criminal should be so deep-seated and universal. Men 

 and women equally guilty before law, human and divine, but who 

 have not been exposed to the contamination and shame of prison life, 

 have abandoned their evil courses in response to influences exerted 

 upon them in free life. There have been many signal instances of 

 transformation of character and conduct occurring in prison. It 

 would be foolish to estimate the exact percentage of corrigible and 

 incorrigible convicts, or to shut our eyes to the persistence of the 

 criminal type of character or to expect from the average prisoner 

 anything more than that he shall cease to be a lawbreaker and 

 become a law-abiding citizen. Religion encourages this hope. So 

 does science, as I shall now proceed to show. 



The methods and achievements of science have profoundly modi- 

 fied metaphysical thought, so that a new word, psycho-physics, 

 has been admitted to the dictionary. In the psycho-physical study 

 of human nature there is a constant recognition of the vital relation 

 between mental experiences and the operations of the brain and of the 

 nervous system in man, of their interdependence and reciprocal 

 relations and influence. The researches of physiologists have shed 

 light on much that was formerly obscure in the anatomical structure 

 and functions of the body. We have learned that every mental 

 impression and perception, every act of memory, of the imagination, 

 of the judgment, of the will, every passing thought or emotion, is 

 accompanied, in this life, the only life of which we have experimental 

 knowledge, by molecular changes in nerve-tissue, by nervous activity 

 and motion. The paths followed in the accumulation and discharge 

 of nerve-force have been partially traced. By the aid of vivisection, 

 scientific proof of their existence has been secured, and the functional 

 utility of certain tracts of the brain has been demonstrated, enabling 

 us to localize, to a limited extent, cerebral action, and to inspire the 

 hope that the further prosecution to the investigations now in progress 

 may dispel some portion, at least, of the mystery which enshrouds 

 our present dual existence. The correspondences between the order 

 of succession cf nervous phenomena and of the phenomena of 



