NATURAL SELECTION AND CRIME. 43 5 



might see in the different wards Sundanese, Javanese, Chinese, 

 Hindoos, various Europeans, and peoples from other countries, 

 with widely varying features, yet the " cachet/' so to speak, of 

 the mental disease could in many cases be recognized at a glance. 

 Had the laws of heredity, even, been earlier understood it would 

 have been seen that mental derangements, like physical diseases 

 and tendencies, were transmitted. 



If insanity was formerly considered the evidence of satanic 

 possession, how much more reason was there to believe that de- 

 linquencies of a criminal nature were the result of satanic insti- 

 gation. While demoniacal possession, as an explanation of in- 

 sanity, is discredited on all hands,* criminal acts are still looked 

 upon as the instigation of the devil. It may be safely asserted 

 that to-day the vast majority of mankind fully believe that an 

 external influence for evil is at war in the individual with an 

 external influence for good. 



Atrocious crimes are especially referred to as the result of 

 diabolical suggestion; and the same procedures, though in a 

 milder form, which obtained in former times for the treatment 

 of the insane are in full force to-day in the treatment of the 

 criminal. In the one case, however, torture was used to drive 

 the devil out, in the other the victim is punished for yielding to 

 the devil's persuasion. The criminal is imprisoned, chained, 

 immured in a dark cell, forced to severest labor, and in many 

 prisons abroad subject to physical torture. Under some govern- 

 ments he is transported to torrid climates and compelled to work 

 under a broiling sun, or, hidden from the sun altogether, to delve 

 in mines. This much for the punishment. Similar methods are 

 resorted to in attempting reform, as were formerly used in exor- 

 cising the devil from the maniac. The minister and priest, hav- 

 ing at all times free access, exhort and pray for the criminal, that 

 he may have strength to resist the evil spirit, and if some sud- 

 den revulsion of feelings animates him to struggle against his 

 criminal impulses, as many an insane man succeeds in control- 

 ling his maniacal impulses, then it is believed that a new spirit 

 has shed its beneficent influence upon him, or, in other words, 

 the evil spirit has been exorcised. Those who strenuously pro- 

 test against such an interpretation of sin and crime are branded 

 with obnoxious names. Dr. White says that perhaps nothing 

 did so much to fasten the term " atheist " upon the medical pro- 

 fession as the suspicion that it did not fully acknowledge diabolic 

 interference in mental disease. 



* This holds good for the present time, but a firm belief in the existence of demoniacal 

 possession in past times is still held by the Church, as lately witnessed in the discussions 

 between Huxley and Gladstone, Dr. Wace, and others, regarding the Gadarene pigs. 



