NATURAL SELECTION AND CRIME. 437 



broadly that in studying the criminal classes from the standpoint 

 of anatomy, physiology, external appearance, even to the minuter 

 shades of difference in the form of the skull and facial proportions, 

 the criminal is a marked man. His abnormities are characteristic, 

 and are to be diagnosticated in only one way. That these propo- 

 sitions are being rapidly established there can be no doubt. As 

 an emphatic evidence of their truth, the criminal is able to trans- 

 mit his criminal propensities even beyond the number of genera- 

 tions allotted to inheritance by Scripture. 



William Douglas Morrison, in his Crime and its Causes, while 

 denying these propositions, admits that degeneracy and disease 

 are transmitted, and in these conditions seeks for the origin of 

 crime. 



A very significant relation is shown between crime and in- 

 sanity in figures given by Malcolm Morris, as quoted by Dr. Emily 

 "White, in her address on Hygiene as a Basis of Morals.* She says : 

 " The intimate relationship between nervous diseases and crime 

 is conspicuous. In England, the ratio of insane to sane criminals 

 is thirty-four times as great as of the insane to the whole popula- 

 tion, and criminal lunatics are in excess in the high proportion of 

 seventeen to one." The persistence of criminal and vagabond 

 taints is even more pronounced than that of lunacy ; the latter 

 condition often yields to benign treatment, and there is reason to 

 believe that in time it may be eradicated, though confinement and 

 consequent prevention of offspring will be the main cause of its 

 disappearance. Whether criminal propensities can be obliterated 

 is a grave question. Certainly the irrational and unscientific meth- 

 ods in the treatment of criminals to-day are as much responsible 

 for the increase of crime as were the superstitious and unscien- 

 tific ways of dealing with contagious diseases in earlier times 

 responsible for their wide dissemination. 



The repeated association of certain abnormities of the body 

 with the criminal character suggesting simian features has led to 

 the idea that congenital criminals are instances of reversion. 

 Eminent students in this branch of study call attention to the 

 resemblances of many minor details of structure to features in 

 the higher apes. Dr. Fletcher admits that, while this view may 

 be correct, it is purely hypothetical. The presence of certain 

 abnormal muscles in man have been justly looked upon as evi- 

 dence of reversion, and certainly the atavistic view clears up many 

 points of structural difference seen in the criminal class which 

 would otherwise be obscure. It is possible, however, that if the 

 antecedents of all criminals were known, retention of ancestral 

 traits and not reversion would be the more probable explanation 



* Popular Science Monthly, May, 1887. 



