NATURAL SELECTION AND CRIME. 441 



pires to Christianize the heathen, it exercises a far more direct 

 and effectual influence in heathenizing Christians, and in drag- 

 ging the rest of England down to its own low level/' And he 

 goes on to declare that " the enormous facts of London charity 

 are to a lamentable extent responsible for this state of things/' 



Whether the law-abiding man is abnormal, according to Al- 

 brecht, and the criminal is normal slaying and robbing without 

 compassion, as do the animals below him does not now concern 

 us, for it has come to pass in the progress of the races that the 

 moral man has formulated laws for the good of society, and insists 

 upon obedience to their establishment. Intelligence and not brute 

 force has become the main factor in man's selection. This has 

 been foreshadowed in past geological times where it has been 

 shown that in the progressive development of the various groups 

 of mammals the brain increased in size out of all proportion to 

 the size of the body. An ignorant man in civilized countries, 

 and even in savage and barbarous countries, occupies the lowest 

 position. 



Among the dominant races ignorance, poverty, and crime are 

 often associated. The association of poverty and crime has no 

 immediate relation, as shown by Morrison, though poverty pre- 

 supposes a low intellect, and this implies an inability to acquire 

 an education, which in a hundred ways in civilized life leads to 

 degeneracy and crime. It can probably be shown that nations 

 that are in the worst plight politically and financially are those 

 where general education is or has been at the lowest ebb, where 

 superstition takes the place of knowledge. In Italy, for example, 

 where an attempt to disinfect cholera districts results in the mur- 

 der of the officers engaged in this beneficent work where priestly 

 processions and holy water take the place of quarantine and car- 

 bolic acid in fighting cholera natural selection runs riot and mer- 

 cifully removes priest and peasant alike. One word in that fa- 

 mous encyclical, in which half its anathemas were hurled against 

 human reason and the sciences,* might have changed all this, but 

 the Church's attitude on these questions is one of the great factors 

 in the selective category. 



In this operation of the law of natural selection we have plainly 

 indicated to us the principle with which to fight crime and pau- 

 perism. Let us pause for a moment and observe a few of the 

 many ways in which this selective action is working in regard to 

 man, and the suggestions to be derived from it. That the princi- 

 ple of natural selection works in Nature, no intelligent man doubts 

 to-day. The discussion between Prof. Weismann and his adher- 



* See Draper's Conflict between Religion and Science, for convenient reference to these 

 anathemas, p. 350. 



