66z THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



for treatment, he heard his friend caution the nurse to "keep the 

 windows closed, as one of his fever-patients had attempted to jump 

 out." No sooner had the sick man heard this than he set his mind to 

 circumvent his attendant and jump out of the window, though, until 

 he had heard the cautioning remarks, such a desire had not occurred 

 to him. His intention was happily frustrated, and, as soon as he 

 recovered, he resumed his hospital practice. Strangely forgetting the 

 presence of the patients, he related to some of the other physicians 

 present his experience, and was only made aware of his imprudence 

 when told that, after he had left, several of the sick had risen from 

 their beds and attempted to jump out of the windows. 



Without endorsing the apothegm of the able author of the "In- 

 tellectual Development of Europe," that " the equilibrium and move- 

 ments of humanity are altogether physiological phenomena, and that 

 the succession of events are the inevitable results of a law depending 

 on, or the consequences of physical conditions," we are persuaded that 

 a large proportion of crime is to be attributed to the responsive nature 

 of the physical organization. Among unsophisticated persons, un- 

 trammeled by etiquette, there are many who can not hear a march 

 played without attempting to keep step with the music, or a waltz 

 without an instinctive desire to dance. There is, indeed, a certain 

 amount of rhythmical response in most of us to the time measurements 

 of harmony particularly^ when lively airs are played ; but as some 

 more than others are easily affected by moral and physical harmonies, 

 may there not be other souls, or vitalized bodies, which spontaneously 

 respond to the moral and physical discords people who may be said 

 to be out of tune with the organized harmonies of society, and whose 

 natural impulse is to put these into modes of activity ? 



Plato recognized these differences in the impulses of persons differ- 

 ently constituted and educated; he says in vol. iv. of his "Laws," "I do 

 not expect or imagine that any well-brought-up citizen will ever take 

 the infection [of crime], but their servants or those of strangers may." 

 Speaking of those who might be tempted to crime, he perceives very 

 clearly the power of association over the imitative instinct of human 

 beings, especially of those who dwell together, and he thus advises . 

 " When any such ill thought [as that of committing a crime] comes 

 into your mind, go at once to the society of those who are called good 

 among you. Fly from the wicked ; fly, and turn not back, and, if 

 thy disorder is lightened by these remedies, well and good ; but if not, 

 then acknowledge death to be nobler than life, and depart hence." 



Without going so far as the noble Greek, and recommending suicide 

 to those cursed with evil instincts, we concede that the first part of 

 his advice is as sound to-day as it was two thousand years ago. The 

 power of a dominant idea is almost irresistible in some natures ; and, 

 therefore, it should be the aim of every philanthropist, whose efforts 

 are directed to the reduction of crime, to seek the introduction of 



