664 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



der good influences, will lead at least quiet and orderly lives, but who 

 are equally plastic to evil, and who will inevitably bloom into crimi- 

 nality if surrounded by lawless associates. 



From two persons who have had extensive acquaintance with 

 criminals, as also with those living in ignorance and poverty, which 

 too often prove the approximate cause of crime, we are able to draw 

 conclusive reasons for believing that the instinct of imitation may be 

 used with astonishing effect, if rightly directed over those whose 

 habits have not become irretrievably fixed. The author of " The Juke 

 Family," on the one hand, and the author of " The Dangerous Classes," 

 on the other, have done much to prove this hypothesis. Mr. Dugdale 

 selected for his elaborate analysis the history of an extensive family, 

 some of whom are yet living, whom he calls the Jukes ; these he 

 follows through town registers, almshouses, court-records, hospitals, 

 prisons, etc., for six generations, from 1720 to 1872. For greater 

 certainty in tracing the hereditary influence, he follows the female line 

 of descent with the most definite results ; his minute research, as to 

 the character and fate of these persons, proves that where any member 

 of the family was removed from the influence and example of crime, 

 either by adoption into or marriage with honest and respectable fami- 

 lies, the criminal tendencies disappeared, and the individuals reverted 

 to a reputable life. Thus the imitative faculty was found, even in 

 these cases where vicious blood was a recognized inheritance, to be 

 as active in the imitation of good as of evil ways of living. 



Particularly was this the case with those members of this criminal 

 family who escaped from the vicious environment before the age of 

 eighteen these all took to honest ways, imitating the honest people 

 with whom they lived ; notably one who at the age of fifteen mar- 

 ried a faithful and industrious German this branch of the female line 

 never produced a criminal, which was a remarkable exception with the 

 Jukes. Another point bearing on the argument of the propelling in- 

 fluence of imitation is the discovery of the fact that where relatives 

 of the poor have received shelter in almshouses, the children of these 

 more readily resort to them in emergencies than do others in more 

 pressing need, who have had no such record in their families. In 

 fact, pauperism of the chronic kind is more difficult to cure than a 

 tendency to criminality for the first indicates weakness, the latter 

 vitality. 



As a general rule it may be assumed that before maturity the life 

 of every individual is in the main imitative ; later, experience and 

 social compulsion reach the reason and teach all persons of average 

 brain-power and moral culture that conformity to the laws of society 

 is in the end more profitable than crime. The exceptions to this rule 

 will be certain to exhibit some form of abnormal development. But 

 the important practical truth is manifest, that while there is growth in 

 the substance-matter of the brain, and this organ is acquiring func- 



