MENTAL SCIENCE AND SOCIOLOGY. 681 



they have often met with comparisons between the numbers of crimi- 

 nals who can read and write and the numbers who cannot ; and, find- 

 ing the numbers who cannot greatly exceed the numbers who can, 

 they accept the inference that ignorance is the cause of crime. It does 

 not occur to them to ask whether other statistics, similarly drawn up, 

 would not prove with like conclusiveness that crime is caused by ab- 

 sence of ablutions, or by lack of clean linen, or by bad ventilation, or 

 by want of a separate bedroom. Go through any jail, and ascertain 

 how many prisoners had been in the habit of taking a morning bath, 

 and you would find that criminality habitually went with dirtiness of 

 skin. Count up those who had possessed a second suit of clothes, and 

 a comparison of the figures would show you that but a small percent- 

 age of criminals were habitually able to change their garments. In- 

 quire whether they had lived in main streets or down courts, and you 

 would discover that nearly all urban crime comes from holes and 

 corners. Similarly, a fanatical advocate of total abstinence or of sani- 

 tary improvement could get equally strong statistical justifications 

 for his belief. But, if, not accepting the random inference presented 

 to you, that ignorance and crime are cause and effect, you consider, as 

 above, whether crime may not with equal reason be ascribed to various 

 other causes, you are led to see that it is really connected with an in- 

 ferior mode of life, itself usually consequent on original inferiority of 

 nature ; and you are led to see that ignorance is simply one of the 

 concomitants, no more to be held the cause of crime than various 

 other concomitants. 



But this obvious criticism, and the obvious counter-conclusion it 

 implies, are not simply overlooked, but, when insisted on, seem pow- 

 erless to affect the belief which has taken possession of men. Disap- 

 pointment alone will now affect it. A wave of opinion, reaching a cer- 

 tain height, cannot be changed by any evidence or argument, but has 

 to spend itself in the gradual course of things before a reaction of 

 opinion can arise. Otherwise it would be incomprehensible that this 

 confidence in the curative effects of teaching, which men have care- 

 lessly allowed to be generated in them by the reiterations of doctrinaire 

 politicians, should survive the direct disproofs yielded by daily ex- 

 perience. Is it not the trouble of every mother and every governess, 

 that perpetual insisting on the right and denouncing the wrong do not 

 suffice ? Is it not the constant complaint that on many natures reason- 

 ing and explanation and the clear demonstration of consequences are 

 scarcely at all operative ; that where they are operative there is a more 

 or less marked difference of emotional nature ; and that where, having 

 before failed, they begin to succeed, change of feeling rather than differ- 

 ence of apprehension is the cause ? Do we not similarly hear from 

 every house-keeper that servants usually pay but little attention to re- 

 proofs ; that they go on perversely in old habits, regardless of clear 

 evidence of their foolishness; and that their actions are to be altered 



