100 MARRIAGE AND HEREDITY 



How many philanthropists have acted upon the con- 

 viction that the children brought up in a thieves' 

 quarter are ruined by evil associations alone, and that 

 a course of moral precepts will reclaim them ! There 

 could be no greater error. And what are we to 

 say of the misguided people who adopt from work- 

 houses and foundling hospitals children of whose 

 parentage they know nothing ? 



As Maudsley points out, there are three classes of 

 criminals — (1) those who are driven to crime by want 

 or adversity ; (2) those who have in their natures a 

 taint of crime which may be corrected by favourable 

 circumstances; and (3) those of a radically bad organi- 

 sation/ The last are practically irreclaimable. They 

 are born criminals, their predisposition to crime being 

 the outcome of morbid conditions like insanity. Gall 

 cites cases of a predisposition to theft in which the in- 

 fluence of example or necessity was nil. In view of 

 such facts, the Chinese law that punishes for treason 

 the son and the grandson of the actual culprit is no more 

 ridiculous than the European system of loading within- 

 creasing terms of penal servitude the unhappy wretch 

 to whom punishment is no deterrent. Sensual passion 

 is hereditary, as Lucas shows, and so is gambling. 



^ Maadsley's Patholoijy of Mind. 



