294 MARRIAGE AND DISEASE. 



per cent, had their sentences commuted a large 

 proportion on the ground of mental weakness leaving 

 only a third of those actually sentenced to death to 

 undergo the last penalty of the law. 



From all this it is clear, or it should be, that the 

 instinctive criminal is as much sinned against as 

 sinning ; that, as Plato said, " the wicked are wicked 

 because of their organisation and education, and their 

 parents and instructors deserve punishment rather 

 than they.'* It is difficult to look upon the criminal, 

 who offends against the laws we have framed for the 

 guidance of men and women in our social system, 

 as the involuntary agent of a tyrannous fate. But if 

 we will only recognise the fact that volitional power 

 depends as much upon the organisation and healthy 

 working of the higher nervous centres, as does the 

 power of exercising any intellectual quality whatever, 

 our way is clear. Once thus far, having passed the 

 dangerous narrows of " free will," we can clearly see 

 that the maniac who does murder at the command 

 of a voice from heaven, his brother, who hangs him- 

 self without reasonable cause, his sister, who takes to 

 prostitution and glories in her shame, and the other 

 member of the family who is impelled to repeated 

 acts of theft or violence, are equally guilty, or equally 

 the unhappy victims of- a vicious organisation. The 

 thin end of this wedge has already been introduced, 

 in the recognition by our courts of the dipsomaniac 

 and the kleptomaniac, even though we are only ablo 

 as yet to recognise such faulty organisation in those 



