THE LAW OF LIKENESS, AND ITS WORKING. 235 



taints of their parents. As physical disease is transmissible, 

 and as the conditions regulating its descent are now tolerably 

 well ascertained, so moral infirmities pass from one genera- 

 tion to another, and the " law of likeness " is thus seen to 

 hold true of mind as well as of body. Numerous instances 

 might be cited of the transmission of criminal traits of cha- 

 racter, often of very marked and special kind. Dr. Despine, 

 a Continental writer, gives one very remarkable case illus- 

 trating the transmission from one generation to another of 

 an extraordinary tendency to thieve and steal. The subjects 

 of the memoir in question were a family named Chretien, 

 of which the common ancestor, so to speak, Jean Chretien 

 by name, had three sons, Pierre, Thomas, and Jean-Baptiste. 

 Pierre in his turn had one son, who was sentenced to penal 

 servitude for life for robbery and murder. Thomas had 

 two sons, one of whom was condemned to a like sentence 

 for murder ; the other being sentenced to death for a like 

 crime. Of the children of Jean-Baptiste, one son (Jean- 

 Francois) married one Marie Taure, who came of a family 

 noted for their tendency to the crime of incendiarism. 

 Seven children were born to this couple with avowedly 

 criminal antecedents on both sides. Of these, one son, 

 Jean-Francois, named after his father, died in prison after 

 undergoing various sentences for robberies. Another son, 

 Benoist, was killed by falling off a house-roof which he had 

 scaled in the act of theft ; and a third son, " Clain " by 

 nickname, after being convicted of several robberies, died 

 at the age of twenty-five. Victor, a fourth son, was also a 

 criminal ; Marie-Reine, a daughter, died in prison, as also 

 did her sister Marie-Rose whither both had been sent for 

 theft. The remaining daughter Victorine, married a man 

 named Lemarre, the son of this couple being sentenced to 

 death for robbery and murder. 



This hideous and sad record of whole generations being 

 impelled, as it were, hereditarily to crime, is paralleled by 

 the case of the notorious Jukes family, whose doings are still 

 matters of comment amongst the legal and police authorities 



