258 WHAT IS LIFE? 



beyond our power to alter the progress of Nature, but 

 we can assist the order of Nature in a humane manner, 

 And this is not done by carrying the lie the Bible, 

 the rifle, and the gin bottle into the ranks of savage life. 

 We cannot alter the brain-power of savage life, that is, 

 mature life, but we can, often, do a great deal towards 

 altering the brain-power of the growing organism ; for 

 this is education, and this can only be obtained in the 

 lower civilized communities, as well as in savage 

 communities, by teaching the growing organisms, 1 the 



1 "I believe that with no small proportion of the criminal class 

 the hope of their being reformed is utterly contradicted by experi- 

 ence, and yet the idea of imprisonment for life is repugnant to our 

 feelings, and in many instances would be unjust." (" Some Experi- 

 ences of a Barrister's Life," Serjeant Ballantiiie, 1883, p. 339.) 



The following is an illustration of this view : " The death has 

 occurred this week in Dartmoor Prison of an old and well known 

 burglar named David Griffin, who out of the fifty-six years of his 

 life is reported to have spent forty-six in prison. A native of Ireland, 

 he was brought to England by his parents, who, however, were 

 unable to control him, and at the age of nine he was sent to a re- 

 formatory. With the aid of three other lads he escaped from here 

 and was not recaptured for four days ; and about twenty years ago, 

 when at Dartmoor, he succeeded in escaping, but was quickly 

 recaptured. He had been thirty-four times convicted, four times to 

 penal servitude, and at the time of his death was undergoing a 

 sentence of five years' penal servitude with three years' police super- 

 vision. He was known in almost every prison in England and to 

 all the leading Scotland Yard officials, and during the few spans of 

 freedom he was connected with some of the most notorious gangs of 

 country mansion burglars of the last thirty years. He used to boast 

 that when in prison he used to plan his operations for the time when 

 he would be released, and he claimed to be the originator of the 

 mysterious system of silent talking among convicts, which has been 

 the means of many of the daring burglaries being planned among 

 convicts while in gaol." (From " The Daily Graphic," May 13th, 

 1897.) 



