SCIENCE AND MAN. 361 



He told me that the prisoners in his charge might be 

 divided into three distinct classes. The first class con- 

 sisted of persons who ought never to have been in prison. 

 External accident, and not internal taint, had brought 

 them within the grasp of the law, and what had hap- 

 pened to them might happen to most of us. They 

 were essentially men of sound moral stamina, though 

 wearing the prison garb. Then came the largest class, 

 formed of individuals possessing no strong bias, moral 

 or immoral, plastic to the touch of circumstances, which 

 could mould them into either good or evil members 

 of society. Thirdly came a class happily not a large 

 one whom no kindness could conciliate and no dis- 

 cipline tame. They were sent into this world labelled 

 * incorrigible,' wickedness being stamped, as it were, 

 upon their organisations. It was an unpleasant truth, 

 but as a truth it ought to be faced. For such crim- 

 inals the prison over which he ruled was certainly not 

 the proper place. If confined at all, their prison should 

 be on a desert island where the deadly contagium of 

 their example could not taint the moral air. But the 

 sea itself he was disposed to regard as a cheap and ap- 

 propriate substitute for the island. It seemed to him 

 evident that the State would benefit if prisoners of the 

 first class were liberated; prisoners of the second class 

 educated; and prisoners of the third class put com- 

 pendiously under water. 



It is not, however, from the observation of indi- 

 viduals that the argument against ' free-will/ as com- 

 monly understood, derives its principal force. It is, 

 as already hinted, indefinitely strengthened when ex- 

 tended to the race. Most of you have been forced to 

 listen to the outcries and denunciations which rang 

 discordant through the land for some years after the 

 publication of Mr. Darwin's ' Origin of Species/ Well, 



