

214 DEGENERACY. 



prime. Such vigor is, however, relative rather than actual. Even 

 when the parents are born healthy, children produced after the age 

 of 30 are more than likely to be tainted with degeneracy arising 

 from parental viciousness. It thus happens that among this class 

 of people the only persons liable to be physically vigorous are the 

 eldest of the eldest in steady procession. 



Crime and pauperism may be considered as the practical protests 

 of persons incapable of meeting the competition of their fellow men, 

 because no man will go into crime or pauperism unless it appears to 

 him as the easiest solution of his difficulties. This is but another 

 form of Herbert Spencer's principle that human actions follow the 

 lines of least resistance. When this inability to compete in the 

 struggle of life comes from a weak intellect combined with a com- 

 paratively vigorous body, the protest takes the aggressive form 

 of crime; when it arises from physical defects and lack of energy 

 it takes the humbler form of pauperism. 



THE GENESIS OF CRIME AND PAUPERISM. 



These degenerate classes have been much studied with a view 

 of learning the causes of degeneracy and the application of rem- 

 edies, but up to the present there has been little more than an ac- 

 cumulation of partially understood facts. In some cases the family 

 history of degenerates has been traced through six or seven genera- 

 tions, but beyond this the history has been lost in the mists of the 

 past and the real origin has not been found. The most that is 

 known is that degenerate classes, and classes low in the scale of 

 intelligence, continue indefinitely in the same stage. 



In the absence of definite records showing the origin of degen- 

 erate families we will construct a hypothetical genealogy of one. 

 There occurs, as is frequently the case, an early reproduction, say 



