532 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



esting to read from Sir John Strachey's quotation of an official 

 report from India : " When a man tells you that he is a Bodhak, 

 or a Kanjar, or a Sonoria, he tells you what few Europeans ever 

 thoroughly realize that he, an offender against the law, has been 

 so from the beginning and will be so to the end ; that reform is 

 impossible, for it is his trade, his caste I may almost say his re- 

 ligion to commit crime." 



The belief in the inevitable steadfastness of these personal and 

 family traits will finally clear our moral atmosphere, for we shall 

 and must see that the safety of society lies in right methods of 

 development based upon normal marriages and normal breeding. 

 As population increases and the complexities of life increase, the 

 burdens put upon us become heavier in proportion. We need 

 more mental and moral backbone than we have ; we are becoming 

 progressively unable to stand the strain, it has become absolutely 

 necessary to raise men to a higher level. For our present stand- 

 ard in character even more than in brains is a pitiably low one. 

 Just as it is practicable to improve a breed of animals, so is it 

 possible to increase our own worth. It is in this belief that 

 Francis Galton said : " I argue that, as a new race can be obtained 

 in animals and plants, and can be raised to so great a degree of 

 purity that it will maintain itself, with moderate care in prevent- 

 ing the more faulty members from breeding, so a race of gifted 

 men might be obtained, under exactly similar circumstances." 



Here we have the gist of the matter. There is a consensus of 

 opinion in the competent that crime is not fortuitous ; likewise 

 that there is one sure method for betterment : " in preventing the 

 more faulty members from breeding." 



Scientists have known this for a long time ; but the mere fact 

 that the opinion was a scientific one kept it from the active appre- 

 ciation *of the many people who go to make up the intelligent 

 class. Now it is time for us to understand the full bearing of the 

 matter, as we certainly must do if we follow to their logical con- 

 clusion the teachings of great minds like Darwin and Wallace, 

 like Wilson, Prof. Oscar Schmidt, Dr. Maudsley, and Jonathan 

 Hutchinson ; if we would rightly follow the meaning of the bril- 

 liant Weismann when he says that heredity is " that property of 

 an organism by which its peculiar nature is transmitted to its 

 descendants. And not only are the characteristics of the species 

 transmitted to the following generation, but even the individual 

 peculiarities." Besides all this, we have the evidence of men of 

 authority, specialists in criminal anthropology, whose conclusions 

 point in exactly the same direction, men like Cesare Lombroso, 

 Ottolenghi, Rossi, Zucarelli, Virgilio Morselli, Marro ; to these let 

 us add the names of the eminent Lacassagne, of Kocher, Raux, 

 Bournet. And even then we shall have only a part. The teach- 



