MENTAL CONSTITUTION OF ANIMALS. 253 



progeny, which comes into the world with secretiveness 

 excessive in strength and activity. All other evil charac- 

 teristics may be readily conceived as being implanted in a 

 new generation in the same way. And sometimes not one, 

 but several generations, may be concerned in bringing up the 

 result to a pitch which produces crime. It is, however, to be 

 observed, that the general tendency of things is to a limitation, 

 not the extension of such abnormally constituted beings. The 

 criminal brain finds itself in a social scene where all is against 

 it. It may struggle on for a time, but it is sure to be over- 

 come at last by the medium and superior natures. The 

 disposal of such beings will always depend much on the 

 moral state of a community, the degree in which just views 

 prevail with regard to human nature, and the feelings which 

 accident may have caused to predominate at a particular time. 

 "Where the mass was little enlightened or refined, and terrors 

 for life or property were highly excited, malefactors have ever 

 been treated severely. But when order is generally trium- 

 phant, and reason allowed sway, men begin to see the true 

 case of criminals namely, that while one large section are 

 victims of erroneous social conditions, another are brought to 

 error by tendencies which they are only unfortunate in 

 having inherited from nature. Criminal jurisprudence then 

 addresses itself less to the direct punishment than to the 

 reformation and care-taking of those liable to its attention. 

 And such a treatment of criminals, it may be farther re- 

 marked, so that it stop short of affording any encouragement 

 to crime, (a point which experience will determine,) is evi- 

 dently no more than justice, seeing how accidentally all forms 

 of the moral constitution are distributed and how thoroughly 

 mutual obligation shines throughout the whole frame of 

 society the strong to help the weak, the good to redeem and 

 restrain the bad. 



The sum of all we have seen of the psychical constitution 

 of man is, that its Almighty Author has destined it, like 

 everything else, to be developed from inherent qualities, and 

 to have a mode of action depending solely on its own organi- 

 zation. Thus the whole is complete on one principle. The 



