CRIMINALS AND INCAPABLES. 91 



symptom of some innate variation from the normal, 

 and it is therefore the physician's duty to treat it like 

 any other constitutional disease. In the same light 

 we are bound to view the cases of many criminals and 

 persons who from some inborn defect are incapable 

 of doing their share in the work of the community. 



Crime is often an Acquired Habit. 



It is probable that a large proportion of criminals 

 are the creatures of accident or of vicious training. 

 Children are very imitative, and are apt to acquire 

 the habits and even modes of thought of those who 

 surround them ; and bad example in their homes, or 

 the neglect of parents who, perhaps, in their turn had 

 also suffered from bad example and neglect, has often 

 stamped a child's character for life. At school again, 

 the child is surrounded by influences which often 

 affect him throughout life for good or for evil, and 

 later on he is still susceptible to many evil tempta- 

 tions which may in his case be exceedingly strong. 

 We are therefore all of us a compound of our in- 

 nate inborn qualities, and those that have been 

 stamped, as it were, upon us by contact with the 

 external world; and we have no right to judge in 

 an off-hand manner of the innate qualities of a 

 criminal without a very extensive knowledge of his 

 upbringing, and of the temptations and influences 



