96 DARWINISM AND RACE PROGRESS. 



really for life would be among many causes of that 

 change in the general tone of society which is shown 

 by history to be the greatest preventive of crime as 

 now understood. Like persons affected with scarlet 

 fever or other infectious maladies, the propagandist 

 criminal should be confined in his proper hospital 

 a prison and if incurable should be detained until 

 his death. Like phthisis or other hereditary disease, 

 the criminal disposition would in the end cease to be 

 inherited, if all who were tainted with it were com- 

 pelled to live and die childless. The remedy may be 

 painful, and even cruel, but perhaps greater cruelty 

 and greater pain may be inflicted by the neglect 

 which leaves physical and social ills to spread them- 

 selves unchecked." 



Many of the innate criminals, and those who 

 have committed crime rather from the effect of want, 

 or bad example, than from any inherent tendency, 

 sooner or later fall upon the parish. Within the 

 same wards of the poorhouse, or receiving the same 

 out-door relief, we find this criminal class together 

 with the incapables and deserving poor. This is, 

 indeed, a most unfortunate state of things, for we are 

 bound to draw a strong line of demarcation between 

 those, on the one hand, who are in want through 

 acquired habits of idleness, those who are innately in- 

 capable, and those, on the other hand, who are afflicted 

 during their lifetime by sickness, adversity, or old 



