NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 263 



ill which just views prevail witli 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 

 triumphant, and reason allowed sway, men begin to 

 see the true case of criminals — namely, that while one 

 large department are victims of erroneous social condi- 

 tions, 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 aflbrding any encourage- 

 ment to crime (a point which experience will determine), 

 is e\ddently 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 constitu- 

 tion 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 organisation. Thus the whole is complete on 

 one principle. The masses of space are formed by law ; 

 law makes them in due time theatres of existence for 

 plants and animals ; sensation, disposition, intellect, are 

 all in like manner developed and sustained in action by 

 law. It is most interesting to observe into how small a 

 field the whole of the mysteries of nature thus ultimately 

 resolve themselves. The inorganic has one final compre- 



