58 THE JUKES. 



sighted policy of a criminal career and accommodates himself to 

 social requirements. 



This demonstrates that the natural process of the development 

 of nerve tissue is a spontaneous and enormous force, capable of 

 assisting in the work of reforming vicious and criminal lives. So 

 long as there is growth, there can you produce change. Per contra, 

 wherever you can change the environment so that the sensations, 

 the experience, the habit of steady attention become automatic, you 

 have at your disposal the means by which this will can be so devel- 

 oped, organized and made steady, that it can serve as a guide and 

 as a restraint in the future career of the person so transferred to 

 new environment. Here is the probable explanation of the spon- 

 taneous reform of the criminals whose cases are recited above. In 

 spite of early training which was vicious ; in spite of our penal ser- 

 vitude, which is execrable, and not in consequence of it, we find 

 that the disadvantages of criminal life have been weighed against 

 the advantages of liberty and good repute, and a new course adopt- 

 ed after the twenty-fourth year, without any adventitious encourage- 

 ment from reformatory institutions. The law would seem to be that 

 development is in the direction ot least resistance. Hence the 

 value of good environment and the power of skilful training which 

 removes obstacles to sound physical and mental organization and 

 to an extent artificially contrives to open up the direction of least 

 resistance in the channel of the established laws of social order. 



But the statistical proof of a steady decrease of crime among 

 males of 33 per cent for every term after 20 years of age, which, it 

 has just been argued, is accounted for by growth of the will up 

 to maturity, does not account for the decrease after that time. The 

 facts collected in this report show that the essential characteristic 

 of aggressive crime in the meridian of life is vitality ; that impris- 

 onment causes and hastens induced pauperism ; and as life wanes 

 the criminal tends to become a permanent public charge. Thus we 

 get a gradual substitution of careers, from the criminal to the pau- 

 per, which glide into each other in so natural and steady a proces- 

 sion, that the ratio of decrease in crime, according to successive 

 terms, as pointed out by Dr. Neison, is progressively continued to 



