THE yUKES. 113 



tional, as in the earlier stages of insanity and other diseases, it is 

 greater ; where it results from educational neglect, it is greatest. 

 But no scheme which has but one method of dealing with every 

 class of cases, can be of any general value. Is there not more 

 in human nature than in any human device which does not 

 include all varieties of human aberration and adapt itself to their 

 multiplex requirements ? To meet the exigencies of the problem the 

 State of New York has hitherto provided a prison, ranged the 

 perhaps epileptic felon in a gang to learn the lock step to torment 

 the shattered nerves, the fragment of a trade that supplies the mur- 

 derous or suicidal weapon, the congregate idleness that prepares for 

 solitary debauch, the enforced companionship of felons in the 

 stratified dormitories, where unmentionable crimes are perpetrated 

 — inevitably perpetrated, because of the predisposing sloth — till, at 

 last, the exhausted brain breaks down, and the congregate system 

 adds one more maniac to the long list of wrecked lives which 

 its many deficiencies create, or returns the felon upon the commu- 

 nity a more dangerous offender. 



What is wanted is that an order and kind of treatment in ac- 

 cordance with the ascertained deficiencies of each person shall be 

 the key of the method of training, adopting any passion or emotion 

 which is yet sound or serviceable for the purpose as a point of 

 departure in the new education, and a weapon to conquer or amend 

 the frailties of the character, thus making any good trait the 

 nucleus for the crystallization of better habits. 



In the " Jukes " it was shown that heredity depends upon the 

 permanence of the environment,^ and that a change in the environ- 

 ment may produce an entire change in the career, which, in the 

 course of greater or less length of time, according to varying cir- 

 cumstances, will produce an actual change in the character of the 

 individual. t Now, if the environment furnishes the elements of the 

 mental nutrition, and largely determines by that means the char- 

 acter of the mental and moral growth, what are we to think of a 

 prison system which, with vast perfunctory incompetence, masses 

 an army of moral cripples, cursed with contaminating characteristics 

 * See proposition 5, page 66. f The " Jukes," 58. 



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