Marcu 26, 1914] 
NATURE 87 
the public should be in possession of the mass 
of information collated, and _ statistically tabu- 
lated by him, and of the conclusions he draws 
therefrom. It must also be explicitly understood 
that the commissioners are not in a position to 
endorse all the conclusions at which he arrives, or 
to criticise the method employed in attaining them, 
as any attempt in this direction would involve an 
elaborate discussion of matters on which the 
highest scientific authorities differ.” 
Part I. of Dr. Goring’s work is devoted to an 
examination of the theories of the late Prof. Cesare 
Lombroso and his followers. These are shown, 
we think, quite conclusively to be erroneous. 
The matter is one eminently suitable for statistical 
- handling. Lombroso stated that criminals are 
mentally and physically abnormal. A_ large 
number of convicts have been examined, and the 
abnormalities have not been found. 
No evidence has emerged confirming the existence 
of a physical criminal type such as Lombroso and his 
disciples have described... there is no such thing 
as a physical criminal type (p. 173)... there is no 
such thing as a mental ‘‘criminal type” (p. 246). 
In chapter i. of part II. we find another statis- 
tical summary which must be accepted unless, as 
is very improbable, it can be shown that the facts 
are not correctly stated. Convicts as a class are 
physically and mentally inferior to the general 
population. They are, on the average, shorter, 
lighter, and stupider. Thieves, burglars, and in- 
cendiaries are especially defective. Criminals con- 
victed of violence or fraud are little, if at all, 
inferior. A third 
indisputable statistical fact has emerged from the 
investigation. It is that the family incidence 
of crime is not fortuitously distributed, it is not 
entirely independent of lineage; that criminals do not 
occur equally in all families of the general community, 
but tend to be restricted to particular stocks or sec- 
tions of the community: to those stocks tainted with 
criminal ancestry. And we have found that the in- 
tensity of this limitation, the intensity of this parental 
resemblance in criminal propensity, ranges between 
0-45 and 0-6 (p. 364). 
But the greater portion of part II. consists of 
debatable matter. Statistics are not merely sum- 
marised, they are interpreted. The inferences are 
not immediate, but mediate. It is probable that 
the very facts on which Dr. Goring relies would 
be used by opponents as foundations for quite 
contradictory conclusions. Facts very similar 
actually have been so used times without number. 
For instance, a generation ago the British Asso- 
ciation appointed an anthropometric committee to 
ascertain the statures and weights of persons 
engaged in different occupations, in accordance 
with the principle that— 
“The occupation of an individual explains not only 
the direct effects of physical or mental work on the 
constitution of the body, but the kind of nurture or 
sanitary surroundings to which he may have been 
subjected.”” The Committee found ‘‘ the most obvious 
facts which the figures disclose are the check which 
growth receives as we descend lower and lower in the 
social scale.” 
NOmaa07, VOL. 93) 
Dr. Goring’s comment is— 
“The figures disclose no such check upon growth 
as an obvious fact. The facts actually revealed are 
that, as we descend lower and lower in the social 
scale, the means of stature and weight diminish in 
value. ‘There is no evidence that the diminution is 
caused by a check upon growth due to environmental 
conditions. An inference from these facts of equal 
validity with the Committee’s deduction would be that 
descent in the social and economic scales of life is 
associated with a physical inferiority of human stock; 
in other words, that the professional man, labourer, 
and artisan, &c., breed their own kind, who in turn 
pursue the calling of their fathers, i.e. the work most 
suited to their social station, and to their particular 
type of physique” (p. 193). 
Here we have the old dispute as to whether 
nature or nurture is the stronger. Dr. Goring 
sets himself the task of “disentangling the influ- 
ence of heredity from a complication of environ- 
mental influences” (p. 337). 
‘“As seen in the above table, 177, the parental cor- 
relation for sexual crimes and crimes of wilful damage 
to property, is from 0-45 to 0-5; for stealing it is from 
0-48 to 0-58. We would assume then from this 
evidence, that the intensity of the inherited factor in 
criminality is from 0-45 to 0-5, and the intensity of 
criminal contagion is anything between 0-05 and o-1” 
(p- 367). ‘‘Our second conclusion, then, is this: that 
relatively to its origin in the constitution of the male- 
factor, and especially in his mentally defective con- 
stitution, crime is only a trifling extent (if to any) 
the product of social inequalities, of adverse environ- 
ment, or of other manifestations of what may be 
comprehensively termed the force of circumstances ”’ 
(p. 371). 
In these and many other passages, Dr. Goring 
appears to maintain strongly that the criminal is 
born, not made; that parentage counts for much, 
and training for little; that the child of a criminal 
has,2:,yOme wthes savyerase; < the “proclivity.” <or 
‘“diathesis”” so strongly developed that he will 
be a criminal no matter what the circumstances in 
which he is reared. With some surprise, there- 
fore, we read near the end of the work :— 
“But this fact of resemblance does not argue 
absence of the influence of environment in the develop- 
ment of human beings. It is as absurd to say that, 
because criminal tendency is heritable, a man’s con- 
viction for crime cannot be influenced by education, 
as it would be to assert that, because mathematical 
ability is heritable, accomplishment in mathematics is 
independent of instruction; or that, because stature 
is heritable, growth is independent of nutriment and 
exercise. Our correlations tell us that, despite of 
education, heritable constitutional conditions prevail in 
the making of criminals; but they contain no pro- 
nouncement upon the extent to which the general 
standard of morality may have been raised by educa- 
tion. We know that to make a law-abiding citizen 
two things are needed—capacity and training. Within 
dwells the potentiality for growth; but without stands 
the natural right of each child born into the world— 
the right to possess every opportunity of growing to 
his full height’’ (p. 373). 
This passage is a little vague. Probably in- 
stead of “conviction for crime”? Dr. Goring means 
“proclivity for crime,” or “chances of conviction 
for crime.” He seems clearly of the opinion that 
“training” is necessary to make of a normal 
