MENTAL. CONSTITUTION OF ANIMAL,*. 183 



and hence those errors, and shortcomings, and excesses, 

 without end, with which the good are constantly finding 

 cause to charge themselves. There is at the same time 

 even here a possibility of improvement. In infancy, the 

 impulses are all of them irregular ; a child is cruel, cun- 

 ning, and false, under the slightest temptation, but in 

 time learns to control these inclinations, and to be habit- 

 ually humane, frank, and truthful. So is human society, 

 in its earliest stages, sanguinary, aggressive, and deceit- 

 ful, but in time becomes just, faithful and benevolent. 

 To such improvements there is a natural tendency which 

 will operate in all fair circumstances, though it is not to 

 be expected that irregular and undue impulses will ever 

 be altogether banished from the system. 



It may still be a puzzle to many, how beings should be 

 born into the world whose organization is such that they 

 unavoidably, even in a civilized country, become male- 

 factors. Does God, it may be asked, make criminals? 

 Does he fashion certain beings with a predestination to 

 evil ? He does not do so ; and yet the criminal type of 

 brain, as it is called, comes into existence in accordance 

 with laws which the Deity has established. It is not, 

 however, as the result of the first or general intention of 

 those laws, but as an exception from their ordinary and 

 proper action. The production of those evilly-disposed 

 beings is in this manner. The moral character of the 

 progeny depends in a general way (as does the physical 

 character also,) upon conditions of the parents, — both 

 general conditions, and conditions at the particular time 

 of the commencement of the existence of the new being, 

 and likewise external conditions affecting the foetus 

 through the mother. Now, the amount of these condi- 

 tions is indefinite. The faculties of the parents, as far 

 as these are concerned, may have oscillated for the time 

 towards the extreme of tensibility in one direction. The 

 influences upon the foetus may have also been of an ex- 

 treme and unusual kind. Let us suppose that the condi- 

 tions upon the whole have been favorable for the develop- 

 ment, not of the higher but of the lower sentiments, and 

 of the propensities of the new being, the result will ne- 

 cessarily be a mean type of brain. Here it will be ob- 

 served, God no more decreed an immoral being than he 

 decreed an immoral paroxysm of the sentiments. Our 

 perplexity is in considering the ill-disposed being by 



