606 Analyses of Books, [October, 
suggests may be due to some specific poison present in the 
atmosphere. 
We may now turn to Dr. Howard’s general conclusions. 
These are : — 
Firstly, that body and mind are one, — that is, the mind of 
man, as we know it, is the produdt of matter, as we know and 
define matter. Those persons who may feel inclined to denounce 
the author as a “ materialist ” will do well to consider certain 
reservations made on p. 20, where he says — “ By this identity 
of mind and matter I refer simply to the manifestations of mind 
during this life through its material medium, the body.” 
Secondly, that insanity is abnormal mind, the consequence of 
abnormal matter, — therefore a purely physical disease. This 
conclusion is flatly at variance with, and much more practical 
than, the view held by not a few jurists and theologians, that 
insanity is sin. 
The ninth conclusion is of an exceedingly serious character. 
The author writes “ that every normal man has under certain 
circumstances a free will, but every intellectual man, according 
to my definition of an intellectual man, has a free will by which 
he controls all his desires. Consequently such a man would not, 
if he could, be guilty of a crime against society. Before he could 
be a criminal there must be a physical change in his mental 
organisation rendering him insane, and consequently irrespon- 
sible for his acts.” This contention, as we understand it, 
amounts to a general plea of irresponsibility for all criminals. 
In his tenth conclusion he asks “ Does the fear of punishment 
act as a preventative to crime in any person?” The author 
seems to answer his own question in the negative, and adds — 
“ If ever any means had a fair trial for the prevention of crime 
it has been punishment, with what effect criminal history can 
answer.” 
We think a reply to these views is not far to seek. If the fear 
of punishment does not prevent crime, how is it that so many 
offenders carefully and eagerly scrutinise the law in order to find 
some loophole which may enable them to effect unrighteous ends 
without peril ? Punishment can scarcely be said to have had a fair 
trial for the prevention of crime. In England it has been stulti- 
fied by the fundamental error of treating offences against the 
person more leniently than those against property. Sometimes 
it has been indiscriminately severe, and sometimes as indiscrimi- 
nately lenient. It has rarely made a sufficiently broad distinction 
between the incidental crime into which a man may be led by 
the pressure of want and the formal war against society for 
which the burglar and the garrotter deliberately equip themselves. 
Even as it is we may fairly assert that had there been no punish- 
ment crime would be far more prevalent, just as if we had no 
medication disease would be more rampant. Nature acfts on the 
principle that the species, the race, is of more moment than the 
