Not Guilty: A Defence of the Bottom Dog

Again, the musical talent may have been a quality that had been improving by marriage for several generations. Or it may have been an accident, due to some physical process about which we cannot possibly have any direct knowledge.

For instance, just as some special excellence of some special organ may be handed down, so may some special defect A child may inherit the defect, or the excellence. Or he may inherit a talent from both parents, and so may excel them both.

A man may inherit his genius piecemeal from a hundred ancestors, some of them dead for centuries, or he may owe his special brilliance to some excitement, or even to some derangement of the nervous system. In fact, to what Lombroso calls "degeneracy." He may be like a river, fed by several ancestral streams. He may be the descendant of some "mute inglorious Milton." But one thing he is not – he is not a "mystery." There is nothing in his greatness more mysterious than the accumulation of money in a bank, or the agrandisement of a river by its tributary streams, or the sudden appearance of a pattern of unusual beauty in a kaleidoscope.

There is nothing in genius to belie heredity. There is nothing in genius that cannot be accounted for by heredity – if we remember the laws of variation, and of atavism, or breeding back.

"THE BORN CRIMINAL"

Speaking strictly, there are no "born criminals"; but there are some unfortunate creatures born with a nature prone to crime, just as there are others born with a nature prone to disease.

These "born criminals," regarded by their better-endowed or luckier brothers and sisters as "wicked," are the victims of "atavism" or of "degeneracy."

They are as much to be pitied, and as little to be blamed, as those born with a liability to insanity or consumption.

Atavism, as we have seen, is a reversion to an older and a lower type, a "breeding back," in some points, to the savage or the brute.

"Degeneracy" is the inherited result of vice, insanity, or disease in the parent Lombroso describes degeneracy as "the action of heredity in the children of the inebriate, the syphilitic, the insane, the consumptive, etc.; or of accidental causes, such as lesions of the head, or the action of mercury, which profoundly change the tissues, perpetuates neuroses or other diseases in the patient, and, which is worse, aggravates them in his descendants."

The atavist is a man born with the nature, or some of the traits of bestial or savage ancestors. He is bred back to the type that was before morals. He is born with strong animal traits, with few social qualities; with little or no moral brain. He is a modern child, born with the passions, or the appetites, or the intelligence, of an ape, or a cave-man. To expect him to rise to the moral standard of to-day, and to blame him if he fail, is as unreasonable as it would be to expect the same conduct from a gorilla, or a panther.

If the atavist is "wicked," the shark, and the wolf, and the adder are "wicked."

To say that the atavistic man has "reason" is no answer; he has not the kind of reason that makes for peace and order. His misfortune just lies in the fact that he is "bred back" to the kind of reason which, amongst the cave-men, perhaps, made a man a leader, or a hero, but amongst civilised Western people makes him a "born criminal."

I said before, that to blame a Spaniard for being proud is to blame him for being born of Spanish parents. It is just as true to say that to blame a man for being a "born criminal" is to blame him because some of his baser ancestors have accidentally passed on to him the traits of their lower natures.

Indeed, it is plainly absurd to blame a man for being "born" anything, since he had no hand nor part in his birth.

All we can do with regard to the "born criminal" is to pity him for his unhappy inheritance, and try to make the best of him. So far we have never tried to make the best of him; but have usually made almost the worst of him, by meeting his hate with our hate, his ignorance with our ignorance, his ferocity with our ferocity. Nature, or God, having cursed the poor wretch with a heritage of shame, we have come forward, in the name of humanity and justice, to punish and execrate him for his fatal mischoice of ancestors. It is as though we should flog a gorilla or a hyæna for having wickedly refused to be born a Canon of St. Paul's, or a Primitive Methodist Sunday school teacher.

But some will suppose that the "born criminal" might be a sober, law-abiding, and God-fearing man, "if he would try"; and they do not understand that the man with the atavistic brain cannot try.

He has not got the kind of brain that can try to be what we think he ought to be. We do not expect the bear to "try" to be polite, nor the hog to "try" to be cleanly. We know they cannot try to be either of those things. Neither can the atavistic man try to be something for which his nature was not made.

What is sauce for the atavist is sauce for the degenerate. He also is the victim of cruel fate. He also inherits misfortune, or shame, or disaster from his fathers. His nature is not a casting back to an ancient type: it is a nature poisoned, maimed, perverted, or spoiled through the vices or the diseases of those who brought him into the world.

The degenerate may inherit from a diseased or drunken parent an imperfect mind or an imperfect body. He may be born with a weak moral sense, or with weak lungs, or with an ill-balanced brain.

Proneness to crime or proneness to disease may be born in him through no fault of his own. The cause is the same in both cases: the vice or disease of a parent.

Now it is certain that we do not blame, but pity, and that we do not punish but help the victim whose degeneracy takes the form of disease. But we do blame and we do punish the victim whose degeneracy takes the form of immorality or crime.

In neither case is the degeneracy the fault of the degenerate: in both cases it is handed down to him by his parent or parents. Yet in the one case he gets our sympathy, and in the other case our censure.

There is neither justice nor reason in such treatment of those who have the misfortune to be born – in the true sense of the words – of "unsound mind."

Those who have made a scientific study of crime tell us that "psychic atavism is the dominant characteristic of the born criminal."

What is "psychic atavism"? It is a breeding back, or "casting back" to a lower type of mind. This atavistic mind is inherited by the "born criminal" just as certain "muscles common to apes" are inherited by some other men.

And we are told that this inherited atavistic mind is "the dominant characteristic of the criminal born." In other words, those men whom we have always blamed and punished as exceptionally "wicked," have inherited an atavistic, or criminal, mind from ancestors who died millions of years ago. The most noticeable and striking fact about the born criminal is his unfortunate inheritance of that atavistic mind.

And in the plenitude of our wisdom and the glow of our righteous wrath, we hang a man, or flog him, or brand him, or loathe him, because a cruel fate has visited upon him an affliction more pitiable than blindness, or lameness, or paralysis, or consumption.

In cases of psychic atavism the actual form of the brain, or the skull, is more or less like that of the older and lower type to which the luckless atavist has been cast back. The skull of the "born criminal" is the skull of the ape-man, or the cave-man. It has a low and retreating forehead, a heavy and square jaw, and is large behind, where the baser animal parts of the brain are placed.

Now, to expect the same morals and the same intelligence from a man cursed with the skull of a gorilla, or the brain of a wild hog, as from the man blest with the skull and brain of a Socrates or a Shakespeare, is like expecting figs to grow upon thistles, or fish to breathe without gills.

And to blame a man for the shape of his skull, or the balance of his brain, is as foolish as to blame him because he has no eye for colour or no ear for music, or because his "having in beard is as a younger brother's revenue."

Speaking on this subject in his excellent book, "The Diseases of Society," Dr. Lydston, Professor of Criminal Anthropology, who is a well-known authority in America, says:

Atavism, or reversion of type, is a most important phase of the relation of evolutionary law to criminal and vice tendencies… Reversion of type may be psychic (mental) or physical or both.

Whether associated with obvious physical reversions or not, psychic atavism is the dominant characteristic of the criminal. It is certainly the principal phenomenon involved in the study of the crime question, because it constitutes the dynamics of crime. The outcropping of ancestral types of mentality is observed to underlie many of the manifestations of vice and crime. These ancestral types or traits may revert farther back even than the savage progenitors of civilised man, and approximate those of the lower animals who, in turn, stand behind the savage in the line of descent…

Lombroso assigns to atavism a position of pre-eminence in the etiology of crime. In effect he thinks that crime is a return to primitive and barbarous ancestral conditions, the criminal being practically a savage, born later than his day. Obviously this view fits very accurately the so-called born criminal, comprising about one-tenth of the entire criminal population.

But what of the other victims of heredity: the criminal, or immoral "degenerate"? Let us take a few facts, and see what they will teach us.

Dr. Lydston testifies as follows:

Rev. O. McCulloch has traced the life histories of seventeen hundred and fifty degenerate criminal and pauper descendants of one "Ben Ishmael," who lived in Kentucky in 1790.

The Rev. Dr. Stocker, of Berlin, traced eight hundred and thirty-four descendants of two sisters, who lived in 1825. Among them were seventy-six who had served one hundred and sixteen years in prison, one hundred and sixty-four prostitutes, one hundred and six illegitimate children, seventeen pimps, one hundred and forty-two beggars, and sixty-four paupers.

It has been estimated by Sichart, Director of Prisons in Wurtemburg, that over twenty-five per cent, of the German prison population comes from a degenerate ancestry. Vergilis claims thirty-two per cent, for Italian criminals.

Now, bearing in mind that the unfortunate children of drunken, diseased, criminal, vicious, and insane parents may, and in very many cases will, either become criminal or immoral, or, becoming imbecile or diseased, will breed other degenerate children who will become criminal or immoral, let us consider the following plain facts taken from a London daily paper of the present year (1905).

It is estimated that there are 50,000 epileptic children in the United Kingdom, and that one child in every 100 of the population is feeble-minded.

In the last few years special schools have been opened for these children, and they are trained until they are sixteen years of age. At that age they are turned out into the world. A few are able to look after themselves. The majority drift into imbecility and vice, and flood the workhouses and prisons.

At a meeting in the Guildhall, London, called to discuss the means of dealing with imbeciles and epileptics, a speech was made by Dr. Potts, of Birmingham, of which the following is a condensed report, cut by me from the Daily Express:

Terrible facts with regard to feeble-minded and defective women were given by Dr. Potts. He paid a visit to a girls' night shelter, and investigated the first twelve cases he found there. Here is their record:

1. Consumptive, both parents died of the disease.

2. Neurotic drunkard, with a family who had suffered from St. Vitus' dance.

3. Normal.

4. Deaf and mentally defective.

5. Neurotic and mentally defective.

6. No congenital defect, but health ruined by drink.

7 and 8. Feeble character.

9. Suffering from persistent bad memory.

10. Twice imprisoned for theft; daughter of drunken loafer.

11. Normal.

12. Mentally defective and suffering from heart disease. Thus, out of twelve only two were normal individuals. Yet the ten were free to go as they liked, and to bring up defective children.

"It is well known," said Dr. Potts, "that a large number of the inmates of penitentiaries are feeble-minded women."

We see, then, that a great many poor imbeciles are regularly sent to prison as criminals. On that point allow me to put in the evidence of Sir Robert Anderson, late of Scotland Yard. Speaking of the feeble-minded, Sir Robert said (I quote again from the London Press):

My deliberate, conviction is that our present prison methods and prison discipline are absolutely brutal to these poor persons. People say the law of Moses is brutal, but it is not so brutal as the present criminal system of England.

No one who has not been behind the scenes can understand in any measure the misery and cruelty of it. It is "seven days' hard labour," "a month's hard labour," time after time for these poor creatures, who ought to be dealt with like children. In prison they spend their miserable lives. Out of gaol they add to the number of their own species, and commit offences which send them back once more.

Our magistrates simply send them for another month or six months. But it is not the magistrates' fault. It is the fault of the law. And this goes on in what promises to be the most intellectually conceited age since God made man upon earth. Surely we might have some pity for these poor creatures! If we have no pity for them we should have regard for the public.

That is the testimony of the late head of the Criminal Investigation Department: an Assistant Commissioner of Police, and Barrister at Law.

Let us now return to Dr. Potts, of Birmingham, for a moment. In the speech above quoted Dr. Potts gave the causes of mental defects – which are the causes that lead these poor creatures to immorality and to crime, as follows:

1. Defective nutrition in early years of life.

2. Hereditary tendency to consumption.

3. Descent from insane or criminal stock.

4. Chronic alcoholism of one or both parents.

We have here, added by Dr. Potts, another cause of degeneracy: that is, defective nutrition in early life. In plain words, improper feeding, or semi-starvation.

Later, when we come to deal with environment, I shall show that there are many other causes of degeneration and of crime. But here I only point out that atavism and degeneration account for from thirty to forty per cent, of the criminals of the present day. That atavism and degeneration are forced upon the unborn child by heredity; that therefore these forty per cent, of our criminals are unfortunate victims of fate, and are no more blameworthy nor wicked than the victims of a railway accident, or an earthquake, or an epidemic of cholera or smallpox.

They should, as I claimed before, be pitied, and not blamed; they should be helped, not punished.

Unhappy, unblest atavistic man, that in lieu of love has only lust, in lieu of wisdom only cunning, in lieu of power violence; and with a whole world to walk in, as in a garden fair, lies wallowing hideously in the foul dungeon of his own unlightened soul.

Unhappy criminal born, most pitiful dreadful of developed creatures; lonelier and more accursed than banded wolf or solitary tiger: a waif, a spoil, a pariah "born out of his due time":

A scribe's work writ awry and blurred,

Spoiled music, with no perfect word, a wretched, horrible Ishmael with his hand against the hand of every man, and every man's hand implacably against his.

On him, it would appear, has fallen the doom of the prophet, and instead of sweet spices there is rottenness, instead of a girdle a rope: branding instead of beauty.

In the barren garden of his mind no flowers will blow, his trees will bear no fruit All human pleasure is to him a Circe cup; he finds no pathos in the children's laughter, no beauty in the dawn-shine; no glory in the constellations.

What are we to do for this wretched desperate brother who will not love us though we whip him with whips of wire, who will not make friends of us though we spurn and spit upon him; who, though we preach to him, cannot understand; who, though we teach him, cannot learn; who, though we hang him high as, Haman, will "die game," cursing us with his strangled breath, mocking us with his blinded eyes; and in spite of all our intellect and righteousness going back from us unbettered and untamed into the abyss of eternity and the laboratory of evolution, whence he and we were drawn: going back from us a savage still, and in his angry heart and baffled mind holding our half-fledged knowledge and green morality in derision.

Well, he is dead; his stiff neck broken, and his body wrapped in a winding sheet of lime.

And we? We remain the superior persons we are. We are civilised, and holy. We punish weakness with blows, and misfortune with chains. We teach sweet reasonableness with the cat-o'-nine-tails – steeped in brine. We exemplify gentleness and mercy with the gibbet and the axe. We brand the blind, and torture the imbecile, and execrate the miserable, and damn the diseased, and revile the fallen; we set our righteous heel upon the creeping thing, and thank our anomalous and hypothetical God of Love and Justice that we are not as those others – our atavistic brother and his degenerate children.

And our atavistic brother, the criminal born! He does not understand us, he does not admire us, he cannot love us. We fail, in some inexplicable way, to charm the deaf adder, charm we never so wisely.

But some day, perhaps, when the superior person has achieved humility, even the outlawed Bottom Dog may come by some crumbs of sympathy, some drops of the milk of human kindness, and – then?

CHAPTER SIX – ENVIRONMENT

|WHAT is environment?

When we speak of a man's environment we mean his surroundings, his experiences; all that he sees, hears, feels, and learns from the instant that the lamp of life is kindled to the instant when the light goes out.

By environment we mean everything that develops or modifies the child or the man for good or for ill.

We mean his mother's milk; the home, and the state of life into which he was born. We mean the nurse who suckles him, the children he plays with, the school he learns in, the air he breathes, the water he drinks, the food he eats. We mean the games he plays, the work he does, the sights he sees, the sounds he hears. We mean the girls he loves, the woman he marries, the children he rears, the wages he earns. We mean the sickness that tries him, the griefs that sear him, the friends who aid and the enemies who wound him. We mean all his hopes and fears, his victories and defeats; his faiths and his disillusionments. We mean all the harm he does, and all the help he gives; all the ideals that beckon him, all the temptations that lure him; all his weepings and laughter, his kissings and cursings, his lucky hits and unlucky blunders: everything he does and suffers under the sun.

I go into all this detail because we must remember that everything that happens to a man, everything that influences him, is a part of his environment.

It is a common mistake to think of environment in a narrow sense, as though environment implied no more than poverty or riches. Everything outside our skin belongs to our environment.

Let us think of it again. Education is environment; religion is environment; business and politics are environment; all the ideals, conventions, and prejudices of race and class are environment; literature, science, and the Press are environment; music, history, and sport are environment; beauty and ugliness are environment; example and precept are environment; war and travel and commerce are environment; sunshine and ozone, honour and dishonour, failure and success, are environment; love is environment.

I stress and multiply examples because the power of environment is so tremendous that we can hardly over-rate its importance.

A child is not born with a conscience; but with the rudiments of a conscience: the materials from which a conscience may or may not be developed – by environment.

A child is not born with capacities, but only with potentialities, or possibilities, for good or evil, which may or may not be developed – by environment.

A child is born absolutely without knowledge. Every atom of knowledge he gets must be got from his environment.

Every faculty of body or of mind grows stronger with use and weaker with disuse. This is as true of the reason and the will as of the muscles.

The sailor has better sight than the townsman, because his eyes get better exercise. The blind have sharper ears than ours, because they depend more on their hearing.

Exercise of the mind "alters the arrangement of the grey matter of the brain," and so alters the morals, the memory, and the reasoning powers.

Just as dumb-bells, rowing, or delving develop the muscles, thought, study, and conversation develop the brain.

And everything that changes, or develops, muscle or brain is a part of our environment.

There must be bounds to the powers of environment, but no man has yet discovered the limits, and few have dared to place them wide enough.

But the scope of environment is undoubtedly so great, as I shall try to prove, that, be the heredity what it may, environment has power to save or damn.

Let us think what it means to be born quite without knowledge. Let us think what it means to owe all that we learn to environment.

So it is. Were it not for the action of environment, for the help of other men and women, we should live and die as animals; without morality, without decency, without the use of tools, or arms, or arts, or letters. We should be savages, or superior kinds of apes. That we are civilised and cultured men and women we owe to the fellow-creatures who gave into our infant hands the key to the stored-up knowledge and experience of the race.

The main difference between the Europe of to-day and the Europe of the old Stone Age is one of knowledge: that is, of environment

Suppose that a child of Twentieth-Century parents could be born into the environment of an earlier century. Would he grow up with the ideas of to-day, or with the ideas of those who taught and trained him? Most certainly he would fall into step with his environment: he would think with those with whom he lived, and from whom he learnt.

Born into ancient Athens, he would look upon slavery as a quite natural and proper thing born into ancient Scandinavia, he would grow up a Viking, would worship Thor and Odin, and would adopt piracy as the only profession for a man of honour born into the environment of the Spanish prime, he would think it a righteous act to roast heretics or to break Lutherans on the wheel. Born into the fanatical environment of Sixteenth-Century France, he would have no scruples against assisting in the holy massacre of St. Bartholomew's.

Born a Turk, he would believe the Koran, and accept polygamy and slavery. Born a Red Indian, he would scalp his slain or wounded enemies, and torture his prisoners. Born amongst cannibals, he would devour his aged relatives, and his faded wives, and most of the foes made captive to his bow and spear.

Suppose a child of modern English family could be born into the environment of Fourteenth-Century England!

He would surely believe in the Roman Catholic religion, in a personal devil, and in a hell of everlasting fire.

He would believe that the sun goes round the world, and that any person who thought otherwise was a child of the devil, and ought to be broiled piously and slowly at a fire of green faggots.

He would accept slave-dealing, witch-burning, the Star Chamber, the whipping-post, the pillory, and the forcing of evidence by torture, as comfortably as we now accept the cat-o'-nine-tails, the silent system, and the gallows.

He would look upon education, sanitation, and science as black magic and defiance of God.

He would never have learnt from Copernicus, Newton, Harvey, Bacon, Spencer, Darwin, Edison, or Pasteur.

He would be ignorant of Shakespeare, Cromwell, the French Revolution, the Emancipation of Slaves, the Factory Acts, and the Household Franchise.