among the cross-breeds between the Latin and the Teuton in whom the Latin spirit is dominant, than among Teutons and Anglo-Saxons who have more or less freed themselves from Latin rule. The Latin is much more impulsive than the Teuton. The criminal by passion, therefore, should be more numerous in Latin or intermediate countries than in Teutonic or Anglo-Saxon countries; and perhaps as the Teuton and Anglo-Saxon throw off the Latinism due to education this class of criminal will gradually disappear. Crime consists in opposition, more or less violent, to the law of the land. If the laws are not oppressive the people do not revolt against them, therefore as a rule it is the fault of the law, and not of the people, that crimes exist. There is no evidence to support the popular belief as to the hereditariness of crime. All the evidence with which I am acquainted tends to prove that crime is not hereditary, but is propagated by education or training. The child of a thief who hears thieving spoken of habitually as admirable, and is perhaps sent out to steal, is a thief not by heredity but by education. When a young child is taken by burglars to assist in effecting an entrance into the house to be robbed, he is being educated for a burglar. In all the cases with which I have become acquainted the evidence tends to prove that if a child of a thief or other criminal is removed from parental control before he is old enough to be contaminated by his evil surroundings, he may be trained up as an honest man. I am not prepared to say that all crime, except, perhaps, impulsive or passionate crimes, is due to a revolt against unjust or oppressive laws, but I am convinced that this is very largely the cause of crime, and until the racial characteristics are much better understood than they are at present, I shall continue to believe that the criminal is rather to be pitied than condemned in the majority of cases. "Since we have learned to study the development of human life as we study the

1

evolution of species throughout the animal kingdom, some peculiar phenomena which have puzzled the philosopher and moralist for so long begin to show themselves in a new light. We begin to see that, so far from being inscrutable problems, requiring another life to explain, these sorrows and perplexities of our lives are but the natural results of natural causes, and that, as soon as we ascertain the causes, we can do much to remove them." The criminal is not yet understood because he has not yet been studied from the evolutionary point of view; when we know more about him, perhaps many of the old opinions held of him will go the way of other bygone superstitions. What we know is that he is confined to no particular class of the community; when a child of the respectable class develops into one of the agitating class, he may develop into an inventor, an agitator, or a criminal. If he is a profound original thinker, he becomes an inventor or a discoverer. If he is a less profound thinker, but is impatient of control, and is deeply impressed with some new idea propounded by another, he becomes an agitator, a reformer. If he is weak-minded, or has some moral obliquity in his character, he reasons himself into a criminal career. He contrives to satisfy his conscience somehow, and until this trait in the character of the majority of criminals is recognised and allowed for, the true history of the criminal cannot be written.

1 "Women and Economics," Charlotte Perkins Stetson, ch. i.

CHAPTER XIV

THE SELF-GOVERNING INSTINCT

PERSONAL CLEANLINESS IN THE ANIMAL AND IN MAN

PROBABLY in no other development of the AngloSaxon in modern times has he come to exhibit a greater contrast to the Greek or Latin than in connection with his science of hygiene. The evolution of this science has not yet been traced, but if we regard the animals we find that many of them have evolved more or less efficient methods of cleansing their skins. The bird preens, and at the same time cleans, his feathers with his beak. Some species, as the gallinacei, sparrows, etc., fill their feathers with dust, which, when shaken out, carries with it many of the impurities due to skin exudation. The felinæ lick themselves all over, the cat being a common object of observation. The pachydermata usually wallow in mud and plaster themselves over with it, and this, when it dries and falls off, cleanses the skin. The cleansing power of clay is well known, and clay is used by mothers for cleansing chaps and sores in their children, in the form of fuller's earth. The older savages never wash themselves for cleansing purposes; like the dog, they will plunge into water to retrieve game, or to cross a stream, but although this undoubtedly tends to cleanse their skins, it is done unconsciously. Savages pipe-clay themselves, and when this is rubbed off, and the skin cleaned, they

anoint themselves all over with the fat of animals. At what stage in the evolution of man washing with water for cleansing purposes was first practised, I cannot say, but the Jews and Arabs enforced hygienic rules as religious ceremonies. The Mosaic laws prescribe very elaborate rules for insuring personal and household cleanliness. Hindoo religions also prescribe washing in the Ganges and other sacred rivers or in pools, and in this respect the Hindoos appear to be far superior to the Greeks and Latins, who were, and are, essentially dirty people. The superior health of the Jews, as compared with the Christians in the middle ages, and even in modern times, is an eloquent testimony to the efficacy of their system of hygiene, to which nothing in the Christianity of the Greeks and Latins is comparable. Latin Christianity, indeed, glorified filth, and the evil influence of the apotheosis of the filthy hermit, who never cleansed himself even as the savages do, and who, boasting of never changing his clothes until they dropped off him from decay, has yet to be estimated. There can be no doubt that his example, lauded as it was by the Church authorities, was largely responsible for the plagues and other epidemics which swept off the populations of European cities in mediæval times, and even up to the middle of the nineteenth century.

CONSECRATED FILTH

That personal cleanliness is very modern among Anglo-Saxons there is ample evidence to show. About 1786, Robbie Burns indited a sonnet "To a louse, on seeing one on a lady's bonnet in church." Burns seems to have been the first scientific observer to notice how common these parasites were, even in genteel society, in his day. G. J. Holyoake said in 1846: “I had ample time to think as I sat on the edge of my cell-bed during the first night in Gloucester

Gaol. The lice I observed creeping about the blankets prevented me lying down." He does not inform us whether he had become so far accustomed to their presence as to be able to go to bed the next night in spite of them. The reports of prisons during the Howard agitations frequently mention the presence of these parasites, and the gaols of his time were hotbeds for the propagation of disease by reason of their filth. The popular disgust now shown by the Anglo-Saxon for these little insects appears to be of very recent growth, and during the time that the Anglo-Saxon was more completely under the control of the Latin than he is now, they appear to have been allowed to live out their lives in peace, if not altogether undisturbed. Probably they were to some extent consecrated by the example of the holy and filthy anchorite. I remember reading some travels in Spain many years ago, in which the writer said that he preferred walking in the roadways of the cities rather than on the footpaths, owing to a habit the ladies had of sitting on the balconies of their houses picking pediculidæ from each other's heads and throwing them down on the pedestrians passing beneath. I also remember once that a great commotion was caused in a small mining camp in Australia by the discovery of one of these creatures (pediculus capitis). The Englishmen and Germans made a great fuss, bathing in the creek, shampooing their heads and cutting their hair, much to the amusement of an Irishman, who remarked: "Sure, there's no harm in a good ould Irish louse wid a cross on its back." From this it would appear that the imaginative Irishman saw in the little black speck on the louse's back a resemblance to the emblem of his faith. Did the Anglo-Saxon of the middle ages also see this resemblance ?

1 "Sixty Years of an Agitator's Life," Vol. I., ch. xxviii.