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Page 29
It is external only in those whose higher brain centres are either
undeveloped or diseased. These constitute the criminal classes. Their
motor impulses are unrestrained. They offer a low or reduced resistance
to temptation.
Weak or absent resistance in the face of a normal motor impulse whose
expression injuriously affects another, is crime, and a criminal is one
whose power of resistance to motor impulses has been reduced by disease,
hereditary or acquired, or is absent through arrested development.
A confirmed criminal is one in whom the frequent recurrence of an
unrestrained impulse injurious to others has induced habit.
Auto-inhibition is defective or absent, and society must in her own
interest provide external restraint, and this we call law.
Criminals are, therefore, mental defectives, and may be defined for
sociological purposes as those in whom legal punishment for the second
time, for the same offence, has failed to act as a deterrent.
M. Boies, in "Prisoners and Paupers," says that conviction for the third
time for an offence, is proof of hereditary criminal taint.
The existence of motor impulses in the human animal is normal. They vary
in strength and force. We cannot eradicate, we can only control them.
They may become less assertive under the constant control of a highly
cultivated inhibition, but it is only in this way that they can be
affected at all. They may be controlled, either by the individual
himself or by the State. Our reformatories are peopled by young persons
whose distinguishing characteristic is that inhibition is undeveloped or
defective. This defect may be due to want of education, but it is more
often hereditary.
Two things only can be done for them. This faculty of inhibition can be
trained by education, or external restraint can be provided by law.
But the distinguishing characteristic of all defectives, within or
without our public institutions, is defective inhibition,--they are
unable to control the spontaneous impulses that continually arise, and
which may indeed be normal.
Impulses may be abnormal from hereditary predisposition, as _e.g._ the
impulse to drink, but only through strengthening inhibition can these
impulses be controlled,--their existence must be accepted.
But whether the defect is an abnormal impulse, or a normal impulse
abnormally strong, or an abnormally weak or defective inhibition, the
condition is hereditary, and such defectives propagate their kind.
It has been shown that they are more fertile than any other classes
because of the very defect that makes them a danger to society.
The defective restraint that allows them to commit offences against
person and property, also allows their procreative impulse unrestrained
activity.
Defectives, therefore, are not only fertile, but they propagate their
kind, and a few examples will serve to show to some extent the
fertility, and to an enormous extent the hereditary tendencies, of the
unfit.
CASE NO. 1, p. 49.
J. E----'s FAMILY.
M M F
----------+---------------------------+----------------+--------------
| | |
A suicide, Aet. 56 Died of cancer of | Died in a fit,
Married. No issue stomach, Aet. 66 | Aet. 54
|
----+---------+----------+----------+-----------+------+----+--------+
| | | | | | |
M M F F F M M
Died of Died of Died of Died of Died of Healthy, |
cancer of convulsions consumption consumption, consumption, has |
stomach, at | | Aet 16 seven |
Aet. 58 13 weeks | | children |
| | | |
Left five Married several Married several M
children years. years. Epiletic, twice
No issue No issue insane, testes in
abdomen. Married.
No children
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