Suppose that one should go to the
worst quarter of the city and pick out the worst-looking child of the
worst couple he could find, and then train him up successively at the
School for Infant Rogues, the Academy for Young Scamps, and the College
for Complete Criminal Education, would it be reasonable to expect a
Francois Xavier or a Henry Martyn to be the result of such a training?
The traditionists, in whose presumptuous hands the science of
anthropology has been trusted from time immemorial, have insisted on
eliminating cause and effect from the domain of morals. When they have
come across a moral monster they have seemed to think that he put himself
together, having a free choice of all the constituents which make up
manhood, and that consequently no punishment could be too bad for him.
I say, hang him and welcome, if that is the best thing for society; hate
him, in a certain sense, as you hate a rattlesnake, but, if you pretend
to be a philosopher, recognize the fact that what you hate in him is
chiefly misfortune, and that if you had been born with his villanous low
forehead and poisoned instincts, and bred among creatures of the Races
Maudites whose natural history has to be studied like that of beasts of
prey and vermin, you would not have been sitting there in your gold-bowed
spectacles and passing judgment on the peccadilloes of your
fellow-creatures.
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