The humanitarian reaction against excessive punishments, and the decriminal- Great development of trade and manufactures, and the birth of opposing The abuses of the factory system and their remedy by statute law..... The Compulsory Education Act and the modern multiplication of criminals. 270 The injury to one regarded more and more as a wrong to all.... The age of rapid progress, science and democracy. Records of the criminal classes in the great European civilizations. In Spain alone criminality shows practically no increase.. The relation between crime, industrial efficiency and education. The sifting processes of natural selection Fundamental laws of growth, their antagonisms, and the resulting criminal CHAPTER I THE EVOLUTIONARY FUNCTION AND USEFULNESS OF CRIME AND PUNISHMENT. EACH human community, in every age, is busy moulding its individual members into conformity with its own typeinto a closer resemblance to the social ideal. The American is different from the Englishman and both are unlike the German. The French type is markedly distinct and separate from both the Italian and the Spanish. A social education environs us from the cradle to the grave—a pressure to be this kind of man and not to be this other and antagonistic kind. If, for the most part, we are scarcely conscious of this moulding influence, it is because we are so used to it, and because we are ourselves scions of the national stock, inheriting these national traits and tendencies from our remote ancestors. Settle in a foreign land, and the pressure soon becomes disagreeably, perhaps painfully, apparent; and you must conform, in large measure, to these unwonted customs, rules and ways of doing things, if you would be happy and prosperous in the new environment. In the furtherance of this social education, two great natural forces-strong, ever-present, social tendencies—are made use of, encouraged, trained, by the social group. One is the natural admiration and imitation of strong men, largely resembling their comrades, only somewhat better representatives of the developing social type; and the second is the instinctive abhorrence and persecution of individuals unlike their fellows-anti-social variations-dangerously hostile to the common weal. These two great socializing tendencies, or forces, work together in absolute harmony; and along the line of progress they induce, social pressure becomes more and more strongly developed, with increasing social evolution. This pressure is partly conscious and partly unconscious, in both directions: of praise or blame, of honor or persecution. The limits of the field of crime are largely coterminous with the extent of conscious persecution and punishment by the social group for wrongs against itself, and are continually being extended with the progress of civilization. The creation of a new crime (that is, the branding by society of some form of conduct as criminal) always implies social punishment-a punishment enforced to raise the community to a higher plane of life, a nearer approach toward the social ideal. A new form of crime means either a step forward or a step backward for the nation choosing it. Wisely chosen, it is an active force driving man upward to a better, more truly social, stage of civilization; but the nation that persists in choosing its crimes wrongly is on the high road to degeneration and decay. Crime is to the body social much what pain is to the individual. Pain is the obverse of the shield of pleasure, and without the existence of pain there is no pleasure possible; without increasing pain there is no growth of higher pleasures. So, also, crime is the obverse of the shield of social good, and without increasing crime, there is probably no growth in social goodness-or, in other words, no development of the nation into the fullness of its strength, happiness and usefulness. It will cease to be a living force in the evolution of a higher, world civilization, and will become stationary, like the Chinese, or degenerate, like the American Indian. Crime, therefore, is an inevitable social evil, the dark side of the shield of human progress. The most civilized and progressive states have the most crime. It is a social pro |