Chapter 13

What should be done to meet these new conditions? Common honesty, common sense and common humanity alike plainly show that a large part of the crimes of violence are due to the war. Will hangings and life sentences stop them? And, if so, is it right for organized society to ignore its responsibility and place it on the young men that they innoculated with the universal madness? It is expecting too much to think that there is any process by which society can be made to think and feel. Some day, however, when the war fever passes away crime will again take its normal place.

This phenomenon is not new in the world. Everyone interested has noted it before. It has followed all great wars. War means the breaking up of old habits, the destruction of many inhibitions, which in the strongest civilization are only skin deep at the best. It means the return to the primitive feelings that once ruled man.

The Napoleonic Wars left a long heritage of crime. Every nation in Europe was affected by them. Many years passed before the world grew tranquil. Our Civil War brought its harvest of crime. It was felt both North and South. It was not confined to homicide but was shown in all sorts of criminal statistics, especially crimes of violence.

I do not write as a pacifist. There is nothing in the constitution of man that makes pacifism anything but a dream. Man is largely ruled by fear and hate, and it is not possible to imagine an individual or a race that under sufficient provocation will not fight. Neither is it possible that nations will not always, from time to time, find the provocation sufficiently great. Individuals and nations can philosophize and reason and make compromises when they are calm; but let them be moved by fear and hatred, and these emotions will sweep away every other feeling. The conditions for war were ripe in 1914, and it was inevitable that America should be in it too. This should not make one wish for war nor believe in war nor close one's eyes to its horrors and results. Much less should it prevent him from trying to do his part to restore sanity to the world.

Another consequence of war which America is passing through is the spirit of super-patriotism. This is always aroused and must be aroused to carry on the war. It is potent in creating the psychology that makes men fight. Every people teaches that its own country is the best; that its laws and institutions excel those of all other lands. This spirit is taken advantage of and used by designing men. It is used to send to jail those who criticise existing things. It is used to hamper and destroy any effort to change laws and institutions. The one who criticises conditions is a disturber and a traitor. Those who profit by existing things are always intense patriots and by means of cheap appeals and trite expressions seek to stifle discussion and criticism. This war has borne a deadly harvest of restrictive legislation in America. We are no longer an asylum for political offenders. We no longer stand for freedom of speech. Old traditions and constitutional and legal guarantees have been swept aside under the hysteria which has prevailed during and since the war. These results were inevitable and will follow war as long as man is man.

All the after-effects of the World War show how completely man is ruled by forces over which he has no control. If considerable numbers of the people have been moved by war hysteria, and if a large part of crime is directly traceable to war, it seems plain that all human action could be traced to some controlling cause, if only man could be wise enough and industrious and humane enough to find the cause. It is plain that the law of cause and effect influences mental phenomena as it does physical acts, and sometime, perhaps, men will seek to avoid the effect by removing the cause.

XXX

CIVILIZATION AND CRIME

As children we have all amused ourselves by looking into a kaleidoscope, turning it around and around and watching the changing patterns formed from the mixing bits of different colored glass in the other end. Each turn makes a different pattern and each bit of glass seems to seek a spot in the general medley where it can be settled until another turn drives it to find a resting place somewhere else. The organization of individual units into a group is more or less such a formation, each seeking to adjust itself to a pattern and finding that the pattern is ever-changing and the individual units obliged to seek new positions and make new adjustments.

It is vain for social theorists to talk of a perfect order, a system of social organization that will find the proper place for each unit and bring social symmetry out of the whole. Such a society is not consistent with the varied capacities and wants of men. Neither is a perfect order possible with ever-changing and moving physical forces, with new mental conceptions, with new needs and wants, with constant births and deaths, and with the innate instincts of man.

Some system may be the best for a time but must in turn give place to new formations. In this process the old is ever mixed with the new. The past hangs on to plague the present, and the vision of the future disturbs the quiet and stability that the present inherited from the past. Organizations of society are necessary and automatic. The frost on the window pane takes its pattern, the crystals in the glass and stone have their formations, the grain of sand, the plant--all forms of animal life--the solar system and, doubtless, an infinite number of other systems which the eye cannot see or the mind comprehend take on form and order. The symmetry and shape of any of these organizations may be shattered by growth or catastrophe, and new forms may take their place. All life is constant friction and constant adjustment, each particle in a blind way trying to find a more harmonious relation, but never reaching complete rest.

The social and political patterns that men have taken have been of many forms. All through the past these have changed, and the laws and habits that were meant to hold men together, have been made and discarded as fast as new emotions or ideas have gained the power to make the change. Men are of all degrees of adaptability. Some can readily conform to the new. Some adjust themselves very slowly. Man's structure is fixed; his inherent instincts are of ancient origin, always urging him to primitive reactions; his habits are slowly formed and slowly changed. Slowly he settles himself to the conditions that surround him. He learns their demands; he manages to conform, but the folk-ways that he knew and the way of life he learned must be changed to something else. Every new adjustment, every change of organization, every modification made by civilization, bears its toll of victims who have not been able to adjust themselves to the new order.

The first criminal regulations, doubtless, had to do with the personal relations of men. The number of offenses was small for life was simple, wants were few, and ambition rare. The growth of religion created a ferocious criminal code, regulating every thought and action that God's agents thought might offend the Deity or threaten their power on earth. Anyone interested in the story of punishment for heresy, sorcery or other crimes growing out of religious fanaticism, can read the story in Lecky's _History of Rationalism in Europe_, in White's _A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom_, in Draper's _Intellectual Development of Europe_, and in many other books. The Spanish Inquisition alone furnished about 350,000 victims in the two centuries of its power. Many of them were burned alive, many others were killed by the most cruel torture that could be devised by man. Up to recent times more victims have been put to death for heresy and kindred crimes against religion than for any other cause. Next to this no doubt stand political crimes. Even America hanged old women for witchcraft, a crime they could not commit. Practically all the victims of religious and political persecution have been guiltless of any real crimes, and among them were always many of the noblest of their age.

Every general change of religious or political ideas bears its quota of crimes. For whatever the religious or political organization, it always uses every means in its power to perpetuate itself. This is as true of republics as of monarchies, although the severity of punishment and the amount of heresy permitted change from time to time. Each age is sure that it has the true religion and the God-given political organization. In every age the accepted religion is true, and the king and the state can do no wrong.

One thing only seems to be sure. Human nature does not change. Whether it was the theological systems of the ancient world fighting to keep Christianity out, or Christianity fighting to preserve itself, the same cruel, bigoted, fanatical majority has been found to do its will, and the same reasons and excuses have served the law from the earliest times down to today.

A letter of the younger Pliny, who was then governor of Bythinia-Pontus, a province of Rome, asking the Emperor Trajan for instructions in dealing with the early Christians shows how persistent are intolerance and bigotry. This might have been written yesterday to seek advice in the suppression of opinion and punishment for sedition in any of the most advanced governments of the modern world, as it was in the most advanced of the ancient world. The letter is here reproduced as an interesting exhibit of human nature and it fixity.

Pliny, the younger, was born in 61 A.D. and became governor of the province of Bythinia-Pontus about the year 112 A.D. under the Emperor Trajan. In the discharge of his duties as governor, Pliny discovered that the conversion of many of his subjects to Christianity had resulted in a falling off of trade in the victims usually purchased for sacrifices at the temples and in other commodities used in connection with pagan worship. As a good governor, Pliny sought to remedy this economic situation, and his plan was to restore his subjects to their old forms of worship. Thus he was brought into contact with Christianity. The following letters, one from Pliny to Trajan, and the other, Trajan's reply, show the situation. These documents are from the Tenth Book of Pliny's Correspondence, Letters 97 and 98.

PLINY ASKING INSTRUCTIONS OF TRAJAN ON TRIALS OF CHRISTIANS

It is my invariable rule, Sir, to refer to you in all matters where I feel doubtful; for who is more capable of removing my scruples, or informing my ignorance? Having never been present at any trials concerning those who profess Christianity, I am unacquainted not only with the nature of their crimes, or the measure of their punishment, but how far it is proper to enter into an examination concerning them. Whether, therefore, any difference is usually made with respect to ages, or no distinction is to be observed between the young and the adult; whether repentance entitles them to a pardon; or if a man has been once a Christian, it avails nothing to desist from his error; whether the very profession of Christianity, unattended with any criminal act, or only the crimes themselves inherent in the profession are punishable; on all these points I am in great doubt. In the meanwhile, the method I have observed towards those who have been brought before me as Christians is this: I asked them whether they were Christians; if they admitted it, I repeated the question twice, and threatened them with punishment; if they persisted, I ordered them to be at once punished: for I was persuaded, whatever the nature of their opinions might be, a contumacious and inflexible obstinacy certainly deserved correction.

There were others also brought before me possessed with the same infatuation, but being Roman citizens, I directed them to be sent to Rome. But this crime spreading (as is usually the case) while it was actually under prosecution, several instances of the same nature occurred. An anonymous information was laid before me, containing a charge against several persons, who upon examination denied they were Christians, or had ever been so. They repeated after me an invocation to the gods, and offered religious rites with wine and incense before your statue (which for that purpose I had ordered to be brought, together with those of the gods), and even reviled the name of Christ: whereas there is no forcing, it is said, those who are really Christians into any of these compliances: I thought it proper, therefore, to discharge them. Some among those who were accused by a witness in person at first confessed themselves Christians, but immediately after denied it: the rest owned indeed that they had been of that number formerly, but had now (some above three, others more, and a few above twenty years ago) renounced that error. They all worshipped your statue and the images of the gods, uttering imprecations at the same time against the name of Christ. They affirmed the whole of their guilt, or their error, was, that they met on a stated day before it was light, and addressed a form of prayer to Christ, as to a divinity, binding themselves by a solemn oath, not for the purposes of any wicked design, but never to commit any fraud, theft, or adultery, never to falsify their word, nor deny a trust when they should be called upon to deliver it up; after which it was their custom to separate, and then re-assemble, to eat in common a harmless meal. From this custom, however, they desisted after the publication of my edict, by which, according to your commands, I forbade the meeting of any assemblies.

After receiving this account, I judged it so much the more necessary to endeavor to extort the real truth, by putting two female slaves to the torture, who were said to officiate in their religious rites: but all I could discover was evidence of an absurd and extravagant superstition. I deemed it expedient, therefore, to adjourn all further proceedings, in order to consult you. For it appears to be a matter highly deserving your consideration, more especially as great numbers must be involved in the danger of these prosecutions, which have already extended, and are still likely to extend, to persons of all ranks and ages, and even of both sexes. In fact, this contagious superstition is not confined to the cities only, but has spread its infection among the neighboring villages and country. Nevertheless, it still seems possible to restrain its progress. The temples, at least, which were once almost deserted, begin now to be frequented; and the sacred rites, after a long intermission, are again revived; while there is a general demand for the victims, which till lately found very few purchasers. From all this it is easy to conjecture what numbers might be reclaimed if a general pardon were granted to those who shall repent of their error.

TRAJAN TO PLINY

You have adopted a right course, my dearest Secundus, in investigating the charges against the Christians who were brought before you. It is not possible to lay down any general rule for all such cases. Do not go out of your way to look for them. If indeed they should be brought before you, and the crime is proved, they must be punished; with the restriction, however, that where the party denies he is a Christian, and shall make it evident that he is not, by invoking our gods, let him (notwithstanding any former suspicion) be pardoned upon his repentance. Anonymous information ought not to be received in any sort of prosecution. It is introducing a very dangerous precedent, and is quite foreign to the spirit of our age.

Civilization is largely a question of new machinery and methods. It is not the humanizing of men. It is plain that no matter what the time or age, the characteristics of man remain the same. His structure does not change; his emotional life cannot change. New objects and desires may control his feeling, but whatever the aim of the age and place, the same inherent emotions control.

Intolerance has been one of the great sources of evil all down the ages. It is practically certain that neither time nor education has made man more kindly in his judgment of his fellows or more tolerant in his opinions and life. All that education can do is to remove some of the inducing causes that have always brought the sharp conflicts and awakened the cruelty of man.

Every civilization brings new evils and new complexities which man meets with the same machine and the same emotions. It is fairly certain that no nobler idealism or no finer feelings have been planted or cultivated in man since the dawn of history, and when it is thoroughly realized that man's structure is fixed and cannot be changed it seems as if none could be developed.

XXXI

THE CONVICT

Human nature is so weak and imperfect that, at its best, it needs all the encouragement it can get. The comradeship of friends, and the attitude of the public and acquaintances are of the greatest importance in effecting the development of most lives. Sooner or later the convicted man is turned out either on probation or parole, or at the expiration of his sentence. He was probably none too strong a man before his conviction. His heredity was poor in most cases, and his environment completed his downfall. He faces the world again with a serious handicap that he did not have at first. If he had just recovered from a severe illness, everyone he met would do all he could to help him; his environment would be made easier than before his confinement in the hospital; and especially from the conditions that placed him there, both society and his neighbors would try to see that he should, as far as possible, be saved. If he had been one of those who could live only by means of his own work, and if on account of himself or his family he had been obliged to over-strain, an easier place would probably be found for him. The chances of going to the hospital the second time would be very much less than they were the first time. Even his experience in confinement would be of use, and through that experience he would be taught to live and preserve his health.

The discharged prisoner is met in an entirely different way. The ex-convict is under doubt and suspicion from the start. On the slightest provocation he is reminded of his past. He is always under suspicion unless, perhaps, he professes a change of heart. Such a change implies a physical process which is impossible. Some sudden exaltation may furnish him a new emotion for a time, but this can last only while the stimulus has power to act. It will soon pass away and the man will be himself again. It may be possible that here and there is a nature of such an emotional temperament, that religion or socialism or single tax or some other strong conviction may possess him until such time as his feelings begin to cool and change, when he will be safe. But most men are inherently the same when they come out of prison as when they go in. Under right treatment they may gain a little more wisdom as to life that will help them make adjustments; or they may be relieved from some burdens, or placed in an environment of less stress and strain where it will be easier to live. In those cases, the attitude and help of the community are all-important.

Society is not entirely to blame for looking on him with suspicion. It knows he once failed. It has been taught that this failure was due to a moral delinquency outside the law of cause and effect, and society is naturally suspicious that he will offend again or molest the community in some other way. Had he been confined because he had not the strength to meet his environment; had the law put him in custody under expert control until he gained the strength for his battle with life; or had a new environment been provided under scientific direction as in the case of a hospital patient, society would then take another view and do all it could to help him. New comrades and associates would surround him to show him the way, and they would make his burden lighter. Instead of this, he comes out with his ability to adjust himself to life lessened. If a crime is committed in his community he is blamed or at least suspected. He is known to the police and often "rounded-up." This directly interferes with his employment, places him at a disadvantage with his associates, and drives him into the company of others who feel that the world is against them and that a life of crime is all there is left to follow. It is not hard to see how men come to be "repeaters." It is hard to understand when they do not.

XXXII

ISOLATION AND STERILIZATION

The growing belief that crime comes largely from the subnormal has created a more or less definite demand for the isolation of the moron before the commission of crime and for the sterilization of certain misfits, especially after conviction. Both of these methods are very drastic, and while society must and will adopt any way that seems to be necessary to protect itself, still before accepting such drastic remedies it should be very clear that the danger is sufficiently great to justify the means, that the desired result will follow and that no other means will bring about the end.

In this discussion it should be remembered that the mental classification of children and grown-ups is only in its infancy, that much that is freely stated is still in the realm of theory, and that time and patience in making investigations and classifying facts are most important in arriving at correct results.

The really intelligent are as abnormal as the defective. The great masses of men are rather mediocre, and those above and below are exceptions. This depends on how broad is the class included in the normal. There are no sharp divisions anywhere; above, the normal shades imperceptibly into those of unusual intelligence, and below it fades just as gradually into the sub-normal. While defectives are more apt to commit crimes, in the main this is because their environment is too hard for their machine.

The sub-normal are probably more tractable and less disposed to the emotions that lead to criminal acts than are the more intelligent. Their crimes are especially noticed because they seem to be without any serious motive and often shockingly brutal. City life most readily uncovers the sub-normal. This is true because the strain is far greater in the city than the country. There are exceptions to this rule, particularly those portions of the country that are barren and unproductive territory into which the venturesome and obvious unfits are drawn.

The prisons are not the only places which are inhabited by the sub-normal and the misfit. The hardest and most disagreeable and most poorly paid labor is largely done by this class of people. Very few people of superior intelligence and education do manual labor and the more disagreeable the manual labor, the more certain it is that the job is done by the sub-normal and the misfit. A large part of the farm labor, the odd jobs and common labor in small towns, the cheaper labor on railroads, in factories and all industrial plants is given to this sort of men. In the country and small village, where life is easy, this class seldom makes trouble and is hardly known. These men and women easily and naturally fall into a place in the industry and society of the village and are often among the most useful members.