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the work of generalizing them, using large numbers as his basis, would probably find himself paid for his pains.

PATHOLOGICAL SELECTION

The races present different degrees of resistance to certain diseases. Between Homo Europaeus and Homo Alpinus there exists a very decided difference as regards miliary fever,1 granular conjunctivitis, and myopia. The first disease decimates the dolicho-blonds of the west of France at each epidemic; it hardly touches their competitors. At Montpellier, a case of granular conjunctivitis on a brachycephalic is a rarity. The map of frequency of exemptions from military service for myopia is approximately identical with the map of the cephalic index. In America, the negro is nearly immune against yellow fever and against various local diseases very destructive to the whites. Contrariwise, in Africa, in Indo-China, the Europeans are almost entirely refractory to certain local diseases. In this sphere of ideas numerous researches have been made by Dr. Bordier and by various naval physicians, to whose works I confine myself to referring, being desirous not to risk myself on ground where I have hitherto made no personal researches. It would be superfluous to repeat what others have said more competently than I could.

SOCIAL SELECTIONS

To sum up, the domain of natural selection is quite limited. The part it plays in evolution is superior to that of the causes of transmutation, but does not come near to that of the causes of social selection. The philosophy of history is almost entirely comprised in the study of social selections. There remains yet a wide field for statisticians, historians, and anthropologists, to complete the picture of the social selections.

1 La suette miliaire, not typhoid fever or prickly heat (which are definitions given for "miliary fever" by some authorities), but an epidemic apparently identical with the "sweating sickness" of the sixteenth century, though its modern manifestations differ in certain symptoms. England, which was the special home of the earlier disease, seems to be exempt in our day, and likewise America; hence the frequent ignoring of the modern disease by English and American authorities. TRANSLATOR.

XXVII

THE EVOLUTIONARY FUNCTION AND USEFULNESS OF CRIME AND PUNISHMENT1

Each human community, in every age, is busy molding its individual members into conformity with its own type, — into 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 molding 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, antisocial 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,

1 From Crime in its Relation to Social Progress, by A. Cleveland Hall, pp. 1-22 (copyright, 1902, by the Columbia University Press, New York).

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 highroad 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, 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.

- or,

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 product, increasing with the growth of knowledge, intelligence, and social morality, with all that is summed up in the words "higher civilization." 1

1 There is scarcely a state in the American Union for which the census statistics do not show a large and, for the most part, progressive increase in the number of criminals (i.e. prisoners) in proportion to population, since 1850. The average numbers for these five census periods are: For Massachusetts, 1899 prisoners per 1,000,000 population; New York, 1378; Maryland, 993; Missouri, 689; Arkansas, 651; Mississippi, 551; Utah (four last census periods), 529; New Mexico (four last census periods), 510.

The increase of crime largely takes the direction of acts in opposition to new social prohibitions. These prohibitions are neither accidental nor whimsical, but are inevitable consequences of the increasing complexity of life. In general, new crime follows lines of greatest resistance to the new life of society.

This book is an attempt to study some of the relations of crime to social progress, chiefly two great phases of the subject, namely: the evolutionary function and usefulness of crime and punishment, and crime as a social product, increasing with the increase of social prohibitions.

Nature's great task, throughout the ages, seems to have been the elevation of the individual, at the expense of his powers of reproduction, individuation versus procreation, resulting in the persistent rise in value of the individual life, as measured in terms of size, strength, and activity of body and of brain. The forces preservative of race are two, writes Herbert Spencer, the power to maintain the individual, the power to generate the species. These vary inversely as one decreases the other increases. The evolution of larger, stronger, more highly developed forms of life is always accompanied by the same phenomenon, a decreasing birth rate. The minutest organisms multiply in their millions; the small compound types next above them in their thousands, while larger and more compound types multiply but in their hundreds or their tens, and the largest and most highly developed types only by twos or units.2 Lowest organisms are marvelously prolific. The shallow seas of the Paleozoic age swarmed with minute life, which left its history written in the fossils of the hills, in the coral reefs of ocean, in chalk cliffs and siliceous deposits everywhere, and in "the summits of great mountain ranges in Europe, Africa, and India," formed of tiny shells of animals (known as nummulites), which lived and died and helped to build our earth, during those early ages. Undeveloped life is almost completely dependent upon its physical environment. The lower the organism the smaller its ability to contend with external dangers, and great fertility is absolutely necessary to 1 See Principles of Biology, Vol. II, p. 401. 2 Ibid., pp. 426-427.

8 Mitchell, p. 47.

preserve the species from destruction. Evolutionary forces act upon these lowly forms of life mainly from the outside, upon whole groups, rather than from within the group, upon its members singly. The development produced by such means is enormously expensive. Nature seems to squander life, holding it of little worth.

A thousand types are in the hills.

During the Mesozoic or reptilian age, natural selection was working along a low plane of individual self-interest; dominance was the reward of great size and enormous physical strength. But in united effort there is greater power than any gigantic brute can possess, and social life, with its mutual helpfulness against enemies and stimulation of mental development, becomes the prime requisite for success in the struggle for existence, the great means to the attainment of a higher, more unselfish life.

After some mental activity has been aroused within the social group, there is, as it were, an effort of nature to promote upward growth by a less wasteful process, using the awakened individual intelligence, combined with the inherited social instinct, to induce evolution from within the group, by encouraging useful variation from the average thus producing the leader — and punishing harmful variation, thus ultimately converting the mere malefactor into the criminal. Social pressure from within the group unites with the pressure from without to uplift and socialize the individual. One of the most important forms of this inner pressure is called among men criminal prosecution and punishment.

A social group is fundamentally a kindred group. Its members feel a resemblance among themselves, and a sense of safety and of pleasure develops. There is general likeness with individual variation. The natural leaders are very like their fellows,

1 A numerically large group of these microscopic organisms would occupy a very small space on the surface of our earth, and their environment would be practically the same for all individuals; that is, the forces acting upon them for good or evil would be in general the same throughout the entire group; and, being so very plastic under external influences, they would all develop in much the same way, until success or destruction came to the entire band. Another similar group, a little removed in space, might have a different set of forces acting upon it, have its individual units differently developed, and perhaps succeed where the first group failed.

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