Not Guilty: A Defence of the Bottom Dog

He would have been that which his environment had made him.

And would he have been to blame? Would it have been his fault that he was born amongst thieves? Would it have been his fault that he had never heard good counsel, but had been drilled and trained to evil?

But the objector may say that as he got older and knew better he could mend his ways.

And it is really necessary, strange as it may seem, to point out that he never could "know better," unless some person taught him better. And the teaching him to "know better" would be a change in his environment: it would be a part of his environment, for which he himself would deserve no credit.

The point is that, since he is born destitute of knowledge, he never could know good unless taught good by some other person. And that this other person would be outside himself, and part of his environment.

Now, how could the ignorant child be blamed if some power outside himself teaches him evil, or how can he be praised if some power outside himself teaches him good?

But he would have a conscience? He would be born with the rudiments of a conscience. But what his conscience should become, what things it would hold as wrong, would depend wholly upon the teaching he got from those who formed part of his environment.

In a cannibal environment he would have a cannibal conscience; in a Catholic environment a Catholic conscience; in a piratical environment a pirate's conscience. But of that more in its due place. Let us now examine some of the effects of environment.

MORALS AND DISEASE

The brain is the mind. When the brain is diseased the mind is diseased. When the brain is sick the mind is sick.

But the brain is part of the body. We see, hear, smell, feel, and taste with the brain. The nerves of the toes and fingers are connected with the brain; they are like twigs on a tree, of which the brain is the root. The same blood which circulates through the heart and limbs circulates through the brain.

It is only a figure of speech to speak of the mind and the body as distinct from each other. The mind and the body are one.

A wound in any part of the body – a burn, a stab, a lash – is felt in the brain. When the body suffers from illness or fatigue, the brain suffers also. When a limb is paralysed, the real paralysis is in a part of the brain. When the brain is paralysed the man can neither move nor speak, nor think nor feel. When the heart is weak the brain does not get enough blood, and the mind is languid, or syncope sets in ana the man dies.

We do not need a prophet nor a doctor to tell us that sickness affects the mind. We know that dyspepsia, gout, or sluggish liver makes us peevish, stupid, jealous, suspicious, and despondent.

We know that illness or weariness turns a sweet temper sour, makes a patient man impatient, a grateful man ungrateful. We know how trying are the caprices and whims of an invalid, and we commonly say of such, "he cannot help it: he is not himself to-day."

But we do not know, as doctors know, how searching and how terrible are the effects of some diseases on the brain. Dr. Lydston, in The Diseases of Society, says:

The old adage, mens sana in corpore sano, is too often forgotten. Especially is it ignored by the legislator and penologist. A normal psychic balance and a brain fed with blood that is insufficient in quantity or vicious in quality are physiologic incompatibles. The nearer we get to the marrow of criminality, the more closely it approximates pathology.

That is to say that the sound mind depends largely on the sound body; that a brain fed with diseased blood, or with too little blood, cannot work healthily and well; and that the more we know of crime the closer do we find its relation to disease.

I quote again from Dr. Lydston:

Despite the scant and conflicting testimony of cerebrologists with reference to the brain defects of criminals, there is so much clinical evidence of the aberration of morals and conduct from brain disease or injury that we are justified in believing that brain defects of some kind affecting the mental and moral faculties is the fons origo of criminality. This defect, as already seen, may be congenital or acquired, and may consist of a lack of development due to vicious environment and faulty education, mental and physical.

The fountain from which crime arises, says this authority, is some form of disease, or defect of the brain. And such disease or defect may be inherited, or may be caused by bad environment: by improper teaching, food, and exercise. To feel the full force of this statement we must bear in mind that "children are not born with intellect and conscience, but only with capacities for their development."

Therefore, if the capacities for intellect and morals are not developed, we cannot expect to find the intellect and morals.

In other words, we have no right to hope nor to expect that the neglected child will grow up into the good and clever man.

Neither is it reasonable to hope for a cure by pumping moral lessons into a brain in which no moral sense has been developed.

That epilepsy has a bad effect on morals, and that epileptics are often untruthful, treacherous, and dangerous is as well known as that epilepsy is a form of degeneracy, and is often caused by improper feeding and neglect in childhood.

Hysteria also affects the moral nerves of the brain. Dr. Lydston says:

Hysterical women often bring accusations of crime against others. The victim is generally a man, and the alleged crime, assault. Physicians recognise this as one of the dangers to be guarded against in their work. Hysterical women in the primary stage of anaesthesia, sometimes imagine themselves the victims of assault. In one well-known case the woman accused a dentist of assault while he was administering nitrous oxide to her. Her husband was in the room during the imaginary assault.

Dr. Lydston tells us that Flesch examined the brains of fifty criminals, and found imperfections in all.

In twenty-eight he found, in different cases, meningeal disease, such as adhesions, pachy-meningitis, interna hæmorrhagica, tubercular meningitis, leptomeningitis, edema of the pia mater, and hæmorrhagic spinal meningitis; also atheroma of the bisillary arteries, cortical atrophy, and cerebral haemorrhage. In most cases the pathologic conditions were not associated with the psychoses that are usually found under such circumstances.

How many men have been hanged or sent to prison who ought to have been sent to lunatic asylums? According to Dr. Lydston, very many. As bearing upon that point I quote two passages from The Diseases of Society, which "give one furiously to think." The first is from page 172:

Cases of moral turpitude, mania furiosa, and other mental disturbances are met with in which the patient is harshly treated, because of supposed moral perverseness, and only the autopsy has shown how undeservedly the patient has been condemned. When a tumour or other disease of the brain is found in a punished criminal, the case is most pathetic.

The other passage is from page 221, and is as follows:

If the foregoing premises be correct, vice and crime will be one day shown more definitely than ever to be a matter to be dealt with by medical science rather than by law.

The "foregoing premises" here alluded to concern the increase in vice and crime through autotoxemia, or unconscious self-poisoning, due to over-strain and other evil conditions of life.

As to this self-poisoning, a few words may be said. It is known that birds who die of fright are poisonous. That is because the violence of the emotion, by some chemical action, evolves poison.

It is also known that when the human system is out of order it secretes poison. This poison affects the brain, and excites the baser passions, or injures the moral sense.

Self-poisoning may be due to the presence of poisonous matter in the system, or to the over-strain, or over-excitement, of business, or trouble.

We all know the effects of violent anger, of violent grief, or violent love, or violent emotion of any kind upon the health. We know also the effect of "worry," and the effects of fatigue and of improper food.

One of these effects is self-poisoning, and one of the results of self-poisoning is brain sickness, resulting often in vice or in crime.

We find, then, that disease may be caused by neglect in childhood, by starvation or improper food, by over-work, by terror, by excitement, and by worry, amongst a thousand other causes.

And we find that disease affects the brain, and very often leads to vice, to crime, to dishonesty, falsehood, and impurity.

And disease is one part of our environment.

A wound or a shock may have a wonderful effect on the mind. A man may slip and strike his head on a stone, and may get up an idiot A gunshot wound in the neck, a sword-cut on the head, may cause madness, or may cause an injury of the brain which will quite change the injured man's moral nature.

As to the effects of such accidents on the mind there are many interesting particulars in Lombroso's book, The Man of Genius, from which I am tempted to quote some lines:

It has frequently happened that injuries to the head, and acute diseases, those frequent causes of insanity, have changed a very ordinary individual into a man of genius… Gratry, a mediocre singer, became a great master after a beam had fractured his skull. Mabillon, almost an idiot from childhood, fell down a stone staircase at the age of twenty-six, and so badly injured his skull that it had to be trepanned; from that time he displayed the characteristics of genius… Wallenstein was looked upon as a fool until one day he fell out of a window, and henceforward began to show remarkable ability.

Lombroso also gives many examples and proofs of the influence of weather and climate on the mind; but for these I have no room.

Now, disease, and weather, and climate, and injuries are all parts of environment.

Food

We have seen that one cause of insanity and disease, and of immorality and crime, is degeneration. And we have seen that one cause of degeneration is "insufficient or improper food."

Children who are half starved suffer in body and in mind: therefore they suffer in intelligence and in morals.