ent moral sense on which the
abnormal intelligence builds up systematic delusions, which are
interpreted as philosophical principles, place these persons in a
category apart as extra-social beings.

The general nervous weakness and the wandering intelligence which
preclude an interest in work make of these persons individuals
incapable of production, who therefore try to live upon the
productions of others. This fundamental fact, which tends to unite a
dislike of productive labor with impulses towards rapine, causes them
to make use of all those surrounding causes which prepare the external
means for crime. These men are "bad." But if we observe more closely
we see that it is not wickedness with which we have to deal but morbid
conditions and social errors. If such be the case, these bad men, who
from no fault of their own were born in these unhappy conditions, and
who are driven to perdition by society, are really "victims." Their
whole history, when closely investigated, reveals this fact. They are
hunted and neglected from babyhood. Incapable of making themselves
beloved owing to mental deficiency, volitive disorders, to the
anomaly of the affections and also to lack of physical attraction,
they pass from maternal persecution to that of the school, and finally
to that of society, bringing on themselves every kind of punishment.

The first picture which Morel drew of these "dead ones of the race"
was an impressive one. According to his original theory, containing a
synthesis which, if not very exact, yet sums up the phenomenon with
comprehensive clearness, when a cause of degeneration acts upon a man,
he may have defective children, whose deficiency increases in the two
or three following generations, until it is extinguished in the final
sterility of exceedingly debased individuals. According to Morel,
madmen, criminals, epileptics and idiots form the sad series in this
extinction of man. The man who dies leaving strong descendants, does
not really die, but is renewed in them, youth succeeding to age. It is
only the degenerate who dies, for his kind is "extinguished," the few
miserable generations whom he produces represent a "living agony."
This "dying species," which lives among the healthy, exhibiting its
weakness, its delusions, its convulsions, irritability and egoism, is
finally driven into those tombs of the living, lunatic asylums and
prisons.

What a living picture, and what a warning to man! One "fault"