hat he whom, secretly, you most despise is he who
echoes back to you what he is pleased to think you think and flatters
you for gain. Anyhow, for some reason, I never hear you speak well of
newspaper men and politicians, though in the shadow of your disesteem
they get an occasional gleam of consolation by speaking fairly well of
one another.

CRIME AND ITS CORRECTIVES

I.

SOCIOLOGISTS have been debating the theory that the impulse to commit
crime is a disease, and the ayes appear to have it--not the impulse but
the decision. It is gratifying and profitable to have the point settled:
we now know "where we are at," and can take our course accordingly.
It has for a number of years been known to all but a few back-number
physicians--survivals from an exhausted _regime_--that all disease is
caused by bacilli, which worm themselves into the organs that secrete
health and enjoin them from the performance of that rite. The
medical conservatives mentioned attempt to whittle away the value and
significances of this theory by affirming its inadequacy to account
for such disorders as broken heads, sunstroke, superfluous toes,
home-sickness, burns and strangulation on the gallows; but against the
testimony of so eminent bacteriologists as Drs. Koch and Pasteur their
carping is as that of the idle angler. The bacillus is not to be denied;
he has brought his blankets and is here to stay until evicted, and
eviction can not be wrought by talking. Doubtless we may confidently
expect his eventual suppression by a fresher and more ingenious
disturber of the physiological peace, but the bacillus is now chief
among ten thousand evils and it is futile to attempt to read him out of
the party.

It follows that in order to deal intelligently with the criminal impulse
in our afflicted fellow-citizens we must discover the bacillus of crime.
To that end I think that the bodies of hanged assassins and such persons
of low degree as have been gathered to their fathers by the cares of
public office or consumed by the rust of inactivity in prison should be
handed over to the microscopists for examination. The bore, too, offers
a fine field for research, and might justly enough be examined alive.
Whether there is one general--or as the ancient and honorable orders
prefer to say, "grand"--bacillus, producing a general (or grand)
criminal impulse covering a multitude of sins, or an infinite number of
well defined and several bacilli, each