nd of the temptation.

The deficiency of conscience in criminals, as shown by the absence
of genuine remorse for their guilt, astonishes all who first become
familiar with the details of prison life. Scenes of heartrending
despair are hardly ever witnessed among prisoners; their sleep is
broken by no uneasy dreams--on the contrary, it is easy and sound;
they have also excellent appetites. But hypocrisy is a very common
vice; and all my information agrees as to the utter untruthfulness
of criminals, however plausible their statements may be.

We must guard ourselves against looking upon vicious instincts as
perversions, inasmuch as they may be strictly in accordance with the
healthy nature of the man, and, being transmissible by inheritance,
may become the normal characteristics of a healthy race, just as the
sheep-dog, the retriever, the pointer, and the bull-dog, have their
several instincts. There can be no greater popular error than the
supposition that natural instinct is a perfectly trustworthy guide,
for there are striking contradictions to such an opinion in
individuals of every description of animal. The most that we are
entitled to say in any case is, that the prevalent instincts of each
race are trustworthy, not those of every individual. But even this
is saying too much, because when the conditions under which the race
is living have recently been changed, some instincts which were
adapted to the old state of things are sure to be fallacious guides
to conduct in the new one. A man who is counted as an atrocious
criminal in England, and is punished as such by English law in social
self-defence, may nevertheless have acted in strict accordance with
instincts that are laudable in less civilised societies. The ideal
criminal is, unhappily for him, deficient in qualities that are
capable of restraining his unkindly or inconvenient instincts; he
has neither sympathy for others nor the sense of duty, both of which
lie at the base of conscience; nor has he sufficient self-control to
accommodate himself to the society in which he has to live, and so to
promote his own selfish interests in the long-run. He cannot be
preserved from criminal misadventure, either by altruistic
sentiments or by intelligently egoistic ones.

The perpetuation of the criminal class by heredity is a question
difficult to grapple with on many accounts. Their vagrant habits,
their illegitimate unions, and extreme untruthfulness, are among the