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ence of example is powerfully felt.
This fact did not escape the notice of
Aristotle. "The playful occupations
of CHILDHOOD he said, SHOULD for the
most part be limitations of what later
on must enchain the attention of man
hood. Children copy their parents in
everything; they walk, talk and gestic-
ulate as their father and mother, and
initiate them even in their faults and
grimaces."
The parents example, then, plays
most important role in the morality
and criminality of our youth.
The action of bad example is so
powerful, so rapid; communication
of vice through imitation is so much
to be feared, that moralists compare it
to the transmission of disease and give
it the name of moral contagion. There
is in the spirit of evil a breath of con-
tagion that communicates itself to the
soul with more subtlety and uncon-
sciousness than does the poisoned at
mosphere surrounding bodies infected
with pest attack those who approach
them.
The particular forms themselves as
sumed criminality are communicated
in like manner. We all know how in
recent years after the assassination of a
victim, the mutilatiOn and carving of
the corpse has become a common oc-
eurrance. A we'll known jurist insists,
in this connection, upon the necessity
imposed upon justice to punish with
great severity the one who first COM
mits crime by the use of new methods,
for the purpose of staying his imita
tors
Bad readings do an immense amount
of harm to the young, who are given to
initiate these heroes of fiction or
theatre above all whenever the pub
licatiOn or drama presents vice under
attractive cOlOrs. Children cannot
without danger read, nor see, nor hear
everything; ignorance of evil is the
best safeguard of child'S morality.
The automaton which is in each one of
us, according to the deep observation
of Pascal, is particularly inclined in
childhood to reproduce acts the pOr
tray of which provOkes emotion. That
is why Plato did not believe that all
sorts of fables indifferently could be
told to children, and considered as det-
rimental to morality the tales of Grim
inal deeds which the poets ascribed to
the gods. The souls of youth, as their
bodies, require a pure atmosphere,
amid which they may develop in pu-
rity, kindness and courage.
The physicians and criminalists who
understand the power of good and
bad example would-with propriety-
prohibit the press from parading in the
newspapers the unhealthy outbreaks
of society's moral infirmities, of its
suicides and crimes; they fear with
cause, the effect of this publicity on
the weak and sickly minds (for all the
insane are not in the asylums,) on the
young men and nervous women. The
details furnished upon the execution
of suicides and crimes generally strike
the mind and may awaken a spirit of
imitation. This publicity, moreover,
presents the very grave inconvenience
of teaching the details of execution of
criminal acts. 1t has been universally
observed that in most cases of murder,
of infanticide, criminal abortion, and
counterfeiting, the crime-doer not in
frequently traces, line for line, the ex-
ecution of his crime from the copies
furnished by the tales of past occur
rences of similar nature. The details
of the relation of criminal matters
should be vigorously reserved to spe-
cial judiciary journals. 1t is most un-
wise to allow the young people to feed
daily upon the vicious paintings and
unhealthy descriptions of the world OF
crime and vice, which our journalists
delight to spread out in the columns
of our press.-Translated from the
French of Louis Proal, for the Elmira
IN. " Summary.
Hope dies only with life.