The mirror. (Stillwater, Minn.) 1894-1925, 1896-07-23

her own happiness with dietary lux
ury.
In man only is wrong committed on
his own species and understood as
SUCH With conscience as a restrain
ing monitor and remorse as punitive
detector of wrong, he is gifted with
two natural aids to acquired means of
determining what rules of conduct shall
guide his intercourse with his fellow
creatures. The inclination for crime
grows with a subtle poisoning of the
moral perception of right akin to that
governing the symptoms Of disease.
The two fundamental requisites for it's
continuance is disregard for the rights
of others and recklessness of conse-
quences. Assuccess attends one venture
the desire for future wrong isawakened, is
the promptings of conscience silenced
by the possession of gain or qualification
of revenge and the experience acquired
is an incentive for greater exploits
and an aid to avoid failure in their eX-
ecution. The practice of crime grad
ually demoraliZes all the better traits
in man, and develops affectation and
deception to mask corrupted life. The
fear of detection succeeds the suppress
sion of the feeling of remorse, instill-
ing distrust of associates, a suspicion
of strangers, and hatred of authority.
The criminal lives in an atmosphere
of unrest, chafng under the restraints
of law and order, with little interest in
anything legitimate, but ever ready to
engage in any crooked enterprise that
invites the exercise of his talents in
the particular line of villainy in which
they are usually directed. Even in the
event of equal gain presenting itself
in an honorable venture he would &C.
cept wrong one for the very love of
intlicting loss on another TO him the
excitement and danger attending
crime is far more welcome than the
quiet security of an honest life.
When a criminal becomes crime
stained to the point of viewing every
phase of life from wrong one, he
reaches a stage of moral degeneration
that higher education, changed habits
of living and religious exhortation sell
dom, if ever, restores to pristine pur-
ity. Every sense of right and justice
has become subordinate to the dictates
of a diseased mind commanding in
tellectual and physical energy to exert
it's powers in satisfying evil desires
and passions. Regard for pride of
character is sunk in the enervating
pleasures of vice, dissipation and i'm
morality, the satellites of crime. Faith
in truth and honesty is lost by long
disregard of their precepts. Hope for
the future is darkened by the hard
memories of the past, and the joyless
, thoughts of the present. Concern for
the inevitable termination of wrong
full course is waved aside with the II
: don't care of a debased nature tor
! tured by the mournful recolIections of
rejected reformative opportunities
Virtue may be scoffed and it's exist
2 ence doubted, or even denied, but, be
he ever so abandoned and ever SO
shameless, the criminal, with an envi-
Gus longing, as psychological as it is
5 materialistic, reveres the pure, and in
3 the same sense as an invalid's thoughts
l are directed to the robust; his own life
Y being corrupt he has an innermost
= reverence for what is diametrically op
9 posed to the results of his own habits
e of life. The degree of the wrongful
: bent has now inclined to an angle that
t threatens the topping over of the en-
tire mental and moral organizations t(
e the last measure of human woe an(
r iniquity- -melancholia and misan
S throphy. Crime is then disease, an(
t one which punishment cannot diagnose
+ or remedy, nor can extreme measures
! check it's course, for one of the axiom
S of penology is that the harder th'
a treatment the more hardened the Grim
l. inal.
f Crime, then, being disease, what i
d the germ, and what the germicide
l. Science is teaching that the underly
q ing principle of organic wrong is o