Los Angeles herald. [microfilm reel] (Los Angeles [Calif.]) 1900-1911, 1908-07-03
BY FRANK F. STONE

! try" Mr.. Blatchford $ reply is; "The
man with the atavistic brain CANNOT,
TRY. He has not got the kind of brain
that can try to be what we think he
ought to be-" So with the degenerate:
His nature is not a casting hack To
an ancient type; it is a nature poi
soned, manned or spoiled through the
Vices or diseases Of his more immedi-
ate forbears."
We do not blame, but pity-we do
not punish, but help-the victim whose
degeneracy takes the form of disease.
But we do blame and punish the VIC
tim whose degeneracy takes the form
of crime. Why? There is neither JUS
tice nor reason in 1t. "In the plenitude
of our wisdom and the glow of our
righteous wrath, we hang a man or
fog him or brand him or loathe him
because a cruel fate has visited upon
him an affliction more pitiable than
blindness or paralysis or consump-
tion." 1t is-as the author says-"ab-
surd to expect the same morals and
intelligence from man cursed with
the skull of a gorilla or the brain of
wild hog as from a man blessed
with the brain of a Socrates OF q
Shakespeare"
Mr.. Blatchford fortifies his position
by frequent, though terse and telling
quotations, from Darwin, Spencer,
hIOPOlhAAs Ay6LOug AOulDTOSO ana
many others. And Sir Robert Ander-
son of Scotland Yard is quoted as fol-
lows: my deliberate conviction is
that our present prison methods and
discipline are absolutely brutal.
Only those behind the scenes can I'M
derstand the cruelty of 1t to poor crea-
lures who ought to be dealt with like
children or invalids'-and that is the
testimony of the late head of the
oV.iY,o feraf ortv,,
assistant commissioner of police and
barrister at law.
what are we to do" asks Mr.
Blatchford, with this atavist, this
wretched, desperate brother who will
not love us though we whip him with
whips of wire; who will not make friends
of us though we spurn and spit upon
him; who, though we preach cannot
understand, and though we hang him
high as Haman will die game. cursing
us with his strangled breath" We re-
main the, superior persons we are, civil
lied and holy, furnishing weakness
with blows and misfortune with
chains"
The author defines environment as
everything that mobiles the child or
man---the mothers milk, the home, the
state of life, the nurse, the playmates,
the school; the food he eats, the water
he drinks and the air he breathes; tho
sights he sees, the sounds he hears, the
girl he loves, the woman he marries,
the children he rears, the wages he
earns the sickness that tries him, the
griefs that scar him, the friends who
aid and the enemies who wound him.
All his hopes and fears, his victories
and defeats, his faiths and disillusion-
ments, etc. Everything outside our
skin belongs to our environment"
Suppose a child of twentieth CEN
fury parents could be born into an
earlier century environment. Would he
grow up with the ideas of today or
with the ideas of those who taught and
trained him? Most certainly he would
fall into step with environment; he
would think with those with whom he
lived and from whom he learnt. Born
into Athens, he would regard slavery
as natural and proper. Born into an
cient Scandinavia, he would grow up
a viking, adopting piracy as the only
profession for a man of honor. Born
into the environment OF the Spanish
prime he would think 1t righteous to
roast heretics or to break Lutherans on
the wheel. Born Turk he would be-
1ieve the Koran and accept polygamy
and slavery. Born among cannibals he
would devour his aged relatives and his
faded wives, and the foes made captive
to his bow and spear"
Equally, Mr.. Blatchford points out.
child of modern family, born into the
environment of fourteenth century
England, would surely believe In the
Roman Catholic religion, a personal
devil and a hell of everlasting fire. He
would believe the sun goes round the
earth. and that anyone who thought
otherwise was a child of the devil, and
ought to be burnt piously and slowly at
a fire of green fagots. He would &C
cept slave dealing and WITHDRAWING.
the star chamber, the whipping post.
the Dillory and the forcing of evidence
bv torture. He would look upon educa-
ton, sanitation and science as black
magic and defiance of God.
we are reminded that the refined
John wesley believed In witch burning
and that some cultured and we'll mean
ing Europeans and Americans today
think that unbaptized babes and free
thinkers and unrepentant Christians
will he shrieking forever in a lake of
Are and birthstone. "And," says the
author, 1--WE must not forget that 1t is
now. in the twentieth century, that /,
an Englishman, am writing this book,
to plead that men and women. our
brothers and sisters, should not be
hated, degraded, whipped, imprisoned,
hanged and everlastingly damned for
being more ignorant and less fortunate
than others, their fellows"
A child must inevitably grow up and
become that which his ancestors and
his fellow creatures make him. He
brought no knowledge of any kind into
the world with him; and now, suppose
that, instead of being taught to read,
and to be honest and courteous, he had
been taught to lie and steal, and to
hate, and to fight, and to gamble, and
to swear would he be to blame for
what his environment had made him.
that he has been trained to evil instead
of good?" But some obJector may say
that as he got older and knew better
he could mend his ways. "Strange
that one must point out that he never
could know better unless some one
taught him, which would be change
in his environment" Conscience! may
be urged; but just what that should
be, VIII t 1t should come to hold as
right and wrong would depend wholly
ON what he was taught by his environ
ment.