grosser passions—also those who from congenital defects of organization have strong natural tendencies toward the commission of crime—sporadic criminals against whom it is scarcely possible for society to protect itself, unless, like the ancient Spartans, it is prepared to undertake the entire education of the future citizen, morally, intellectually, and physically, including the ante-natal period. Some recent investigations and social experiments have proved that, numerous as these are, they are a small minority as compared with those of the imitative and therefore curable class.
Alibert, the ingenious author of the "Système Sensible," regarded the instinct of imitation as the primordial law of nature, which has ruled, taught, and bound together the successive generations of the human race in a more potent manner than any other single faculty: and our every-day observation and experience tend to confirm the sagacity of this remark; and in the matter of crime it is certainly one of the permanent sources of its development and increase. There is one patent fact recognized by the average mind of the community, that the record and publication of any extraordinary crime is very certain to be followed by one or more examples of the same description. This certainly hints at some psychical influence worthy of examination, though it is generally dismissed with an expression as to its being a "singular fatality"—such as appears to follow certain kinds of accidents by flood or field, by land or sea.
The forms and phases of imitation are extremely varied—being sometimes the outcome of the conscious will, but not infrequently it is the result of an automatic sympathy with which the will has nothing to do. In many cases imitation is simply the active form of nervous sympathy and approaches the condition of mania. This instinct or faculty, like all other human attributes, may be well or ill applied, but the essential fact remains ever true that the instinct itself is irrepressible, and will exercise itself in some form: and, often as it is misused, the world could not afford to dispense with it. The race would make small progress if every man had to begin de novo, instead of imitating the previous acquirements of bis ancestors. We may even admit, with the French philosopher, that without the perpetual use of the imitative faculty there could be no distinctive nationalities; for, is it not by successive generations imitating their parents that national customs, usages, and languages are formed, and communities consolidated so as to afford each other mutual support? And the important fact should not be lost sight of that the faculty of imitation is one of the earliest developed, and has acquired strength and vigor long before the reflective faculties or the judgment is prepared to sit in council upon these immature tendencies; particularly should this be remembered in connection with all efforts in behalf of the weaker members of our human brotherhood—whether the young, as such, or the incipient criminal, in which this faculty often plays so considerable a part;
