for treatment, he heard his friend caution the nurse to "keep the windows closed, as one of his fever-patients had attempted to jump out." No sooner had the sick man heard this than he set his mind to circumvent his attendant and jump out of the window, though, until he had heard the cautioning remarks, such a desire had not occurred to him. His intention was happily frustrated, and, as soon as he recovered, he resumed his hospital practice. Strangely forgetting the presence of the patients, he related to some of the other physicians present his experience, and was only made aware of his imprudence when told that, after he had left, several of the sick had risen from their beds and attempted to jump out of the windows.
Without endorsing the apothegm of the able author of the "Intellectual Development of Europe," that "the equilibrium and movements of humanity are altogether physiological phenomena, and that the succession of events are the inevitable results of a law depending on, or the consequences of physical conditions," we are persuaded that a large proportion of crime is to be attributed to the responsive nature of the physical organization. Among unsophisticated persons, untrammeled by etiquette, there are many who can not hear a march played without attempting to keep step with the music, or a waltz without an instinctive desire to dance. There is, indeed, a certain amount of rhythmical response in most of us to the time measurements of harmony—particularly, when lively airs are played; but as some more than others are easily affected by moral and physical harmonies, may there not be other souls, or vitalized bodies, which spontaneously respond to the moral and physical discords—people who may be said to be out of tune with the organized harmonies of society, and whose natural impulse is to put these into modes of activity?
Plato recognized these differences in the impulses of persons differently constituted and educated; he says in vol. iv. of his "Laws," "I do not expect or imagine that any well-brought-up citizen will ever take the infection [of crime], but their servants or those of strangers may." Speaking of those who might be tempted to crime, he perceives very clearly the power of association over the imitative instinct of human beings, especially of those who dwell together, and he thus advises. "When any such ill thought [as that of committing a crime] comes into your mind, go at once to the society of those who are called good among you. Fly from the wicked; fly, and turn not back, and, if thy disorder is lightened by these remedies, well and good; but if not, then acknowledge death to be nobler than life, and depart hence."
Without going so far as the noble Greek, and recommending suicide to those cursed with evil instincts, we concede that the first part of his advice is as sound to-day as it was two thousand years ago. The power of a dominant idea is almost irresistible in some natures; and, therefore, it should be the aim of every philanthropist, whose efforts are directed to the reduction of crime, to seek the introduction of
