often possessing a sense of moral responsibility, these unhappy creatures plunge again and again into vice and crime.  In some cases of this description the will is practically annihilated; in others it is under the dominion of momentary caprice; in others again it has no power of concentration, or it is the victim of sudden hurricanes of feeling which drive everything before them.  Persons afflicted in this way, when not drunkards, are generally convicted for crimes of violence, such as assault, manslaughter, murder.  They experience real sentiments of remorse, but neither remorse nor penitence enables them to grapple with their evil star.  The will is stricken with disease, and the man is dashed hither and thither, a helpless wreck on the sea of life.[44]

    [44] Cf.  Ribot, Les Maladies de la Volonte, 1887.

Let us now consider the class of criminals whose wills are not diseased, but are, on the other hand, dominated by a boundless egoism.  Of such criminals it may be said that there is no essential difference between them and immoral men.  Egoism, selfishness, a lack of consideration for the rights and feelings of others, are the dominant principles in the life of both.  The dividing line between the two types consists in this, that the egoism of the immoral man is bounded by the criminal law; but the egoism of the criminal is bounded by no law either without him or within.  It does not follow from this that the criminal is without a sense of duty or a dread of legal punishment.  In most cases he possesses both in a more or less developed form.  But his immense egoism so completely overpowers both his sense of duty and his fear of punishment that it demands gratification at whatever cost.  He sees what he ought to do; he knows how he ought to act; he is perfectly alive to the consequences of transgression, but these motives are not strong enough to induce him to alter his ways of life.

On summing up the results of this inquiry into criminal biology we arrive at the following conclusions.  In the first place, it cannot be proved that the criminal has any distinct physical conformation, whether anatomical or morphological; and, in the second place, it cannot be proved that there is any inevitable alliance between anomalies of physical structure and a criminal mode of life.  But it can be shown that criminals, taken as a whole, exhibit a higher proportion of physical anomalies, and a higher percentage of physical degeneracy than the rest of the community.  With respect to the mental condition of criminals, it cannot be established that it is, on the whole, a condition of insanity, or even verging on insanity.  But it can be established that the bulk of the criminal classes are of a humbly developed mental organisation.  Whether we call this low state of mental development, atavism, or degeneracy is, to a large extent, a matter of words; the fact of its wide-spread existence among criminals is the important point.