emoralization and crime are heaped up, and
assume the most manifold forms. The only thing that prospers is the
jails, penitentiaries and so-called houses of correction, no longer able
to accommodate the mass that is sent to them. The crimes of all sorts
and their increase are intimately connected with the economic state of
society--a fact, however, that the latter will not have. Like the
ostrich, it sticks its head in the sand, to avoid having to admit the
incriminating state of things, and it lies to the point of deceiving
itself into the belief that the fault lies with the laziness of the
workingmen, with their love of pleasure, and with their irreligiousness.
This is a self-deception of the most dangerous, or a hypocrisy of the
most repulsive, sort. The more unfavorable the state of society is for
the majority, all the more numerous and serious are the crimes
committed. The struggle for existence assumes its rudest and most
violent aspect: it transfers man into conditions where each sees a
mortal enemy in the other. The social bonds become looser every
day.[161]

The ruling classes, who do not probe matters to the bottom, or do not
like to, seek to meet the evil after their own fashion. If poverty and
want, and, as a result therefrom, demoralization and crime increase, the
source of the evil is not searched after, so that it may be stopped; no;
the products of the conditions are punished. The more gigantic the evils
grow, and the numbers of evil-doers multiply in proportion,
proportionately severe penalties and persecutions are deemed necessary.
It is sought to drive out the devil with Beelzebub. Prof. Haeckel also
considers it proper to proceed against criminals with the severest
punishments possible, and that capital punishment, in particular, be
stringently applied.[162] By this stand the Professor places himself in
sweet accord with the re-actionists of all shades, who otherwise are
mortally opposed to him. Haeckel is of the opinion that incorrigible
scape-graces must be uprooted like weeds that take from plants light,
air and space. Had Haeckel turned his mind slightly toward social,
instead of engaging it wholly with natural science, he would know that
these criminals could, in most instances, be transformed into useful
members of human society, provided society offered them the requisite
conditions of existence. He would also find that the annihilation of
individual criminals or the rendering of them harmless,