s can be laid on the
experiments conducted by the Anthropological School as to
peculiarities in the sense of smell, taste, sight, and so on,
discovered among criminals. In all these inquiries it is so easy for
the subject to deceive the investigator, and he has often so direct an
interest in doing it that all results in this department must be
accepted with the utmost caution. Wherever investigations necessitate
the acceptance upon trust of statements made by criminals, their
scientific value descends to the lowest level. As this must be largely
the case with respect to the senses of hearing, taste, smell, etc., it
is almost impossible to reach assured conclusions.

It is different in inquiries respecting the intellect. Here the
investigator is able to judge for himself. According to Dr. Ogle, 86.5
per cent. of the general population were able to read and write in the
years 1881-4, and as this represents an increase of 10 per cent. since
the passing of the Elementary Education Act, it is probably not far
from the mark to say that at the present time almost 90 per cent. of
the English population can read and write. In other words, only 10
per cent. of the population is wholly ignorant. In the local prisons
on the other hand, no less than 25 per cent. of the prisoners can
neither read nor write, and 72 per cent. can only read or read and
write imperfectly. The vast difference in the proportion of
uninstructed among the prison, as compared with the general
population, is not to be explained by the defective early training of
the former. This explanation only covers a portion of the ground: the
other portion is covered by the fact that a certain number of
criminals are almost incapable of acquiring instruction. The memory
and the reasoning powers of such persons are so utterly feeble that
attempts to school them is a waste of time.[43] Deficiencies in
memory, imagination, reason, are three undoubted characteristics of
the ordinary criminal intellect. Of course, there are very many
criminals in which all these qualities are present, and whose defects
lie in another direction, but taken as a whole the criminal is
unquestionably less gifted intellectually than the rest of the
community.

Respecting the emotions of criminals, it is much more difficult to
speak, and much more easy to fall into error. The only thing that can
be said of them for certain, is, that they do not, as a rule, possess
the same keenness of feeling as t