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.

The results of this inquiry also show that degeneracy among criminals
is sometimes inherited and sometimes acquired. It is inherited when
the criminal is descended from insane, drunken, epileptic, scrofulous
parents; it is often acquired when the criminal adopts and
deliberately persists in a life of crime. The closeness of the
connection between degeneracy and crime is, to a considerable extent,
determined by social conditions. A degenerate person, who has to earn
his own livelihood, is much more likely to become a criminal than
another degenerate person who has not. Almost all forms of degeneracy
render a man more or less unsuited for the common work of life; it is
not easy for such a man to obtain employment; in certain forms of
degeneracy it becomes almost impossible. A person in this unfo