mply to
hypnotize the criminal and to supplant his antisocial will by a moral
one. And if the absurdity of such a proposal is recognized it seems to
many justified to demand such an intrusion at least in the case of the
born criminal, even if the occasional criminal cannot be reached. But
the conception of the born criminal is also only a label which is
superficially used for a great variety of minds. That men are born with
a brain which necessarily produces criminal actions is not indicated by
any facts. The varieties which nature really produces are brains which
are more liable than others to produce antisocial actions. We recognized
from the start that the abnormal mind never introduces any new elements
but is characterized only by a change of proportions. There is too much
or too little of a certain mental process and just for that reason there
must be a steady and continuous transition from the normal to the
entirely abnormal. Here again we have not a special class of brains
which are criminal; but we have an endless variety of brains with a
greater or smaller predisposition for antisocial outbreaks. The
variations which produce this criminal effect may lie in most different
directions.

The brain may be for instance inclined to overstrong impulses, so that
any desire rushes to action before the inhibiting counter-idea gets to
work. Or, on the other hand, the brain may have unusually weak
counter-ideas so that even a normal impulse does not find its normal
checking. The fact that selfish and thus antisocial desires awake in the
mind is not abnormal at all; only if they are not normally inhibited,
the disturbance sets in. Furthermore the associative apparatus of the
brain may work especially slowly; it may thus bring it about that the
counteracting ideas do not arise in time. Or the emotions of a person
may be unusually strong. Or there may be strong suggestibility, by which
a bad example or a strong temptation has especially easy access. Or
there may be negative suggestibility, by which a moral admonition stirs
up a vivid idea of the opposite. In short, there may be a large number
of factors, sometimes even in combination, each one of which increases
the chances that the individual may come in danger in the midst of
developed society. Yet no one of those factors involves just the
necessity of crime. The same kinds of brains might simply show stupidity
or credulity or inconsiderateness or brutality or stubbornness o