r
egotism, and might by each of those factors decrease their chances in
the community without directly running into conflict with the law. The
criminal is therefore never born as such. He is only born with a brain
which is in some directions inefficient and which thus, under certain
unfavorable conditions, will more easily come to criminal deeds than the
normal brain.

With the idea of a stereotyped born criminal there disappears also the
idea of a uniform treatment against criminal tendencies. That men are
different in their power of resistance or in their power of efficiency
or in their intellect or in their emotions, we have to accept as the
fundamental condition with which every society starts. It would be
absurd to remodel them artificially after a pattern. The result would be
without value anyhow, inasmuch as our appreciation is relative. No
character is perfect. The more the differences were reduced, the more we
should become sensitive even for the smaller variations. All that
society can do is, therefore, not to remodel the manifoldness of brains,
but to shape the conditions of life in such a way that the weak and
unstable brains also have a greater chance to live their lives without
conflicts with the community.

The situation is different as soon as the particular surroundings have
brought it about that such a brain with reduced powers has entered a
criminal career. The thought of crime now becomes a sort of obsession or
rather an autosuggestion. The way to this idea has become a path of
least resistance, and as soon as such an unfortunate situation has
settled itself, the chances are overwhelming that a criminal career has
been started. If such cases should come early to suggestive treatment
which really would close the channels of the antisocial autosuggestion,
much harm might be averted. Yet again the liability of the brain to
become antisocial would not have been removed, and thus not much would
be secured unless such a person after the treatment could be kept under
favorable conditions. With young boys who through unfortunate influence
have caught a tendency, for instance, to steal, and where the fault does
not yield to sympathetic reasoning and to punishment, an early hypnotic
treatment might certainly be tried. I myself have seen promising
results. But if the impulse has irresistible character in such a way
that the good will is powerless, we are again in the field of disease
and the point of view of