fall, knowing it to be there. Too readily
wrongdoers are prepared to lay their failings at the door of ancestors,
society, or some other blamable source, instead of attributing them, as
they should do, to their own selfish and weak indulgence and lack of
self-control. Heredity, though an enormous factor in our constitution,
need not be regarded as an over-mastering fate, for each human being
has an almost limitless parentage to draw upon. Each child has both a
father and a mother, and two grandparents on both sides, increasing as
one goes back. But, besides drawing on a much wider ancestry than the
immediate parents, we have more than we inherit, or where could the law
of progress operate? Each generation, each child who is born, comes
into a slightly different world, fed by more experience, blown upon by
fresh influences. And each individual comes into the world, not with a
body merely, but with a soul; and this soul is susceptible to
impressions, not only from the outer material world but from the other
souls also impressed by the old and the new, by the material and the
ideal.

"The History of the Jukes" is continually cited as proving the power
and force of heredity. Most people who read the book through, however,
instead of merely accepting allusions one-sided and defective to it,
see clearly that it forms the strongest argument for change of
environment that ever was brought forward. The assumed name of Jukes is
given to the descendants of a worthless woman who emigrated to America
upwards of a century and a half ago, and from whom hundreds of
criminals, paupers, and prostitutes have descended. But how were the
Jukes' descendants dealt with during this period? No helping hand
removed the children from their vicious and criminal surroundings known
as one of the crime-cradles of the State of New York. Neither church
nor school took them under its protecting care. Born and reared in the
haunts of vice and crime, nothing but viciousness and criminality could
be expected as a result. Without going, so far as a wellknown ex-member
of our State Legislature, whose antagonism to the humanitarian
treatment of prisoners led him to the belief that "there wasn't nothin'
in 'erry-ditty,' it was all tommy rot," I still hold to the belief that
environment plays the larger part in the formation of character. Every
phase of criminal reform is, I candidly admit, dealing with effects
rather than causes. Effects, however, must be deal