It is scarcely necessary from a practical point of view to enquire into the actual amount of crime which results from a bad environment, for it is only too obvious that none but those of the strongest wills and of the highest morality can resist the influence of bad surroundings when these are constant. Our enquiry should rather be directed to ascertain what constitutes a bad environment and what are the causes that produce it. It should also seek to discover by what means its evil influence may be checked and how to eradicate these influences when present. The attitude of our law-courts towards the criminal is practically this:--"You have been reared amidst evil surroundings whose influence you could not resist, you are a criminal, an outcast from society, you must be punished by being locked up in a school of crime in the hope that it may inspire you to live a better life. The sentence of the court is ..." And society endorses this attitude! The evil influence of bad surroundings is well exemplified by an instance recorded by Viscount D'Haussonville in his work "L'Enfance a Paris":--"Some years ago a band of criminals were brought before the jury of the Seine charged with a terrible crime, the assassination of an aged widow, with details of ferocity which the pen refuses to describe. The president of the court having asked the principal, Maillot, called 'the yellow,' how he had been brought to commit such a crime, he replied:--What do you wish that I should tell you Mr President? Since the age of seven years I have been found only on the streets of Paris. I have never met anyone who was interested in me. When a child, I was abandoned to every vicissitude--and I am lost. I have always been unfortunate. My life has been passed in prisons and gaols. That is all. It is my fate. I have reached--you know where. I will not say that I have committed the crime under circumstances independent of my own will, but finally--(here the voice of Maillot trembled) I never had a person to advise me. I had in view only robbery. I committed robbery but I ended with murder."