Crime -- United States; Criminals -- United States
Wheresoever mental dullards are schooled, the atmosphere should be
surcharged with hope. There, the word "can't" should be held taboo, and
"you can if you will" issue commonly with the force of an unquestionable
slogan. No matter how apparently hopeless the case, no suggestion of
character whatsoever, to that effect, should be carried to the subject.
Related tests for physical reactions may be taken at very close to their
face value, since the responses thereto are mostly involuntary, and, in
any instance, the subject can't just figure it out how to beat them.
However, acquired ability, plus somewhat of natural gift of the
psycho-analyst to trace signs to their source and intertwining, must be
beyond question.
The phrase "plus somewhat of natural gift" is inserted, because the
burden is at once upon the examiner to pick apart the mosaic of motive,
and to uncover the counter motives of the examined. That he will not do
reliably short of an intuitive faculty naturally keen, backed by a heap of
horse sense, and a broad culture; a culture so broad that he can vibrate
alike with such as the cheap paddock tout, the crass, ego-centric,
oversexed hyperesthenic with a chip on his shoulder, the plain plumb bum
and crowded-out derelict, the congenital victim of hebetude with ox-like
mind and the sensibilities of the mullet, and the bald criminal cheat, out
all of the time to bring the crime-tainted-bacon home over the
subterranean route.
Actually to grade human souls and sound human hearts, is a heaping order
that calls for catholic understanding of comparative sociology,
retroactive as to transmitted traits of character for at least
one-hundred-and-eighty years. Back of that, man has not yet probed to
impulse for human action of the present; but he can not be sure that
reasons in part for present given courses of human conduct, may not strike
backward centuries farther than nine-score years.
Not so long ago, as world time goes, natural selection was the vogue.
Under Lycurgus, a little later on, Spartan youth who were not expert
foragers from the common hoard, were subject to the heaviest hand of the
State. Another short bridge of years, and Germans who grilled the legions
of Varus boasted that they "didn't go to war but to annihilation." Shortly
thereafter the doom of the Roman Empire was adumbrated partly by the
"lounge-lizard" given over to various forms of indefensible conquest, not
the least of which led to vitiating sexual excess; and partly by
establishing barbarous letting of human blood in the national
consciousness as a form of amusement.
From then on, most of social upheavals carried the germs of future social
chaos in thousands of killings, the bulk of which were born of hectic,
heartless bestiality, and very few, if any, of which wrought for
whole-seeing man.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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