"Crime is not, as Lombroso and his coadjutors would have us believe, wholly either a disease or a neurosis in the sense of a direct, absolute, physiological, pathognomonic entity, though doubtless not infrequently closely associated with physical, anatomical, and nerve degeneration, as above conceded. To presuppose absolute and necessary brain lesion or diseased nerve action, or anomalous, physiognomonical, or anatomical diathesis, as the inevitable precursor of any form of mental and moral deflection, is an assumption wholly unwarranted and is nowhere substantiated by facts, though its advocates have sought to lay their foundations deep and wide in the materialistic hypothesis. Most criminals present unusually sound physiological conditions, and there is among them no unusual death rate, considering their habits and mode of life, as we shall hereafter see. Hence their moral instability can not be associated with physiological instability in the absolute sense. The physical defect must be either reversionary or incidental, rather than absolute." {274} The impetus in the study of criminals, which came as a result of the revolutionary teaching of the Italian school, has not been without a good effect. Criminals all over the world have been studied more closely and more sympathetically, in order to test the new ideas, until now it is possible to draw definite conclusions with regard to certain features of the problem. After a time, Lombroso came to admit that the so-called criminal type occurred in somewhat less than half the criminal cases. Criminal anthropologists, however, have shown that the physical conformation called by the name criminal, is really only the result of a defective or degenerative physical constitution. It is easy to understand that persons born with a defective nervous system, or with serious degenerative lesions in other parts of the body, which prevent the proper nutrition and functional development of the nervous system, would perform many more materially criminal acts than the rest of the population. The idiot and certain forms of the degenerative insane show this. Any defective development of the nervous system, moreover, may lead to instability of moral character, because the free action of the soul may be hampered by the physical environment with which it is associated. Certain of the physical peculiarities most frequently seen in criminals have an influence of this kind and merit discussion. A knowledge of them will furnish clergymen with reasons for a larger charity to those unfortunates, and a greater tolerance for their relapses, without allowing sentiment to play too important a rôle in dealing with them. There are all grades of defective human beings, from the idiot up to those little less than normal. Anatomical peculiarities prevent the proper functions of the nervous system, as it is not hard to understand. The will is hampered in its action by the defect of the instrument through which it must work.