We must recognise that moral weakness is very often, {113} partly at least, a physical defect, and there is no such state as "moral insanity" where the intellect is normal. Now, I do not wish to be quoted as holding that all moral depravity has a physical basis; most of it is the unalloyed stuff; the Lombroso criminal is not a scientific fact; but there is a moral condition very frequently met with which is largely physical in origin. Given so many grains of cocaine or morphine or so many ounces of alcohol, and you can make a liar of a man once on the way toward sanctity. Given an attack of hysteria in a holy nun, and she at once becomes a liar, an altogether blameless liar, but no influence that does not remove the physical cause will cure the lying. The morally weak do not at present obtain enough religious instruction. Their religion is more a matter of inheritance and habit than of positive energy. It is "in the bones," sometimes in the fists, rather than in the soul. They prefer the Sunday newspaper to the Sunday sermon. The remedy here seems to be in making the Sunday school solidly interesting and its teaching impressive. Alcoholism in the parents, especially drunkenness at the moment of conception, is one of the chief causes of idiocy in children. Féré, as was said before, by injecting a few drops of alcohol beneath the shell of hens' eggs, or by exposing the eggs to the vapour of alcohol, could produce monsters almost invariably. In 1000 cases of idiocy at the Bicétre, Bourneville found a history of alcoholism in 620, or 62 per centum: in the fathers of 471, in the mothers of 84, in both parents of 65; and in one-half of the remaining 38 per centum no history was obtainable--probably most of these also had the alcoholic taint. The administration of alcohol to infants, of gin and whiskey, of essences of peppermint and anise, to relieve colic or induce sleep, and the dosing with opiates like paregoric, are also well-established causes of idiocy. The idiot is practically dead, except for the trouble he gives in caring for him; but another unfortunate, the imbecile, most commonly the offspring of alcoholics, is often capable of great mischief. The higher grades of imbeciles, those nearest the normal, are almost invariably criminals. Not all criminals, of course, are imbeciles, but a vast number of petty and brutal {114} criminals are imbeciles. We keep these unfortunates most of their lives in jail, while we fine their drunken fathers, the cause of the imbecility, "five dollars and costs." Imbecility has grades,--from marked lack of intellectual power, a stage little beyond idiocy, up to the presence of a mind capable of fair education,--but in all cases there is real defect, either of intellect or of will. Sometimes, where the will is so weak that the patient becomes a criminal in spite of all training, the intellect is practically normal to the superficial observer.