The same analysis applies to the whole question of responsibility or irresponsibility. It is a matter of imaginative contact and personal idea. To hold a man responsible, is to imagine him as a man like ourselves, having similar impulses but failing to control them as we do, or at least as we feel we ought to do. We think of doing as he does, find it wrong, and impute the wrong to him. The irresponsible person is one who is looked upon as a different sort of being, not human with reference to the conduct in question, not imaginable, not near enough to us to be the object of hostile sentiment. We _blame_ the former; that is, we visit him with a sympathetic resentment; we condemn that part of ourselves that we find in him. But in the latter we do not find ourselves at all. It is worth noting in this connection, that we could not altogether cease to blame others without ceasing to blame ourselves, which would mean moral apathy. It is sometimes thought that the cool analysis of such questions as this tends toward indifferentism; but I do not see that this is the case. The social psychologist finds in moral sentiment a central and momentous fact of human life, and if perchance he does not himself feel it very vividly, he should have the candor to confess himself so much the less a man. Indeed, if there is such a thing as an indifferentist, in the sense of one who does not feel any cogency in moral sentiment, he must be quite unsuited to the pursuit of social or moral science, because he lacks power to sympathize with, and so observe, the facts upon which this sort of science must be based. I do not purpose to give this discussion a practical turn by entering into the details of the treatment of various forms of degeneracy; but it may help to show the bearing of our general view, if I point out in brief the line of procedure which common-sense would seem to call for. This procedure naturally divides itself into prevention, reform or cure, and isolation, according to the stage of development which the evil has reached. Everything which acts in a favorable manner upon either the hereditary or the social factor in life is more or less preventive of degeneracy, and of course influences of this general sort are of far more importance as a whole than any more particular measures. Under the head of prevention would also come punishment, disgrace, and the like—everything in the treatment of criminals, paupers, and other special classes which is designed to impress the minds of the rest of the people, and to check the degenerate tendencies possibly existing among them. Although it is now thought that the efficacy of these deterrent influences, in the case of crime at least, is less than was formerly supposed, still it is by no means desirable that the attempt to exert them should be abandoned.