Now, all this does not mean that I wish it to be inferred that healthy and well-developed men never commit crime, for that is far from true. Some of the worst rogues and most dangerous criminals I have ever met have been strong, handsome fellows, well over the average size of fully developed men. There are, however, so far as my experience has shown me, but few criminals of that description; though it is of course certain that big men may commit crimes of any kind, and healthy, handsome, educated men who persist in crime may well be subjects for psychological research; but of that class I shall have more to say in another chapter. For the present I am maintaining that physical causes determine the character and lives of the bulk of our criminals; that they are criminals not because they possess a dark, mysterious psychology, or because they are of malice aforethought determined to be criminals, but because they are either weak or afflicted. In a word weakness, not wickedness, is the one general cause of crime. These men form a stage army of criminals; they move from place to place; they are classified and catalogued in prison after prison; they are tossed from pillar to post; they are subjected to short terms of useless imprisonment and then thrust into short terms of hopeless liberty. What wonder that their physical condition gets worse! Or that they ultimately attain to certified feeble-mindedness! Many of them, as I have pointed out, eventually commit serious crimes; and then a series of sentences to penal servitude await them, if happy death does not claim them or lunatic asylums absorb them. The great majority, however, pursue their wearying round of small crimes and small imprisonments. The State then discovers that, though they are not insane, not absolutely feeble-minded, that there is something wrong with them, and that they are, so to speak, “childish.” So a half-way classification has been coined for them; they are, the State declares, “unfit for prison discipline.” Unfit for prison! unfit for asylums! unfit for liberty! unfit for social or industrial life! unfit for anything! They are in a parlous state, they commit crime, but they are not criminals. Every year 400 new names are added to the list of these unfortunates who are still regularly committed to prison, so the Prison Commissioners tell us. Again I ask, what can it profit us to know more of the psychology of these “criminals” than is apparent to any one with eyes?