But in the realm of the mental and the moral, the law has been content for centuries to rest at ease. Our practical dealings with crime are based on the same theories of evil and evil spirits that made wise physicians drive the devils into swine and swine into the sea. If any progress has been made it has been in believing that, instead of one being possessed of a devil, he really is a devil. When the physical condition of a man is sufficiently far removed from the physical condition of the average which is supposed to represent the normal man, he is treated for the disease. When the mental condition sufficiently varies from that of the ordinary man, the normal man, he is promptly imprisoned or put to death. Judges and juries debate and ponder over the question of whether a man has done some act that is not commonly done by his fellows, and if they determine that he is guilty of doing the act, the judgment follows that he must have wilfully and perversely chosen to do wrong. No one then inquires why he did the act and whether there are conditions of disease present in the community that will lead others to do like acts. There is but one thing to do. The man is evil. The state must lay violent hands upon him—must meet evil with evil, violence with violence. There is but one cure for malice and that is malice. But however ignorant the law and its administrators, some of the rules of conduct have been brought to light; while judges have been sentencing, and hangmen and jailers plying their grewsome trades, there have been thinkers and students and historians, who did not believe in the old theory of witchcraft and evil spirits on which human punishment really rests. These students and scholars have labeled and classified facts and have at least learned something as to the cause and origin of what men call crime. Enough at least has been discovered to prove that punishment has absolutely no effect to lessen crime.