_(b) Criminality._—Criminality in its common forms must be classed as a condition of intellectual deficiency brought about by one or several of the causes I have already rehearsed. It is not necessary, here, to enter into the discussion as to whether a criminal is born or made, nor do I speak now of those violators of the law in favour of a higher law, the reformers, apostles, martyrs to a faith and a truth in advance of their time and place, nor of those who have yielded for a moment to some mastering temptation. I speak of the ordinary criminal who for selfish ends habitually violates the usages of the group in which he lives, and to this extent aims at its destruction. This class cannot be disciplined into the rules necessary to the peace and welfare of the society in which they live. Researches on their psychology show them, as a rule, defective in physical sensibility, more frequently colour-blind, mental instability is always present, vanity is exaggerated, the emotions are violent, and the general intelligence is below the average. We must regard them as pathological, rapidly approaching a self-destructive degree of degeneration. When they are numerous in a group it is a sure sign of its general inferiority. The most advanced criminologists of to-day have returned to the opinion advocated a generation ago by Quetelet in these words: “Society creates the germs of all crimes which are committed. She instigates them, and the criminal is merely the instrument of their execution.” Translated into other words, this means that the psychic traits of any group are the direct parent of its anti-social, self-destructive, criminal instincts. To the extent that such traits are remediable the body politic is directly responsible for the violations of its own laws. If left unremedied, the ruin of the group must follow. 2. CONDITIONS OF PERVERSION.—Alienists have frequent occasion to observe cases of mental disease where all the faculties of the mind seem intact and equal to the average, except that there is a persistent irrational delusion on some single point or a few points; or else the mind is controlled by the insistent recurrence of a single idea, which obstinately aims to govern the whole man. The latter is known as an _idée fixe_, a fixed or dominant idea. In ethnic psycho-pathology the same conditions may be constantly observed, and they react on the character and fate of peoples with visible power. That which passes under the name of “popular prejudice” is an example. A community will adopt an opinion, without reason, and will not permit a discussion of its merits. Any one not accepting it will be regarded as a public enemy.