The Churches and Modern Thought: An inquiry into the grounds of unbelief and an appeal for candourPhelips, Vivian
Religion
The Churches and Modern Thought: An inquiry into the grounds of unbelief and an appeal for candour
Phelips, Vivian
Rationalism
In their volume, The Making of the Criminal (Macmillan & Co.),
Messrs. C. E. B. Russell and L. M. Rigby confirm the now generally
accepted view that it is, as a rule, between the ages of sixteen
and twenty-one that the habitual criminal is made, and show that
juvenile crime is a product of the wretched economic, social, and
family condition in which so many unhappy children are born and have to
live. The criminal is also recruited, as Dr. W. D. Morrison points out
(in a review of their book appearing in the Tribune, December 12th,
1906), from those whose home and social antecedents may be good
enough, but who are themselves either mentally or physically below
the average of the general community, and who, therefore, when times
are bad, drift insensibly into crime. When to all this unfavourable
environment we add an unfavourable heredity, we get a conjunction of
circumstances against which it is quite impossible for the unfortunate
to contend, even though he be aided by the "gift of freewill" and
by all the intercessory prayers of the Churches. The Borstal system
and other remedies recommended in The Making of the Criminal are
excellent in their way, but can be regarded only as palliatives. They
deal with the criminal after he has been made. What is wanted is,
to quote Dr. Morrison, "a wise and progressive statesmanship which
will cut off crime at its roots--a statesmanship which will devote
itself with care and foresight to ameliorating the whole material
and moral conditions of existence of the workman, the woman, and the
child." And this statesmanship will take an enlightened view of the
population question, recognising that it is in the diminution of the
struggle for existence, not in the rise of the birth-rate, that the
material and moral condition of the people can be ameliorated.
P. 336, note.--Psychical research will lead to the discovery
of a complete and scientific method for the toughening of our
moral fibres.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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