The recent growth of sociology and especially the scientific study of the laws of heredity thus tend, by exciting an intelligent interest in the psychological solution of such questions, to render men less positive and peremptory in their judicial decisions. The intellectual horizon is so greatly enlarged and so many possibilities are suggested, that it is difficult for conscientious persons, strongly affected by these speculations and honestly endeavouring to make an ethical or penal application of them, to come to a prompt and practical conclusion in any given case. The voice of decision loses its magisterial sternness and “the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought.” If it be true, as Mr. Galton affirms, that legal ability is transmitted from father to son, criminal proclivity may be equally hereditary, and the judge and the culprit may have reached their relative positions through a line of ancestral influences, working according to immutable and inevasible laws of descent. Schopenhauer maintained the theory of “responsibility for character,” and not for actions, which are simply the outgrowth and expression of character. The same act may be good or bad according to the motives from which it springs. This distinction is constantly made both in ethics and in jurisprudence, and determines our moral judgments and judicial decisions. Yet the chief elements, which enter into a person’s character and contribute to its formation, lie beyond his control or even his consciousness, and in many cases have done their work before his birth. Responsibility for character is equivalent to responsibility for all the inherited tendencies and prenatal influences, of which character is the resultant, and leads at last to the theological dogma of the imputation of sin all the way back to Adam as the federal head of the race, a doctrine which Schopenhauer would be the first to repudiate. Besides, evil propensities and criminal designs are recognizable and punishable only when embodied in overt acts. The law cannot deprive a man of life or liberty because he is known to be vicious and depraved, although the police in the exercise of its protective and preventive functions and as a means of providing for the general security, may feel in duty bound to keep a watchful eye on him and to make an occasional raid on the dens and “dives” haunted by him and his kind. There are also instances on record, in which it is impossible to trace the culpable act to any marked corruption of character.