This, too, is what Buckle said: "We often hear of hereditary talents, hereditary vices, and hereditary virtues; but whoever will critically examine the evidence will find that there is no proof of their existence. The way in which they are usually proved is in the highest degree illogical; the usual course being for writers to collect instances of some mental peculiarity found in a parent and his child, and then to infer that the peculiarity was bequeathed. By this mode of reasoning we might demonstrate any proposition. But this is not the way in which the truth is discovered; and we ought to enquire not only how many instances there are of hereditary talents, etc., but how many instances there are of such qualities not being hereditary." I have for myself, neither in life nor in books, found one single case in which it could be confidently said that a criminal weakness was inherited. That A, a criminal, has a son B, who also became criminal, proves nothing. You must first prove that a similar child of different stock would not become criminal if brought up as A's son was. You must also prove that if you took away A's son as a child and brought him up differently he would still show criminal weakness. But all the facts negative this. The child even of a criminal tribe in India, if removed from its environment, grows up like other children. Coming of criminal ancestors has not handed down a criminal aptitude. You must not mistake inheritance of other traits for inheritance of criminal aptitudes. A is very quick-tempered, which he has not from a child been trained to control. Under sudden provocation he kills a man. His son B inherits his father's quick temper, is similarly badly brought up, and the same thing occurs. The hasty hereditary theorist says: "Behold the inheritance of a propensity to murder." But quick temper is not a criminal trait; it is often an accompaniment of the kindest disposition. It is an excess of sensitiveness. The training, physical and mental, was in each case lacking, and a coincidence of provocation caused a coincidence of crime. Let it be once clearly discerned that if a quality be hereditary it is always hereditary, and cannot appear, except as the result of heredity--and the absurdity of modern theories will be manifest. There is not--there has never been in anyone--a tendency to crime until either gaols or criminal education creates it. No one ever wanted to commit crime as crime. A daring boy with no outlet for his energy may break out into violence, robbery, and later into burglary; he would not have done so had his physical need for exercise and his spiritual need for facing danger had another outlet. The instincts that led him into crime were good and noble instincts which, finding no legitimate channel, found an illegitimate channel for themselves.