The Psychology of Criminals

Extract

That great criminals are wholly without the moral sense, that violent and habitual criminals are, as a class, moral imbeciles—are startling propositions; but, nevertheless, they have been adopted and advocated with singular show of truth and much ability of late years. Such views are quite opposed to all the doctrines of divines, and philosophers, speculative and practical. That any man, however wicked, is utterly deprived of the moral sense, sounds very new and very strange to us. Our own consciousness tells us all, what Sir Thomas Brown has so finely told us in eloquent words—“Surely there is a piece of Divinity in us; something that was before the elements, and owes no homage unto the sun. Nature tells me I am the image of God, as well as the Scripture. He that understands not this much is yet to begin the alphabet of man.”