FREE WILL.

Evening Star, Issue 12763, 16 March 1906, Page 2

FREE WILL.

TO THE KDITOfI. “ Punishment is the last and worst instrument in tne hands of the legislator for the prevention of crime.”—John Ruskin. “Ar, If one were asked the controlling power of our thoughts and actions one would certainly answer the brain. If one were further aslvcd : What is the brain i one would answer somewhat as follows:—A pultaceoua, greyish, pulpy eubstanco, composed of millions upon millions of the minutest nerves, sustained by blood (by the way, Aristotle would never admit of such sustenance), and all centralising in what we call memory. Memory to the writer always comes first. While writing I can see the press in the head-mas-ter’s room where the birch was kept as plain as I saw it sixty years ago, and thousands ot other things also; hence it seems to me to lie tie fundamental and essential element in the ncrvo-cell. This memory, therefore, may ho (no doubt is) a very genera,] property of organised matter, and includes intelligence and will, which were formerly regarded as separate entities, but now as various inodes of cerebral working only. Memory, therefore, seems to be the key of intellectual life, and leads cnc up to will and freewill. Ask a child why* it is cross and naughty, and it often answers : “ I don’t want to be good.” Now, it can hove no idea of wrong-doing, only from the fact of being punished for being different from what it was when good. So we go on to manhood, and make an examination of conscience for ourselves, thus forming a sensation, an image, accompanied by desire, with tendency to act. We have known adults attending their religious devotions pick the pockets of others attending for the same purpose. How can the weak brain of a hereditary neuropath, the descendant of aloohobsed or very serious, nervous persons, control this impulse bv “will,” much less “freewill”? Since infancy he has seen nothing but bis “pals” of the dram-shoo, the gaol, ,or the dance-house. This is how Jane Top pan, a trained nurse, expressed herself a short timo since, after she had killed thirty-one persons by morphine, so that their lives were slowly slept away. “When the paroxysm passed,” continued Miss Top pan, “ I was myself again. I cared no longer for the patients to die. Then my greatest thought was to resuscitate them. I have then worked over them trying to bring them to consciousness. I sent for doctors and other nurses, and tried my best to save them. I used moxphine and atronino because vegetable poisons can hardly be detected, even before death. After death it is difficult, you know, to find either drug.” The tales of Lucretia Borgia and other historic prisoners of the Middle Ages are mild in comparison to this. Miss Toppan’s mental degeneracy began when she was twelve years old. From barbarism down to the middle of the eighteenth century it was dogmatically (ecclesiastical and lay) laid down that all that was required to put down crime was for judges to pass, severe sentences, and they did so, and do so to this day; but crime still exists. Crimes may, however, be more effectually prevented by the certainty than the severity, of punishment. The maximum penalties allowed by Parliament are in many instances too severe, and this severity should be curbed. Lord Russell, late Chief Justice of England, said: —“Public opinion has undergone a very considerable change, atld it is now recognised that criminals of the gravest kind were not creatures to. be treated ns complete outcasts of society, but that they should lie regarded aa human beings capable of improvement.”—l am, etc.7 F.M. March 15.