Crime & criminals : being the jurisprudence of crime, medical biological, and psycological / by Charles Mercier... with an introduction by Sir Bryan Donkin.

  • Charles Arthur Mercier
Date:
1918
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Crime & criminals : being the jurisprudence of crime, medical biological, and psycological / by Charles Mercier... with an introduction by Sir Bryan Donkin. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    83/334 page 61
    • ] . '» not draw. He finds that a very large proportion of criminals are of weak intellect ; but then his figures refer, not to criminals as a whole, but to convicted criminals ; and without going into statistics, it is surely a fair and obvious inference that the more stupid a criminal is, the less likely he is to be successful in elud¬ ing the police. It appears from official statistics that there is a very considerable proportion of crimes, as large a proportion as six-sevenths, that are never brought home to their perpetrators. All the criminals who have com¬ mitted these crimes are excluded from Dr Goring’s statistics, and it is a fair inference that they include the more intelligent criminals. Obviously, too, the more intelligent criminals are the more dangerous criminals ; dangerous, not in the sense that they are more addicted to crimes of violence, but in the sense that it is more difficult to take effectual precautions against them, so that their crimes are at once more difficult to prevent and more difficult to bring home to the criminal after they have been committed. Will But, though choice involves comparison, and cannot be made without comparison, yet in choice there is something more than comparison and the appreciation of likeness and unlikeness, which are pure ingredients in thought. Strictly speaking, comparison is ante¬ cedent to choice, and is not an integral part of choice. Intellect discerns two or more alternatives, compares them with one another, marks the differences between them, decides upon their comparative advantages and disadvantages, but can do no more. To make actual choice between alternative modes of action, a new mental
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