Vice is transmitted
in some families in the same way as scrofula or consumption. The
greater number of crimes come from a comparatively few families,
which need a special supervision, an isolation like that which we
impose on sick persons suspected of carrying the germs of
infection.'' So Aristotle speaks of a man who, being accused of
beating his father, answered: ``My father beat my grandfather,
who used to beat his father cruelly; and you see my son--before he
is grown up he will fly into passions and beat me.'' And Plutarch
added to this: ``The sons of vicious and corrupt men reproduce
the very nature of their parents.''
This is the explanation of Plato's idea, who, ``admitting the
principle that children ought not to suffer for the crimes of
their parents, yet, putting the case of a father, a grandfather,
and a great-grandfather who had been condemned to death, proposed
that their descendants should be banished, as belonging to an
incorrigible family.'' Carrara called this a mistaken idea, but
it seems to us to be substantially just. It may be remembered
that when De Metz in 1839 founded his agricultural penal colony at
Metray, once celebrated but now in decay (for the whole success of
these foundations depends on the exceptional psychological
qualities of their governors), out of 4,454 children, 871, or 20
per cent.
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