A Moral Imbecile or a Bad Boy: Which?
- Author:
Arthur Holmes, Ph.D., y
University of Pennsylvania.
Every teacher has been confronted more than once with the practical problem of deciding whether some persistent career of mischief in a pupil was due to moral imbecility or only to curable badness. That alternative has been present even though the teacher was entirely unaware of it, possibly because he belonged to that dogmatic class who insist that all this talk about degeneracy, moral imbecility, hereditary taints, and abnormalities is merely another fad, and that what most bad boys need is a frequent application of the classical English birch rod translated into an American hickory gad wielded by a pedagogical or paternal arm free from modern confusing notions about its efficacy.
It probably would be very pleasant to all concerned?except, of course, the culprit?if- the solution were so simple and easy. Unfortunately, nothing indicates that it is. In the good old days ?f the Hoosier schoolmaster when the fundamental pedagogical principle was summed up in “The more lickin’ the more larnin’ ” the prisons were nearly as relatively full and the proportion of bad boys to their chances of badness nearly as great as now. History does not give the ratio of bad men produced by the Suabian schoolmaster who proudly summed up his fifty-one years of teaching in a record of “911,500 canings, 121,000 floggings, 209,000 custodes, 136,000 tips with the ruler, 10,200 boxes on the ear, 22,700 tasks by heart,” and further counted to his credit that he made “700 boys stand on peas, 6,000 on a sharp edge of wood, 5,000 wear the fool’s cap, and 1,700 hold the rod.”1 Those were the good old days when it was believed that scholars
“… like horses on the road, Must be well lashed before they take the load, They may be willing for a time to run, But you must whip them ere the work be done.” The problem of the bad boy is a practical one. It demands an answer to the ofttimes perplexing question: Can this particular troublesome character be corrected by any forces of environment Barnard’s English Pedagogy, 2nd series, p. 327, quoted in Swift’s “Mind in the Making,” p. 95. brought to bear upon him. ? Or, in spite of all that can be done, under the best conditions, with the best training, will he go down to his grave with his moral habits unchanged ? If the former is true, it is assumed that he is merely a bad boy, misfit in his present environment, or the victim of bad training. If the latter turns out to be the case, then it is concluded that his badness is due to inherited traits of character, lodged somewhere in the original germ-plasm, or arising from some unknown effects of intra-uterine life, or due later to some nervous lesion caused by accident or disease. In all’ cases environment is powerless to affect a moral cure, or sometimes even to ameliorate the condition. The only solution of the situation is to restrain physically the moral imbecile from doing damage. Turning from the underlying causes and theories of moral degeneracy once more to the practical question of diagnosis, we are met with one of the most difficult problems arising in the treatment of children. In all cases of moral degeneracy one symptom is so constant as to be fairly diagnostic. Whatever may be the fair exterior of the moral imbecile, however healthy and vigorous physically, however agreeable his manners or deep his penitence upon conviction for any moral lapse, indeed, however discriminating his moral sense itself may be, there is always lacking some element in his mentality, and this is true even though the lack may be obscured by many other brilliant intellectual qualities. Dr Barr thus describes one middle grade moral imbecile: “Boy nineteen years old when the photograph was taken. Tall, handsome, of fine physique, with engaging manners. When he came to us at eighteen years of age he could read and write fairly well, but took little interest in school work, had a good voice in singing, learned to play on both drum and cornet, and responded to military and physical training. Did fairly good work in the shoe-shop. Tried to do right and always regretted when he went wrong, but had no moral anchor. A liar, thief, and a mischief maker, he was always in trouble, and, a veritable tramp, simply could not resist when the ‘Wanderlust’ took possession of him. Ran away once’ and worked his way on a cattle steamer to Antwerp and back. Trying for admission to the U. S. Army he was refused upon the first intimation that there was even a slight mental defect. Later, applying again without explanation, he passed the examination, was enlisted and rendered good service in the Spanish-American war, the discipline proving just what he needed. Latest accounts, however, show that he has again taken to the road.”1
Martin W. Barr, “Mental Defectives,” Phila.: Blakiston, 1904, p. 273. MORAL IMBECILE, OB BAD BOY: WHICH? Ill In such a case of comparatively mild moral delinquency and with such an overwhelming record of talents and good deeds, including brave and efficient service in the army of his country, it is difficult enough for the expert to follow the clue of moral deficiency and with any certainty to pronounce from it upon the moral and mental status of the case. It shows itself, however, in his entire inability to resist the “Wanderlust,” an impulse normal to many strong characters but kept in check by sane voluntary control. With this boy such a will was lacking, which was further shown in his impotency to resist the other quite common boy-impulses to lie, steal, and make mischief.
In another case noted by the same author the mental defect is very prominent. He was a boy of sixteen, “bright-faced, goodnatured, well-formed, very erect when coming to us at nine years of age. In school he could not learn to read or write. Very egotistic, he was much mortified at his backwardness; would hire other boys to coach and in time learned to write his own name, and to spell a few words only, although every effort was made and individual attention was given by the most capable teachers. Meanwhile his development through the manual arts through a period of nine years was phenomenal. The results of military, physical and athletic exercises were noticeable in a fine physique,good bearing, excellent carriage, and entire absence of the dragging foot-step peculiar to the imbecile. With a figure erect and well knit he excelled in athletic sports, and was a very graceful dancer. With powers of attention, imitation and memory, each and all exceptional, he developed in household service gifts which, had he been normal, would have placed him above the ordinary either as chef, butler, or valet. … In freehand drawing, designing, wood-carving and crayon-work he was also successful. Several of bis studies in black and white he framed, getting out the mats and frames and designing and burning in, or carving decorations. Very vain of his personal appearance, he improved every opportunity to pose before the mirror. A waif from the almshouse, he indulged in delusions of grandeur, and imagining that he was descended from noble people, would tell wonderful tales of the magnificence in which his family had lived, and managing to steal a photograph of the then Empress of Russia, passed it off as a picture of his mother. Crafty and a past-master in the art of deceiving he would slip from one lie to another until detected when he would make an open confession in his own frank way, weep a little with extravagent protestations of penitence and pro112 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CLINIC. mises of amendment, and would immediately proceed to plan another scheme. Apparently affectionate, loyal and disinterested, he was deceitful, dishonest, and thoroughly calculating, to which was super-added all the sexual vices.” The final acts of his known career, after being taken from the institution by a mistakenly kind gentleman and making a number of failures, was to appeal to a former comrade, “a respectable young carpenter lodging in a neighboring village, who took him in, fed him, clothed him, and going off to Avork, left him in his room; returning he found the fellow had decamped, taking with him his small savings and his Sunday coat. A tramp and a vagabond, much broken in health, he is now an inmate in an almshouse.”1
This case presents with striking emphasis the mental deficiency of a moral imbecile, though to the casual observer, the far more prominent and brilliant talents would obscure the defects and class the possessor as “quick, bright, smart.” Quite possibly, on account of this and his most engaging manners and frank exterior, the same superficial judgment would indignantly repel any imputation of moral degeneracy. So common has been the sharp discrimination between moral and mental character, that, popularly at least, the two seem to be wholly independent. To some extent, this is true, especially in cases of mere badness. In fact, it requires more ingenuity to lead a successfully wicked life than it does to live the humdrum existence of moral mediocrity. Therefore, there appears to be some justification in the conjunction of brightness and badness. The limitation of such an ethical theory is seen in the positive statement that in all but intuitional ethics,?or those acts decided by the moral sense or conscience,?rational action or choice of right means to desired ends, is the only moral action. On such a ground, the bad boy is one who choses the right means to wrong ends, i. e. his own, short-sighted ends in contradiction to the ends of society. When it is clearly shown to him that his own ends? true happiness, for example?will be best conserved by his adoption of the social good, he will have sense enough to see it and act accordingly. He is amenable to moral instruction. The moral imbecile, on the other hand, does not have sense enough to discern the compatibility of his own ends and those of his social group, nor ability to choose the means to an end. His mental deficiency? other things being equal?is the decisive factor of his moral degeneracy. This, however, is not the whole explanation, as will further appear.
1Ibid, pp. 271, 272. MORAL IMBECILE, OR BAD BOY: WHICH? 113
Besides a more or less conspicuous deficiency in purely intellectual attainments, moral deficients present also anomalies of sensibility. Sometimes a pin can be thrust to the head in certain parts of their bodies and they will not wince. A teacher of a special class in one of our large cities had an extreme case of almost animal grade, a small boy, who when given a knife for kindergarten work, promptly slashed his neighbor’s hand; next, struck a boy over the head with his hammer; and when reduced to one pair of blunt scissors exercised his little mentality by snipping a piece out of a girl’s hand. All of this might be set down to ignorant mischief, though that is hardly a tenable hypothesis considering the age of the boy and the discipline and instruction used m the first case of cruelty. The real situation, namely, a complete indifference to pain on his own part, was revealed by an accident which happened one morning upon his arrival at school. He came in much excited, his eyes fairly dancing with delight and in almost insane glee exhibited to the shuddering class his bloody hand all ragged and torn by the teeth of a dog with which he had had an encounter on his way from home. How could it be possible for such an insensate being to feel sympathy for others? How could he take anything but delight in the blood-shed of others when he himself found it literally the most exquisite torture of his benighted existence ?
All morality is based eventually upon community of desires and aversions. The Golden Rule can command only such acts as the actor would like done to him. If a monstrosity is born into the world, who craves so much the excitement of blood-shed that he does not object to having his own spilled occasionally, then, from his point of view he would be quite within the Golden Rule when he slashed his best friends for the pleasure of the thing. Such a being, from our point of vieAV, i. e. from the normal point of view, is a moral degenerate.
In such crude and vicious cases as the above there is no difficulty in the diagnosis, though it might be worth while to remark m passing that the American school system, at last accounts, did not exclude this young savage from the special class. In other cases, where the pain inflicted is purely mental, but the psychology of the operation identical and the nature of the inflictor just as depraved, the judgment is not so sure.
In all such cases, as well as in those where mental deficiency is not marked or striking, family history must be closely examined for traces of tainted heredity. Such history is sometimes hard to discover though theoretically it is open to observation. The importance of this factor is illustrated in a couple of cases recently coming under our notice.
A boy was under observation and training for nearly two years. His eyes had been fitted with glasses, his adenoids removed and his physical condition made as fit as possible. The other members of his family, brothers and sisters, father and mother, were all of the best character, and the home surroundings were favorable. In spite of all this, the boy kept up his habits of stealing, cigarette smoking, poker playing, and lying, waxed more energetic in carrying out his plans, and progressed steadily into deeper and deeper laid schemes for accomplishing his ends. At the same time there was a distinct falling off in his school work, though he was not clearly mentally deficient.
All discipline, confinement in his room, denial of some especially desired things, even threatsi of a reformatory, appeared to have no effect except to lead to greater cunning in circumventing those who opposed him.
The case was peculiar for the reason that neither environment nor mental deficiency was sufficient to explain the persistent desire to plot mischief, and derive happiness from it. Almost by accident, however, a piece of family history came to light which gave the whole matter a new cast. It was discovered that the mother’s father had led a dual life and had once failed in business under very suspicious circumstances. The mother’s sister had left home in her youth, developed unchastity before marriage and later was divorced, though she finally settled down into domestic life. The mother’s aunt,?her father’s sister?married a sailor who left her and her son was also somewhat wild. The mother’s own mother had contracted a drug habit which led her to take any means to satisfy the craving. The father’s aunt had a son who went hopelessly insane and is in an asylum.
Such a history immediately gave an explanation of the boy’s conduct, but did not settle the case. It did lead to more stringent measures looking to the permanent incarceration of the boy in an institution, and steps were taken in that direction. This seemed to be the deciding point for him and since that time he has been doing better.
The other is the case of a fine-looking, manly boy about twelve, coming from a cultured family, with every air of goodbreeding and quiet gentlemanliness in his appearance. He shows no marked abnormalities and no physical stigmata. He is a little backward in his school work, a matter easily accounted for by frequent changes of schools. His moral delinquencies are of a mild order?the very common one amongst boys of appropriating money at home, and a tendency to choose his companions from a lower social and moral level than would be expected from one of his station. Taken in themselves his aberrations are not nearly so serious nor so marked as might be found among boys in any average public school. However, both the seriousness and the frequency of his delinquencies are on the increase.
The item which overtops all others in gravity in this case is again the heredity. The father contracted tuberculosis, of which both his father and mother had died. He did not succumb to the disease but he did fall into some dissipation, not more unusual than that of many men in his station and with hia rearing, but gross enough and intense enough while it lasted. However, as his immoralities began after the birth of this boy, they cannot be said to have had any direct influence through constitutional deterioration and consequent effect upon the germ-plasm. Besides paternal inheritance of the tubercular diathesis, serious heredity occurs on the maternal side. Her sister died insane. Her father’s brother was imbecile and one of his sisters was the mother of an imbecile girl. On the mother’s maternal side also there was a taint. Her mother’s sister had a daughter who grew up immoral and dissipated.
Under such circumstances, even the mildest symptoms of moral deficiency and especially if these increase in intensity, should cause at once the gravest apprehension and call for the most immediate and the most skilled training to avoid a repetition of the same troubles as occurred with the ancestors. Fortunately, in this case, the boy has a far more favorable chance than if he were in other surroundings.
The first requisite is to see that, as far as possible, the physical condition of such a child is kept strictly up to a high standard. A sound body shuts many gates to mental disease. Sports which demand strong, vigorous, manly self-expression, with outdoor associations, plenty of blood-cleansing fresh air, and every antidote to listlessness, idleness, speculation, or brooding should be sought for most diligently. Any disposition to enforce studious habits or to instil religious impulses by a routine of observances repugnant to that boy’s whole present instinctive disposition for activity, would be fatal.
The object aimed at by the. training is simple enough. The lesson should be taught that things giving pleasure or happiness dare not depend upon the possession of money. In those sources of satisfaction quite independent of material possessions this boy should find his happiness. Something of the robust distaste for luxury common in the nobler barbarians, or the Spartans, or the early Romans, should be set up as an ideal and the games and sports and reading should all tend to strengthen it.
Finally, what can be said for the fatality of heredity ? In general, granted that transmission of character is a large and fixed factor, it must be remembered that the law cuts both ways. Good characteristics are inherited as well as bad ones. To this must be joined the second fact, that no inherited element can develop without its apropriate environment. Neither the inherited potentialities of a chick hidden in the germ of an egg nor the innate martial talents of a Napoleon can come to their fruition without favorable external conditions. In all cases of clear moral degeneracy, so rich and so varied is even the simplest environment of the ordinary human being that inherited tendencies will find some sort of expression unless the individual is prevented by confinement in a padded cell from knocking his brains out or by a straightjacket from biting his own flesh. On the other hand, in all borderland cases, where there is reasonable doubt, the environment is such a controlling and controllable factor that, rightly adjusted, it may become decisive in arresting inherited impulses or guiding them into channels useful for the individual and the community. This is the problem in the last two cases. And this is the problem, too, in all the cases of bad boys with which any teacher is confronted until, by most careful diagnosis and long observation by experts, hereditary moral degeneracy is beyond doubt. Then there should be no hesitancy about confining the sufferer in the proper institution for life.
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