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Section 81. (3) Juvenile Delinquency.

There have never lacked authors who have assigned to children a great group of defects. Ever since Lombroso it has been the custom in a certain circle to find the worst crimes already foreshadowed in children. If there are congenital criminals it must follow that there are criminals among children. It is shown that the most cruel and most unhuman men, like Nero, Caracalla, Caligula, Louis XI, Charles IX, Louis XIII, etc., showed signs of great cruelty, even in earliest childhood. Perez cites attacks of anger and rage in children; Moreau, early development of the sense of vengeance, Lafontaine, their lack of pity. Nasse also calls attention to the cruelty and savagery of large numbers of children, traits shown in their liking for horror-stories, in the topsy-turvy conclusion of the stories they tell themselves, in their cruelty to animals. Broussais[1]

says, "There is hardly a lad who will not intentionally abuse weaker boys. This is his first impulse. His victim's cries of pain restrain him for a moment from further maltreatment, if the love of bullying is not native with him. But at the first offered opportunity he again follows his instinctive impulse."

Even the power of training is reduced and is expressed in the proverb, that children and nations take note only of their last beating. The time about, and especially just before, the development of puberty seems to be an especially bad one, and according to Voisin[2] and Friedreich,[3] modern man sees in this beginning of masculinity the cause of the most extraordinary and doubtful impulses. Since Esquirol invented the doctrine of monomanias there has grown up a whole literature, especially concerning pyromania among girls who are just becoming marriageable, and Friedreich even asserts that all pubescent children suffer from pyromania, while Grohmann holds that scrofulous children are in the habit of stealing.

When this literature is tested the conclusion is inevitable that there has been overbold generalization. One may easily see how. Of course there are badly behaved children, and it is no agreement with the Italian positivists to add, also, that a large number of criminals were good for nothing even in their earliest youth. But we are here concerned with the specific endowment of childhood, and it is certainly an exaggeration to set this lower than that of maturity. If it be asked, what influence nurture and training have if children are good without it, we may answer at once, that these have done enough in having supplied a counterbalance to the depraving influences of life,—the awakening passions and the environment.

Children who are bad at an early age are easily noticeable. They make noise and trouble as thousands of well-behaved children do not, and a poor few of such bad ones are taken to be representative of all. What is silent and not significant, goes of itself, makes no impression, even though it is incomparably of greater magnitude. Individual and noisy cases require so much attention that their character is assigned to the whole class. Fortune-telling, dreams, forewarnings, and prophecies are similarly treated. If they do not succeed, they are forgotten, but if in one case they succeed, they make a great noise. They appear, therefore, to seduce the mind

into incorrectly interpreting them as typical. And generally, there is a tendency to make sweeping statements about children. "If you have understood this, you understand that also," children are often told, and most of the time unjustly. The child is treated like a grown man to whom this has occurred as often as that, and who has intelligence enough and experience enough to apply this to thatby way of identification. Consider an exaggerated example. The child, let us say, knows very well that stealing is dishonorable, sinful, criminal. But it does not know that counterfeiting, treachery, and arson are forbidden. These differences, however, may be reduced to a hair. It knows that stealing is forbidden, but considers it permissible to "rag" the neighbors' fruit. It knows that lying is a sin, but it does not know that certain lies become suddenly punishable, according to law, and are called frauds. When, therefore, a boy tells his uncle that father sent him for money because he does not happen to have any at home, and when the little rascal spends the money for sweets, he may perhaps believe that the lie is quite ugly, but that he had done anything objectively punishable, he may be totally unaware. It is just as difficult for the child to become subjective. The child is more of an egoist than the adult; on the one hand, because it is protected and watched in many directions by the adult; on the other, because, from the nature of things, it does not have to care for anybody, and would go ship-wreck if it were not itself cared for. The natural consequences are that it does not discover the limits between what is permissible, and what is not permissible. As Kraus says,[4] "Unripe youth shows a distinct quality in distinguishing good and evil. A child of this age, that is required to judge the action or relations of persons, will not keep one waiting for the proper solution, but if the action is brought into relation to its selfhood, to its own personality, there is a sudden disingenuity, a twisting of the judgment, an incapacity in the child to set itself at the objective point of view." Hence, it is wrong to ask a child: "Didn't you know that you should not have done this thing?" The child will answer, "Yes, I knew," but it does not dare to add, "I knew that other people ought not do it, but I might." It is not necessary that the spoiled, pampered pet should say this; any child has this prejudiced attitude. And how shall it know the limit between what is permitted it, and what is not? Adults must work, the child plays; the mother must cook, the child comes to the laden table; the mother must wash, the child wears the clean clothes; it gets the titbits; it is protected against cold; it is forgiven many a deed and many a word not permitted the adult. Now all of a sudden it is blamed because it has gone on making use of its recognized privileges. Whoever remembers this artificial, but nevertheless necessary, egoism in children will have to think more kindly of many a childish crime. Moreover, we must not overlook the fact that the child does many things simply as blind imitation. More accurate observation of this well known psychological fact will show how extensive childish imitation is. At a certain limit, of course, liability is here also present, but if a child is imitating an imitable person, a parent, a teacher, etc., its responsibility is at an end.

All in all, we may say that nobody has brought any evidence to show that children are any worse-behaved than adults. Experience teaches that hypocrisy, calculating evil, intentional selfishness, and purposeful lying are incomparably rarer among children than among adults, and that on the whole, they observe well and willingly. We may take children, with the exception of pubescent girls, to be good, reliable witnesses.