Perhaps it may be thought that it is not possible to conduct such a study with anything like accurate results, and that the greater part of it would be mere guess work, as e.g. the determining the capacity of a man's nervous system or his degree of moral susceptibility. This is quite a mistake. There is nothing whatever of a speculative quality in the results advanced by criminologists. Their methods are exact and compare equally with those for the investigation of other phenomena.
It is not claimed that the absolute or the relative value of the data collected is as yet determined, nor yet that any one investigation has been exhausted; but this much can be claimed, that the results obtained are of high practical worth and justify the assurance that the solution of the problem concerning the criminal will soon be reached.
The result of Criminological studies has indicated most clearly that no measures for the prevention or repression of crime will ever be adequate which are not based upon a scientific system of education. Whatever this system may prove to be, it must have one distinct aim, and that is to train all its members to love, and to work for, the social state. This aim must be accomplished most thoroughly no matter what the cost may be.
The decreasing birth-rate points to other conclusions than the obvious one that a large number of persons must be using preventive means. It points to a widespread selfishness which regards children as an intolerable burden, as in fact nothing less than a grievous misfortune. It is obvious that where children are so regarded a blight has fallen upon the domestic life. Home cannot be the brightest spot on earth to them; neither can the father and mother be their sympathetic guides, counsellors, and protectors. Nor can those children be studied (by those who alone have the special faculty for studying them) in order that their secret aims and ambitions and the difficulties which obstruct these aims and ambitions, may be understood.
It follows then that from parental selfishness a great number (and close observation leads one to believe that by far the greater proportion) of the children of this generation and in this colony, are growing up with less care and attention being bestowed upon them than what their parents are prepared to bestow upon even their very horses or their dogs. This factor of parental selfishness cannot be ignored either academically or practically. It must in some way be overcome, or at least its influence for harm must be considerably reduced.