Why is it apparent that crime and criminals herd together? Why do not more criminals reform, if crime is functional and not organic? Because they continue to live in the same way. After they have served a term, they know no more of correct living than they did before; for in prison they are fed haphazardly. Perhaps the limited supply of a very plain food is all the benefit they get in the line of diet. Thus they return home to their heavy, gross eating, toxin poisoning, and the depressing effects of being pointed out as ex-convicts, and too often hounded about the country by petty officials of the law, who appear to take a delight in branding them as criminals and setting all the dogs of gossip howling at their heels.

It is difficult to say which is the greater criminal--society or society's victim. Truth declares that they are related as cause and effect.

There is little chance for a bad man to reform; for the undiscovered bad man in every community appoints himself a committee of one to see to it that the ex-convict gets what is coming to him.

Ignorance makes man a criminal, and ignorance keeps him a criminal.

The good and the bad in all mankind are purely functional. If we react good, it is because the shock that caused the reaction was good, and vice versa. We must get away from the ancient and should-be past belief in the entities good and bad.

We are; and the fact that we are is proof that we are fit; for otherwise we should not have passed through the portals of life. Inasmuch as we are, and are fit, our functioning will be proper if the cause of our functioning is censored properly and the right stimulation is used to bring about the reaction (functioning). Our reactions are just what they must be; for they are in keeping, and under the guidance of the laws of cause and effect.

If we would have ideal effects, we must bring them about through ideal causes.

Who can be so childishly silly as to expect figs from thistles--good from bad training? So long as the fundamentals of our ethics are false, when will the superstructure become true and ideal man-building?

Man is man. He is a microcosm--a duplicate of the macrocosm. He is neither good nor bad. He acts and reacts on his environment in kind. If he can so shape the impulses which cause him to react as to build good--the truth--he will soon function truth.

If the influence that causes him to react is good, beneficent, and worthy in every way, his reaction will be in kind. If the influence is bad, selfish, and unworthy in every way, his reaction will be in kind.

The idea of heredity-meaning the inheriting of good and bad--with all the disqualifying, soul-stifling, and health-destroying beliefs and customs that have grown up about this belief, should be given up--should be discarded; for it is a disgrace to this age, and belongs with the devil--with demonology. Indeed, it is one of his majesty's children. In the place of that fallacy should be put man in a state of neutrality. Man should be recognized as an unmoral being who is capable of being molded into truth or fallacy--law-abiding or criminal, loving or hating, healthy or diseased, wise or ignorant. It is all a matter of teaching.

To sum up the foregoing, let us assume that when a child is born it comes with a clean bill of health. I mean health; and the word includes what is ordinarily understood as health of mind and body, free from crime or criminal nature. When a child is born with venereal infection, the infection has taken place since its conception.