It is different in inquiries respecting the intellect.  Here the investigator is able to judge for himself.  According to Dr. Ogle, 86.5 per cent. of the general population were able to read and write in the years 1881-4, and as this represents an increase of 10 per cent. since the passing of the Elementary Education Act, it is probably not far from the mark to say that at the present time almost 90 per cent. of the English population can read and write.  In other words, only 10 per cent. of the population is wholly ignorant.  In the local prisons on the other hand, no less than 25 per cent. of the prisoners can neither read nor write, and 72 per cent. can only read or read and write imperfectly.  The vast difference in the proportion of uninstructed among the prison, as compared with the general population, is not to be explained by the defective early training of the former.  This explanation only covers a portion of the ground:  the other portion is covered by the fact that a certain number of criminals are almost incapable of acquiring instruction.  The memory and the reasoning powers of such persons are so utterly feeble that attempts to school them is a waste of time.[43] Deficiencies in memory, imagination, reason, are three undoubted characteristics of the ordinary criminal intellect.  Of course, there are very many criminals in which all these qualities are present, and whose defects lie in another direction, but taken as a whole the criminal is unquestionably less gifted intellectually than the rest of the community.

Respecting the emotions of criminals, it is much more difficult to speak, and much more easy to fall into error.  The only thing that can be said of them for certain, is, that they do not, as a rule, possess the same keenness of feeling as the ordinary man.  Some Italian writers make much of the religiosity of delinquents; such a sentiment may be common among offenders in Italy; it is certainly rare among the same class in Great Britain.  The cellular system puts an effective stop to any thing like active hostility to religion; but it is a mistake to argue from this that the criminal is addicted to the exercise of religious sentiments.  The family sentiment is also feebly developed; the exceptions to this rule form a small fraction of the criminal population.

    [43] In Christiania the number of children who cannot learn
    amounts in the elementary schools to 4 per 1000.  See Reformatory
    and Refuge Journal for August, 1890.

The will in criminals, when it is not impaired by disease, is, in the main, dominated by a boundless egoism.  Let us first consider those whose wills are impaired by disease.  Among drunkards and the degenerate generally the power of sustained volition is often as good as gone.  Nothing can be more pitiful or hopeless than the position of wretched beings in a condition such as this.  Often animated by good resolutions, often anxious to do what is right,