But the fact remains that in his judgment he is mistaken; his normal is not society's normal.

He has failed to be educated in the judgments of his fellows, however besides and however more deeply he may have failed.
Or, again, the criminal may commit crime simply because he is carried away in an eddy of good companionship, which represents a temporary current of social life; or his nervous energies may be overtaxed temporarily or drained of their strength, so that his education in social judgment is forgotten: he is then the "occasional" criminal.

It is true of the man of this type also that while he remains a criminal he has lost his balance, has yielded to temptation, has gratified private impulse at the expense of social sanity; all this shows the lack of that sustaining force of moral consciousness which represents the level of social rightness in his time and place.

Then, as to the idiot, the imbecile, the insane, they, too, have no good judgment, for the very adequate but pitiful reason that they have no judgment at all.
This, then, is the doctrine of Social Heredity; it illustrates the side of conformity, of personal acquiescence on the part of the individual in the rules of social life.

Another equally important side, that of the personal initiative and influence of the individual mind in society, remains to be spoken of in the next chapter.