fought, triumphed over the tyranny of the mediaeval dogma. And this
condition, instead of being a glorious but transitory stage, is supposed
to be the end of the development of humanity, which is henceforth
condemned not to perfect itself any more by further changes. This is the
illusion which serves as a fundamental argument against the positive
school of criminology, since it is claimed that a penal justice
enthroned on the foundations of Beccaria and Carrara would be a
revolutionary heresy. It is also this illusion which serves as an
argument against those who draw the logical consequences in regard to
the socialistic future of humanity, for the science which takes its
departure front the work of Copernicus, Galilei and Darwin arrives
logically at socialism. Socialism is but the natural and physical
transformation of the economic and social institutions. Of course, so
long as the geocentric and anthropocentric illusions dominate, it is
natural that the lore of stability should impress itself upon science
and life. How could this living atom, which the human being is,
undertake to change that order of creation, which makes of the earth the
center of the universe and of man the center of life? Not until science
had introduced the conception of a natural formation and transformation,
of the solar system, as well as of the fauna and flora, did the human
mind grasp the idea that thought and action can transform the world.

For this reason we believe that the study of the criminal, and the
logical consequences therefrom, will bring about the complete
transformation of human justice, not only as a theory laid down in
scientific books, but also as a practical function applied every day to
that living and suffering portion of humanity which has fallen into
crime. We have the undaunted faith that the work of scientific truth
will transform penal justice into a simple function of preserving
society from the disease of crime, divested of all relics of vengeance,
hatred and punishment, which still survive in our day as living
reminders of the barbarian stage. We still hear the "public vengeance"
invoked against the criminal today, and justice has still for its symbol
a sword, which it uses more than the scales. But a judge born of a woman
cannot weigh the moral responsibility of one who has committed murder or
theft. Not until the experimental and scientific method shall look for
the causes of that dangerous malady, which we call crime, in the
physical and psychic organism, and in the family and the environment, of
the criminal, will justice guided by science discard the sword which now
descends bloody upon those poor fellow-beings who have fallen victims to
crime, and become a clinical function, whose prime object shall be to
remove or lessen in society and individuals the causes which incite to
crime. Then alone will justice refrain from wreaking vengeance, after a
crime has been committed, with the shame of an execution or the
absurdity of solitary confinement.

On the one hand, human life depends on the word of a judge, who may err
in the case of capital punishment; and society cannot end the life of a
man, unless the necessity of legitimate self-defense demands it. On the
other hand, solitary confinement came in with the second current of the
classic school of criminology, when at the same time, in which Beccaria
promulgated his ideas, John Howard traveled all over Europe describing
the unmentionable horrors of mass imprisonment, which became a center of
infection for society at large. Then the classic school went to the
other extreme of solitary confinement, after the model of America,
whence we adopted the systems of Philadelphia and Harrisburg in the
first half of the nineteenth century. Isolation for the night is also
our demand, but we object to continuous solitary confinement by day and
night. Pasquale Mancini called solitary confinement "a living grave," in
order to reassure the timorous, when in the name of the classic school,
whose valiant champion he was, he demanded in 1876 the abolition of
capital punishment. Yet in his swan song he recognized that the future
would belong to the positive school of criminology. And it is this
"living grave" against which we protest. It cannot possibly be an act of
human justice to bury a human being in a narrow cell, within four walls,
to prevent this being from having any contact with social life, and to
say to him at the end of his term: Now that your lungs are no longer
accustomed to breathing the open air, now that your legs are no longer
used to the rough roads, go, but take care not, to have a relapse, or
your sentence will be twice as hard.

In reality, solitary confinement makes of a human being either a stupid
creature, or a raving beast. And "s'io dico il vero, l'effeto nol
nasconde"--if I speak the truth, the facts will also reveal it--for
criminality increases and expands, honest people remain unprotected, and
those who are struck by the law do not improve, but become ever more
antisocial through the repeated relapses. And so we have that contrast
which I mentioned in the beginning of my lecture, that the theoretical
side of criminal science is so perfected, while criminal conditions are
painfully in evidence. The inevitable conclusion is the necessity of a
progressive transformation of the science of crime and punishment.




OF CRIMINOLOGY.


II.

We saw yesterday in a short historical review that the classic cycle of
the science of crime and punishment, originated by Cesare Beccaria more
than a century ago, was followed in our country, some twenty years
since, by the scientific movement of the positive school of criminology.
Let us see today how this school studied the problem of criminality,
reserving for tomorrow the discussion of the remedies proposal by this
school for the disease of criminality.

When a crime is committed in some place, attracting public attention
either through the atrocity of the case or the strangeness of the
criminal deed--for instance, one that is not connected with bloodshed,
but with intellectual fraud--there are at once two tendencies that make
themselves felt in the public conscience. One of them, pervading the
overwhelming majority of individual consciences, asks: How is this? What
for? Why did that man commit such a crime? This question is asked by
everybody and occupies mostly the attention of those who do not look
upon the case from the point of view of criminology. On the other hand,
those who occupy themselves with criminal law represent the other
tendency, which manifests itself when acquainted with the news of this
crime. This is a limited portion of the public conscience, which tries
to study the problem from the standpoint of the technical jurist. The
lawyers, the judges, the officials of the police, ask themselves: What
is the name of the crime committed by that man under such circumstances?
Must it be classed us murder or patricide, attempted or incompleted
manslaughter, and, if directed against property, is it theft, or illegal
appropriation, or fraud? And the entire apparatus of practical criminal
justice forgets at once the first problem, which occupies the majority
of the public conscience, the question of the causes that led to this
crime, in order to devote itself exclusively to the technical side of
the problem which constitutes the juridical anatomy of the inhuman and
antisocial deed perpetrated by the criminal.

In these two tendencies you have a photographic reproduction of the two
schools of criminology. The classic school, which looks upon the crime
as a juridical problem, occupies itself with its name, its definition,
its juridical analysis, leaves the personality of the criminal in the
background and remembers it only so far as exceptional circumstances
explicitly stated in the law books refer to it: whether he is a minor, a
deaf-mute, whether it is a case of insanity, whether he was drunk at the
time the crime was committed. Only in these strictly defined cases does
the classic school occupy itself theoretically with the personality of
the criminal. But ninety times in one hundred these exceptional
circumstances do not exist or cannot be shown to exist, and penal
justice limits itself to the technical definition of the fact. But when
the case comes up in the criminal court, or before the jurors, practice
demonstrates that there is seldom a discussion between the lawyers of
the defense and the judges for the purpose of ascertaining the most
exact definition of the fact, of determining whether it is a case of
attempted or merely projected crime, of finding out whether there are
any of the juridical elements defined in this or that article of the
code. The judge is rather face to face with the problem of ascertaining
why, under what conditions, for what reasons, the man has committed the
crime. This is the supreme and simple human problem. But hitherto it has
been left to a more or less perspicacious, more or less gifted,
empiricism, and there have been no scientific standards, no methodical
collection of facts, no observations and conclusions, save those of the
positive school of criminology. This school alone makes an attempt to
solve in every case of crime the problem of its natural origin, of the
reasons and conditions that induced a man to commit such and such a
crime.

For instance, about 3,000 cases of manslaughter are registered every
year in Italy. Now, open any work inspired by the classic school of
criminology, and ask the author why 3,000 men are the victims of
manslaughter every year in Italy, and how it is that there are not
sometimes only as many as, say, 300 cases, the number committed in
England, which has nearly the same number of inhabitants as Italy; and
how it is that there are not sometimes 300,000 such cases in Italy
instead of 3,000?

It is useless to open any work of classical criminology for this
purpose, for you will not find an answer to these questions in than. No
one, from Beccaria to Carrara, has ever thought of this problem, and
they could not have asked it, considering their point of departure and
their method. In fact, the classic criminologists accept the phenomenon
of criminality as an accomplished fact. They analyze it from the point
of view of the technical jurist, without asking how this criminal fact
may have been produced, and why it repeats itself in greater or smaller
numbers from year to year, in every country. The theory of a free will,
which is their foundation, excludes the possibility of this scientific
question, for according to it the crime is the product of the fiat of
the human will. And if that is admitted as a fact, there is nothing left
to account for. The manslaughter was committed, because the criminal
wanted to commit it; and that is all there is to it. Once the theory of
a free will is accepted as a fact, the deed depends on the fiat, the
voluntary determination, of the criminal, and all is said.

But if, on the other hand, the positive school of criminology denies, on
the ground of researches in scientific physiological psychology, that
the human will is free and does not admit that one is a criminal because
he wants to be, but declares that a man commits this or that crime only
when he lives in definitely determined conditions of personality and
environment which induce him necessarily to act in a certain way, then
alone does the problem of the origin of criminality begin to be
submitted to a preliminary analysis, and then alone does criminal law
step out of the narrow and arid limits of technical jurisprudence and
become a true social and human science in the highest and noblest
meaning of the word. It is vain to insist with such stubbornness as that
of the classic school of criminology on juristic formulas by which the
distinction between illegal appropriation and theft, between fraud and
other forms of crime against property, and so forth, is determined, when
this method does not give to society one single word which would throw
light upon the reasons that make a man a criminal and upon the
efficacious remedy by which society could protect itself against
criminality.

It is true that the classic school of criminology has likewise its
remedy against crime--namely, punishment. But this is the only remedy of
that school, and in all the legislation inspired by the theories of that
school in all the countries of the civilized world there is no other
remedy against crime but repression.

But Bentham has said: Every time that punishment is inflicted it proves
its inefficacy, for it did not prevent the committal of that crime.
Therefore, this remedy is worthless. And a deeper study of the cause of
crime demonstrates that if a man does not commit a certain crime, this
is due to entirely different reasons, than a fear of the penalty, very
strong and fundamental reasons which are not to be found in the threats
of legislators. These threats, if nevertheless carried out by police and
prison keepers, run counter to those conditions. A man who intends to
commit a crime, or who is carried away by a violent passion, by a
psychological hurricane which drowns his moral sense, is not checked by
threats of punishment, because the volcanic eruption of passion prevents
him from reflecting. Or he may decide to commit a crime after due
premeditation and preparation, and in that case the penalty is
powerless to check him, because he hopes to escape with impunity. All
criminals will tell you unanimously that the only thing which impelled
them when they were deliberating a crime was the expectation that they
would go scot free. If they had but the least suspicion that they might
be detected and punished they would not have committed the crime. The
only exception is the case in which a crime is the result of a mental
explosion caused by a violent outburst of passion. And if you wish to
have a very convincing illustration of the psychological inefficacy of
legal threats, you have but to think of that curious crime which has now
assumed a frequency never known to former centuries, namely the making
of counterfeit money. For since paper money--from want or for reasons of
expediency--has become a substitute of metal coin in the civilized
countries, the making of counterfeit paper money has become very
frequent in the nineteenth century. Now a counterfeiter, in committing
his crime, must compel his mind to imitate closely the inscription of
the bill, letter for letter, including that threatening passage, which
says: _"The law punishes counterfeiting_ ..." etc. Can you see before
your mind's eye a counterfeiter, in the act of engraving on the stone or
the others may ignore the penalty that awaits them, but he cannot. This
illustration is convincing, for in cases of other crimes one may always
assume that the criminal acted without thinking of the future, even when
he was not in a transport of passion. But in the case of the
counterfeiter the very act of committing the crime reminds him of the
threat of the law, and yet he is imperturbable while perpetrating it.

Crime has its natural causes, which lie outside of that mathematical
point called the free will of the criminal. Aside from being a juridical
phenomenon, which it would be well to examine by itself, every crime is
above all a natural and social phenomenon, and should be studied
primarily as such. We need not go through so hard a course of study
merely for the purpose of walking over the razor edge of juristic
definitions and to find out, for instance, that from the time Romagnosi
made a distinction between incompleted and attempted crime rivers of ink
have been spilled in the attempt to find the distinguishing elements of
these two degrees of crime. And finally, when the German legislator
concluded to make no distinction between incompleted and attempted crime
and to recognize only the completed crime in his code of 1871, we
witnessed the spectacle of Carrara praising that legislator for leaving
that subtile distinction out of his code. A strange conclusion on the
part of a science, which cudgels its brains for a century to find the
marks of distinction between attempted and incompleted crime, and then
praises the legislator for ignoring it. And another classic jurist,
Buccellati, proposed to do away with the theory of attempted crime by
simply defining it as a crime by itself, or as--a violation of police
laws! A science which comes to such conclusions is a science which moves
in metaphysical abstractions, and we shall see that all these finespun
questions which abound in classical science lose all practical value
before the necessity of saving society from the plague of crime.

The method which we, on the other hand, have inaugurated is the
following: Before we study crime from the point of view of a juristic
phenomenon, we must study the causes to which the annual recurrence of
crimes in all countries is due. These are natural causes, which I have
classified under the three heads of anthropological, telluric and
social. Every crime, from the smallest to the most atrocious, is the
result of the interaction of these three causes, the anthropological
condition of the criminal, the telluric environment in which he is
living, and the social environment in which he is born, living and
operating. It is a vain beginning to separate the meshes of this net of
criminality. There are still those who would maintain the one-sided
standpoint that the origin of crime may be traced to only one of these
elements, for instance, to the social element alone. So far as I am
concerned, I have combatted this opinion from the very inauguration of
the positive school of criminology, and I combat it today. It is
certainly easy enough to think that the entire origin of all crime is
due to the unfavorable social conditions in which the criminal lives.
But an objective, methodical, observation demonstrates that social
conditions alone do not suffice to explain the origin of criminality,
although it is true that the prevalence of the influence of social
conditions is an incontestable fact in the case of the greater number
of crimes, especially of the lesser ones. But there are crimes which
cannot be explained by the influence of social conditions alone. If you
regard the general condition of misery as the sole source of
criminality, then you cannot get around the difficulty that out of one
thousand individuals living in misery from the day of their birth to
that of their death only one hundred or two hundred become criminals,
while the other nine hundred or eight hundred either sink into
biological weakness, or become harmless maniacs, or commit suicide
without perpetrating any crime. If poverty were the sole determining
cause, one thousand out of one thousand poor ought to become criminals.
If only two hundred become criminals, while one hundred commit suicide,
one hundred end as maniacs, and the other six hundred remain honest in
their social condition, then poverty alone is not sufficient to explain
criminality. We must add the anthropological and telluric factor. Only
by means of these three elements of natural influence can criminality be
explained. Of course, the influence of either the anthropological or
telluric or social element varies from case to case. If you have a case
of simple theft, you may have a far greater influence of the social
factor than of the anthropological factor. On the other hand, if you
have a case of murder, the anthropological element will have a far
greater influence than the social. And so on in every case of crime, and
every individual that you will have to judge on the bench of the
criminal.

The anthropological factor. It is precisely here that the genius of
Cesare Lombroso established a new science, because in his search after
the causes of crime he studied the anthropological condition of the
criminal. This condition concerns not only the organic and anatomical
constitution, but also the psychological, it represents the organic and
psychological personality of the criminal. Every one of us inherits at
birth, and personifies in life, a certain organic and psychological
combination. This constitutes the individual factor of human activity,
which either remains normal through life, or becomes criminal or insane.
The anthropological factor, then, must not be restricted, as some laymen
would restrict it, to the study of the form of the skull or the bones
of the criminal. Lombroso had to begin his studies with the anatomical
conditions of the criminal, because the skulls may be studied most
easily in the museums. But he continued by also studying the brain and
the other physiological conditions of the individual, the state of
sensibility, and the circulation of matter. And this entire series of
studies is but a necessary scientific introduction to the study of the
psychology of the criminal, which is precisely the one problem that is
of direct and immediate importance. It is this problem which the lawyer
and the public prosecutor should solve before discussing the juridical
aspect of any crime, for this reveals the causes which induced the
criminal to commit a crime. At present there is no methodical standard
for a psychological investigation, although such an investigation was
introduced into the scope of classic penal law. But for this reason the
results of the positive school penetrate into the lecture rooms of the
universities of jurisprudence, whenever a law is required for the
judicial arraignment of the criminal as a living and feeling human
being. And even though the positive school is not mentioned, all profess
to be studying the material furnished by it, for instance, its analyses
of the sentiments of the criminal, his moral sense, his behavior before,
during and after the criminal act, the presence of remorse which people,
judging the criminal after their own feelings, always suppose the
criminal to feel, while, in fact, it is seldom present. This is the
anthropological factor, which may assume a pathological form, in which
case articles 46 and 47 of the penal code remember that there is such a
thing as the personality of the criminal. However, aside from insanity,
there are thousands of other organic and psychological conditions of the
personality of criminals, which a judge might perhaps lump together
under the name of extenuating circumstances, but which science desires
to have thoroughly investigated. This is not done today, and for this
reason the idea of extenuating circumstances constitutes a denial of
justice.

This same anthropological factor also includes that which each one of us
has: the race character. Nowadays the influence of race on the destinies
of peoples and persons is much discussed in sociology, and there are
one-sided schools that pretend to solve the problems of history and
society by means of that racial influence alone, to which they attribute
an absolute importance. But while there are some who maintain that the
history of peoples is nothing but the exclusive product of racial
character, there are others who insist that the social conditions of
peoples and individuals are alone determining. The one is as much a
one-sided and incomplete theory as the other. The study of collective
society or of the single individual has resulted in the understanding
that the life of society and of the individual is always the product of
the inextricable net of the anthropological, telluric and social
elements. Hence the influence of the race cannot be ignored in the study
of nations and personalities, although it is not the exclusive factor
which would suffice to explain the criminality of a nation or an
individual. Study, for instance, manslaughter in Italy, and, although
you will find it difficult to isolate one of the factors of criminality
from the network of the other circumstances and conditions that produce
it, yet there are such eloquent instances of the influence of racial
character, that it would be like denying the existence of daylight if
one tried to ignore the influence of the ethnical factor on
criminality.

In Italy there are two currents of criminality, two tendencies which are
almost diametrically opposed to one another. The crimes due to hot blood
and muscle grow in intensity from northern to southern Italy, while the
crimes against property increase from south to north. In northern Italy,
where movable property is more developed, the crime of theft assumes a
greater intensity, while crimes due to conditions of the blood are
decreasing on account of the lesser poverty and the resulting lesser
degeneration of the people. In the south, on the other hand, crimes
against property are less frequent and crimes of blood more frequent.
Still there also are in southern Italy certain cases where criminality
of the blood is less frequent, and you cannot explain this in any other
way than by the influence of racial character. If you take a
geographical map of manslaughter in Italy, you will see that from the
minimum, from Lombardy, Piedmont, and Venice, the intensity increases
until it reaches its maximum in the insular and peninsular extreme of
the south. But even there you will find certain cases in which
manslaughter shows a lesser intensity.

For instance, the province of Benevent is surrounded by other provinces
which show a maximum of crimes due to conditions of blood, while it
registers a smaller number. Naples, again, shows a considerably smaller
number of such cases than the provinces surrounding it, but it has a
greater number of unpremeditated cases of manslaughter. Messina, Catania
and Syracuse have a remarkably smaller number of blood crimes than
Trapani, Girgenti and Palermo. It has been attempted to claim that this
difference in criminality is due to social condition's, because the
agricultural conditions in eastern Sicily are less degrading than those
of Girgenti and Trapani, where the sulphur mines compel the miners to
live miserably. But we should like to ask the following question in
opposition to this idea: Why and in what respect are the agricultural
conditions in some provinces better than in others? This condition is
merely itself a result, not a cause of the first degree.

Since the theory of historical materialism, which I prefer to call
economic determinism, has demonstrated that political, moral and
intellectual phenomena are reactions on the economic conditions of any
time and place, the attempt has been made to interpret this theory very
narrowly and to pretend that the economic condition of a nation is a
primary cause and not determined by any other. For my part, ever since I
have demonstrated the perfect accord between the Marxian and the
Darwinian theories, I have said: Very well, the economic conditions of a
nation explain its political, moral, intellectual conditions, but the
economic condition is in its turn the result of other factors. For
instance, how can the industrialism of England in the nineteenth century
be explained? Take away the coal mines (the telluric environment), and
you could not have the economic conditions of England as they are. For
the economic conditions are a result of favorable or unfavorable
telluric conditions which are acted upon by the intelligence and energy
of a certain race. Catania, Messina, Syracuse, are in a better economic
condition, because they have better geographical conditions and a
different race (of Grecian blood) than the other Sicilian provinces. So
it is in Apulia and Naples, which have likewise a considerable mixture
of Grecian blood. The northern tourists are still attracted by our art
and visit the ruins of Taormina or Pesto, which are the relics of the
Grecian race. And it is the Grecian blood which explains the lesser
frequency of bloody crimes in those provinces. This is therefore
evidently the influence of the race. And I maintain that the same fact
is due in the province of Benevent to the admixture of Langobardian
blood. For the Duchy of Benevent has had an influx of Langobardian
elements since the seventh century. And as we know that the German and
Anglo-Saxon race has the smallest tendency towards bloody crimes, the
beneficial influence of this racial character in Benevent explains
itself. On the other hand, there is much Saracen blood in the western
and southern provinces of Sicily, and this explains the greater number
of bloody crimes there. It is evident that the organic character of the
inhabitants of that island, where you may still see the brutal and
barbarian features of the Saracen by the side of those of the blond,
cool and quiet Norman, contains a transfusion of the blood of diverse
races. But it is also true that wherever a certain race has been
predominant, there its influence is left behind in the individual and
collective life.

Let this be enough so far as the anthropological factor of criminality
is concerned. There are, furthermore, the telluric factors, that is to
say, the physical environment in which we live and to which we pay no
attention. It requires much philosophy, said Rousseau, to note the
things with which we are in daily contact, because the habitual
influence of a thing makes it more difficult to be aware of it. This
applies also to the immediate influence of the physical conditions on
human morality, notwithstanding the spiritualist prejudices which still
weigh upon our daily lives. For instance, if it is claimed in the name
of supernaturalism and psychism that a man is unhappy because he is
vicious, it is equivalent to making a one-sided statement. For it is
just as true to say that a man becomes vicious because he is unhappy.
Want is the strongest poison for the human body and soul. It is the
fountain head of all inhuman and antisocial feeling. Where want spreads
out its wings, there the sentiments of love, of affection, of
brotherhood, are impossible.

Take a look at the figures of the peasant in the far-off arid Campagna,
the little government employee, the laborer, the little shop-keeper.
When work is assured, when living is certain, though poor, then want,
cruel want, is in the distance, and every good sentiment can germinate
and develop in the human heart. The family then lives in a favorable
environment, the parents agree, the children are affectionate. And when
the laborer, a bronzed statue of humanity, returns from, his smoky shop
and meets his white-haired mother, the embodiment of half a century of
immaculate virtue and heroic sacrifices, then he can, tired, but assured
of his daily bread, give room to feelings of affection, and he will
cordially invite his mother to share his frugal meal. But let the same
man, in the same environment, be haunted by the spectre of want and lack
of employment, and you will see the moral atmosphere in his family
changing as from day into night. There is no work, and the laborer comes
home without any wages. The wife, who does not know how to feed the
children, reproaches her husband with the suffering of his family. The
man, having been turned away from the doors of ten offices, feels his
dignity as an honest laborer assailed in the very bosom of his own
family, because he has vainly asked society for honest employment. And
the bonds of affection and union are loosened in that family. Its
members no longer agree. There are too many children, and when the poor
old mother approaches her son, she reads in his dark and agitated mien
the lack of tenderness and feels in her mother heart that her boy,
poisoned by the spectre of want, is perhaps casting evil looks at her
and harboring the unfilial thought: "Better an open grave in the
cemetery than one mouth more to feed at home!"

It is true, that want alone is not sufficient to prepare the soil in the
environment of that suffering family for the roots of real crime and to
develop it. Want will weaken the love and mutual respect among the
members of that family, but it will not be strong enough alone to arm
the hands of the man for a matricidal deed, unless he should get into a
pathological mental condition, which is very exceptional and rare. But
the conclusions of the positive school are confirmed in this case as in
any other. In order that crime may develop, it is necessary that
anthropological, social and telluric factors should act together.

We generally forget the conditions of the physical environment in which
we live, because supernatural prejudice tells us that the body is a
beast which we must forget in order to elevate ourselves into a
spiritual life. Manzoni could designate the Middle Ages by the term
"dirty." because they neglected the demands of elementary hygiene, and
thus of human morality. For where the requirements of our physical body
are neglected or offended, there no flower can bloom. The telluric
environment has a great influence on our physical activity, by way of
our nervous system. We feel differently disposed, according to whether a
south or a north wind blows. When Garibaldi was on the Pampas, he
observed that his companions were irascible and prone to violent
quarrels, when the Pampero blew, and that their behavior changed, when
this wind ceased. The great founders of criminal statistics, Quetelet
and Guerry, observed that the change of seasons carried with it a change
in criminality. Sexual crimes are less frequent in winter than in spring
and summer. And with reference to this point I have maintained, and
still maintain, that it is due to the combined effects of temperature
and social conditions, if crimes against property increase in winter.
For lack of employment, the want of food and shelter, intensify the
misery and lead to attacks on property. On the other hand, the cold by
itself reduces sexual crimes and personal assaults. And those who claim
that the longer intercourse between people in summer time has also a
social influence, are also partly in the right.

The most eloquent fact in this respect was mentioned by Murro, when he
pointed out that this change in the frequency of bloody crimes, greater
in the warm months than in winter, applied also to prisoners. Statistics
show that breach of discipline is most frequent in hot seasons. The
social factor does not enter there, because the social life is there the
same in winter and in summer. This is, therefore, a practical proof of
the influence of climate, and it is re-enforced by the fact that
delirium and epilepsy in insane asylums are also more frequent in hot
than in cold months. The influence of the telluric factors, then, cannot
be denied, and the influence of the social factor intensifies it, as I
have already shown by its most drastic and characteristic example, that
of want. One can, therefore, understand that a man, whose morality has
been shaken by the pressure of increasing want, may be led to commit a
crime against property or persons.

It is certainly quite evident, that economic misery has an undeniable
influence on criminality. And if you consider, that about 300,000
criminals are sentenced in Italy every year, 180,000 of them for minor
crimes, and 120,000 for crimes which belong to the gravest class, you
can easily see that the greater part of them due mainly to social
conditions, for which it should not be so very difficult to find a
remedy. The work of the legislator may be slow, difficult, and
inadequate, so far as the telluric and anthropological factors are
concerned. But it could surely be rapid, efficacious and prompt, so far
as the social factors influencing criminality are concerned.

We have now demonstrated that crime has its natural source in the
combined interaction of three classes of causes, the anthropological
(organic and psychological) factor, the telluric factor, and the social
factor. And by this last factor we must not only mean want, but any
other condition of administrative instability in political, moral, and
intellectual life. Every social condition which makes the life of man in
society insincere and imperfect is a social factor contributing towards
criminality. The economic factor is in evidence in our civilization
wherever the law of free competition, which is but a form of disguised
cannibalism, establishes the rule: _Your death is my life_. The
competition of laborers for a limited number of places is equivalent to
saying that those who secure a living do so at the expense of those who
do not. And this is a disguised form of cannibalism. While it does not
devour the competitor as primitive mankind did, it paralyzes him by
calumnies, recommendations, protection, money, which, secure the place
for the best bargainer and leave the most honest, talented, and
self-respecting to the pangs of starvation.

Moreover, the economic factor exerts its crime-breeding influence also
under the form of a superabundance of wealth. Indeed, in our present
society, which is in the downward stage of transition from glorious
bourgeois civilization, which constituted a golden page of human
history in the 19th century, wealth itself is a source of crime. For the
rich, who do not enjoy the advantage of manual or intellectual work,
suffer from the corruption of leisure and vice. Gambling throws them
into an unhealthy fever; the struggle and race for money poison their
daily lives. And although the rich may keep out of reach of the penal
code, still they have condemned themselves to a life devoted to
hypocritical ceremonies, which are devoid of moral sentiment. And this
life leads them to a sportive form of criminality. To cheat at gambling
is the inevitable fate of these parasites. In order to kill time they
give themselves up to games of chance, and those who do not care for
that devote themselves to the sport of adultery, which in that class is
a pastime even among the best friends, on account of sheer mental
poverty. And all because man's mind unoccupied is the devil's own forge,
as the English poet says.

We have now surveyed briefly the natural genesis of crime, as a natural
social phenomenon, brought about by the interaction of anthropological,
telluric, and social influences, which in any determined moment act
upon a personality standing on the cross road of vice and virtue, crime
and honesty. This scientific deduction gives rise to a series of
investigations which satisfy the mind and supply it with a real
understanding of things, far better than the theory that a man is a
criminal because he wants to be. No, a man commits crime because he
finds himself in certain physical and social conditions, from which the
evil plant of crime takes life and strength. Thus we obtain the origin
of that sad human figure which is the product of the interaction of
those factors, an abnormal man, a man not adapted to the conditions of
the social environment in which he is born, so that emigration becomes
an ever more permanent phenomenon for the greater portion of men, for
whom the accident of birth will less and less determine the course of
their future life. And the abnormal man who is below the minimum of
adaptability to social life and bears the marks of organic degeneration,
develops either a passive or an aggressive form of abnormality and
becomes a criminal.

Among these abnormal human beings, two groups must be particularly
distinguished. Limiting our observations to those who are true
aggressively antisocial abnormals, that is to say, who are not adapted
to a certain social order and attack it by crimes, we must distinguish
those who for egoistic or ferocious reasons attack society by atavistic
forms of the struggle for existence by committing socalled common crimes
in the shape of fraud or violence, thereby opposing or abolishing
conditions in which their fellow beings may live. This is the atavistic
type of criminals which represents an involutionary, or retrogressive,
form of abnormality, due to an arrested development or an atavistic
reversion to a savage and primitive type. These constitute the majority
in the world of criminals and must be distinguished from the minority,
who are evolutionary, or progressive, abnormals, that may also commit
crime in a violent form, but must not be confounded with the others,
because they do not act from egoistic motives, but rebel from altruistic
motives against the injustice of the present order. These altruistic
criminals feel the sufferings and horrors due to the injustice
surrounding them and may go so far as to commit murder, which must
always be condemned, but which must not be confounded with atavistic or
egoistic murder. Recourse to personal violence is always objectionable
from the point of view of higher manhood, which desires that human life
should always be held in respect. But the reasons for such a crime are
different, being egoistic in the one, and altruistic in the other case.
The evolutionary abnormal is often an instrument of human progress, not
in the form of criminality, but in that of intellectual and moral
rebellion against conditions which are sanctioned by laws that
frequently punish such an evolutionary rebellion harder than atavistic
crime, as they do in Russia, where capital punishment has been abolished
for common crimes, but retained for political violations of the law! We
are living in an epoch of transition from the old to the new, and
contemporaneous humanity has an uneasy moral conscience in this critical
time. The ruling classes are losing their clearness of vision, so that
they promise monuments to those political murderers who promoted their
own historical victories, but would condemn like any common criminal him
who now devotes his soul to a revolutionary ideal, would throw into
prison the pioneer of new human ideals, just as Russia is
excommunicating the rebel Tolstoi. I mention Leo Tolstoi advisedly for
the purpose of giving a precise illustration of my heterodox thought in
reference to this question. We are opposed to any form of personal
violence (with the sole exception of self-defense), we cannot approve of
any form of personal assault, no matter what may be its motive.
Therefore we cannot have words of praise or excuse for political murder,
though it may be inspired by altruistic motives. We can demand that the
legislator should distinguish between the psychological sources of these
two forms of murder, the egoistic and the altruistic form. But we
condemn them both, because they are inhuman forms of violence. Ideas do
not make victorious headway by force of arms. Ideas must be combatted by
ideas, and it is only by the propaganda of the idea that we can prepare
humanity for its future. Violence is always a means of preventing the
sincere and fruitful diffusion of an idea. We do not say this merely for
the abnormals of the lower classes. We refer with scientific serenity
also to the upper classes, who would suppress by violence every
manifestation of revolt against the social iniquities, every affirmation
of faith in a better future.

This is the conception of our science, which thus succeeds in
distinguishing traits of character even among the unlucky and forlorn
people of the criminal world, while the classic school of criminology
regards a criminal as a sort of abstract and normal man, with the
exception of cases of minors, deaf mutes, inebriates, and maniacs.

In fact, the classic school of criminology regards all thieves as THE
thief, all murderers as THE murderer, and the human shape disappears in
the mind of the legislator, while it re-appears before the judge. Before
the essayist and legislator, the criminal is a sort of moving dummy, on
whose hack the judge may paste an article of the penal code. If you
leave out of consideration the established cases of exceptional and rare
human psychology mentioned in the penal code, all other cases serve the
judge merely as an excuse to select from the criminal code the number of
that article which will fit the criminal dummy, and if he should paste
404 instead of 407 on its back, the court of appeals would resist, any
change of numbers. And if this dummy came to life and said: "The
question of my number may be very important for you, but if you would
study all the conditions that compelled me to take other people's
things, you would realize that this importance is very diagrammatic,"
the judge would answer: "That's all right for the justice of the future,
but it isn't now. You are number 404 of the criminal code, and after
leaving this court room with this number pasted legally on your back,
you will receive another number, for you will enter prison as number 404
and will exchange it for entry number 1525, or some other, because your
personality as a man disappears entirely before the enactment of social
justice!" And then it is pretended that this man, whose personality is
thus absurdly ignored, should leave prison cured of all degeneration,
and if he falls back into the path of thorns of his misery and commits
another crime, the judge simply pastes another article over the other,
by adding number 80 or 81, which refer to cases of relapse, to number
404!

In this way the classic school of criminology came to its unit of
punishment, which it heralded as its great progress. In the Middle
Ages, the diversity of punishment was greater. But in the 19th century
the classic school of criminology combatted dishonoring punishment,
corporeal punishment, confiscation, professional punishment, capital
punishment, with its ideal of one sole penalty, the only panacea for
crime and criminals, _prison_.

We have, indeed, prohibitory measures and fines even today. But in
substance the whole punitive armory is reduced to imprisonment, since
fines are likewise convertible into so many days or months of
imprisonment. Solitary confinement is the ideal of the classic school of
criminology. But experience proves that this penalty has as much effect
on the disease of criminality, as the remedy of a physician would have,
who would sit in the door of a hospital and tell every patient seeking
relief: "Whatever may be your disease, I have only one medicine and that
is a decoction of rhubarb. You have heart trouble? Well, then, the
problem for me is simply--how big a dose of rhubarb decoction shall I
give you?"

And measuring doses of penalty is the foundation of the criminal code.
That is so true that this code is in its last analysis but a table of
criminal logarithms for figuring out penalties. Woe to the judge who
makes a mistake in sentencing a 19 year old offender who was drunk when
he sinned, but had premeditated his deed. Woe to the judge, if he misses
his calculation in adding or subtracting the third, or sixth, or one
half, corresponding to the prescribed extenuating or aggravating
circumstances! If he makes a miscalculation, the court of appeals is
invoked by the defendant, and the inexorable court of appeals tells the
judge: "Figure this over again. You have been unjust." The only question
for the judge is this: Add your sums and subtract your deductions, and
the prisoner is sentenced to one year, seven months, and thirteen days.
Not one day more or less! But the human spectator asks: "If the criminal
should happen to be reformed before the expiration of his term, should
he be retained in prison?" The judge replies: "I don't care, he stays in
one year, seven months, and thirteen days!"

Then the human spectator says: "But suppose the criminal should not yet
be fit for human society at the expiration of his term?" The judge
replies: "At the expiration of his term he leaves prison, for when he
has absolved his last day, he has paid his debt!"

This is the same case as that of the imaginary physician who says: "You
have heart trouble? Then take a quart of rhubarb decoction and stay
twelve days in the hospital." Another patient says: "I have broken my
leg." And the doctor: "All right, take a pint of rhubarb decoction and
17 days in the hospital." A third has inflammation of the lungs, and the
doctor prescribes three quarts of rhubarb decoction and three months in
the hospital. "But if my inflammation is cured before that time?" "No
matter," says the doctor, "you stay in three months." "But if I am not
cured of my lung trouble after three months?" "No matter," says the
doctor, "you leave after three months."

To such results have wise men been led by a system of penal justice,
which is a denial of all elementary common sense. They have forgotten
the personality of the criminal and occupied themselves exclusively with
crime as an abstract juristic phenomenon. In the same manner, the old
style medicine occupied itself with disease as such, as an abstract
pathological phenomenon, without taking into account the personality of
the patient. The ancient physicians did not consider whether a patient
was well or ill nourished, young or old, strong or weak, nervous or