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 fullblooded. they cured fever as fever, pleurisy as pleurisy. modern medicine, on the other hand, declares that disease must be studied in the living person of the patient. and the same disease may require different treatment, if the condition of the patient is different.

criminal justice has taken the same historical course of development as medicine. the classic school of criminology is still in the same stage, in which medicine was before the middle of the 19th century. it deals with theft, murder, fraud, as such. but that which claims so much of the attention of society has been forgotten by the classic school. for that school has forgotten to study the murderer, the thief, the forger, and without that study their crimes cannot be understood.

crime is one of the conditions required for the study of the criminal. but, the same crime may require the application of different remedies to the personalities of different criminals, according to the different anthropological and social conditions of the various criminals. there is a fundamental distinction between the anthropological and social types of criminals, whom i have divided into five categories, which are today unanimously accepted by criminalist anthropologists, since the geneva congress offered an opportunity to explain the misapprehension which led some foreign scientists to believe that the italian school regarded one of these types (the born criminal) merely as an organic anomaly.

just a word concerning each one of these five types.

the born criminal is a victim of that which i will call (seeing that science has not yet solved this problem) criminal neurosis, which is very analogous to epileptic neurosis, but which is not in itself sufficient to make one a criminal. our adversaries had the idea that the mere possession of a crooked nose or a slanting skull stamped a man as predisposed by birth to murder or theft. but a man may he a born criminal, that is to say, he may have some congenital degeneration which predisposes him toward crime, and yet he may die at the age of 80 without having committed any crime, because he was fortunate enough to live in an environment which did not offer him any temptation to commit crime. again, are not many predisposed toward insanity without ever becoming insane? if the same individual were to live under unfavorable conditions, without any education, if he were to find himself in unhealthy telluric surroundings, in a mine, a rice field, or a miasmatic swamp, he would become insane. but if instead of living in conditions that condemn him to lunacy he were to be under no necessity to struggle for his daily bread, if he could live in affluence, he might exhibit some eccentricity of character, but would not cross the threshold of an insane asylum. the same happens in the case of criminality. one may have a congenital predisposition toward crime, but if he lives in favorable surroundings, he will live to the end of his natural life without violating any criminal or moral law. at any rate we must drop the prejudice that only those are criminals on whose backs the judge has pasted a number. for there are many scoundrels at large who commit crime with impunity, or who brush the edge of the criminal law in the most repulsive immorality without violating it.

this misunderstanding was explained at the congress of geneva by the statement that the interaction of the social and telluric environment is required also in the case of the born criminal. and now we may take it for granted that my classification of five types is everywhere accepted. these are the following: the born criminal who has a congenital predisposition for crime; the insane criminal suffering from some clinical form of mental alienation, and whom even our existing penal code had to recognize; the habitual criminal, that is to say one who has acquired the habit of crime mainly through the ineffective measures employed by society for the prevention and repression of crime. a common figure in our large industrial centers is that of the abandoned child which has to go begging from its earliest youth in order to collect an income for the enterprising boss or for its poor family, without an opportunity to educate its moral sense in the filth of the streets. it is punished for the first time by the law and sent to prison or to a reformatory, where it is inevitably corrupted. then, when such an individual comes out of prison, he is stigmatized as a thief or forger, watched by the police, and if he secures work in some shop, the owner is indirectly induced to discharge him, so that he must inevitably fall back upon crime.

thus one acquires crime as a habit, a product of social rottenness, due to the ineffective measures for the prevention and repression of crime. there is furthermore the occasional criminal, who commits very insignificant criminal acts, more because he is led astray by his conditions of life than because the aggressive energy of a degenerate personality impels him. if he is not made worse by a prison life, he may find an opportunity to return to a normal life in society. finally there is the passionate criminal, who, like the insane criminal, has received attention from the positive school of criminology; which, however, did not come to any definite conclusions regarding him, such as may be gathered by means of the experimental method through study in prisons, insane asylums, or in freedom. the relations between passion and crime have so far been studied on a field in which no solution was possible. for the classic school considers such a crime according to the greater or smaller intensity and violence of passion and comes to the conclusion that the degree of responsibility decreases to the extent that the intensity of a passion increases, and vice versa. the problem cannot be solved in this way. there are passions which may rise to the highest degree of intensity without reducing the responsibility. for instance, is one who murders from motives of revenge a passionate criminal who must be excused?

the classic school of criminology says "no," and for my part i agree with them. francesco carrara says: "there are blind passions, and others which are reasonable. blind passions deprive one of free will, reasonable ones do not. blind and excusable passions are fear, honor, love, reasonable and inexcusable ones are hatred and revenge." but how so? i have studied murderers who killed for revenge and who told me that the desire for revenge took hold of them like a fever, so that they "forgot even to eat." hate and revenge can take possession of a man to such an extent that he becomes blind with passion. the truth is that passion must be considered not so far as its violence or quantity are concerned, but rather as to its quality. we must distinguish between social and anti-social passion, the one favoring the conditions of life for the species and collectivity, the other antagonistic to the development of the collectivity. in the first case, we have love, injured honor, etc, which are passions normally useful to society, and aberrations of which may be excused more or less according to individual cases. on the other hand, we have inexcusable passions, because their psychological tendency is to antagonize the development of society. they are antisocial, and cannot be excused, and hate and revenge are among them.

the positive school therefore admits that a passion is excusable, when the moral sense of a man is normal, when his past record is clear, and when his crime is due to a social passion, which makes it excusable.

we shall see tomorrow what remedies the positive school of criminology proposes for each one of these categories of criminals, in distinction from the measuring of doses of imprisonment advocated by the classic school.

we have thus exhausted in a short and general review the subject of the natural origin of criminality.—to sum up, crime is a social phenomenon, due to the interaction of anthropological, telluric, and social factors. this law brings about what i have called criminal saturation, which means that every society has the criminality which it deserves, and which produces by means of its geographical and social conditions such quantities and qualities of crime as correspond to the development of each collective human group.

thus the old saying of imetelet is confirmed: "there is an annual balance of crime, which must be paid and settled with greater regularity than the accounts of the national revenue." however, we positivists give to this statement a less fatalistic interpretation, since we have demonstrated that crime is not our immutable destiny, even though it is a vain beginning to attempt to attenuate or eliminate crime by mere schemes. the truth is that the balance of crime is determined by the physical and social environment. but by changing the condition of the social environment, which is most easily modified, the legislator may alter the influence of the telluric environment and the organic and psychic conditions of the population, control the greater portion of crimes, and reduce them considerably. it is our firm conviction that a truly civilized legislator can attenuate the plague of criminality, not so much by means of the criminal code, as by means of remedies which are latent in the remainder of the social life and of legislation. and the experience of the most advanced countries confirms this by the beneficent and preventive influence of criminal legislation resting on efficacious social reforms.

we arrive, then, at this scientific conclusion: in the society of the future, the necessity for penal justice will be reduced to the extent that social justice grows intensively and extensively.