A final observation is necessary in regard to this anthropological
classification of criminals, and it meets various objections
raised by our syllogistic critics. The difference existing
amongst the five categories is only one of degree, and depends
upon their organic and psychological types, and upon the influence
of physical and social environment.
In every natural classification the differences between
various groups and varieties are never anything but relative.
This deprives them of none of their theoretical and practical
importance, and so it is with this anthropological classification
of criminals.
It follows that, as in natural history we advance by degrees and
shades from the inorganic to the organic creation, life beginning
in the mineral domain with the laws of crystallisation, so in
criminal anthropology we pass by degrees and shades from the mad
to the born criminal, through the links of moral madmen and
epileptics; and from the born criminal to the occasional, through
the link of the habitual criminal, who begins by being an
occasional criminal, and ends by acquiring and transmitting to his
children the characteristics of the born criminal. And finally,
we pass from the occasional criminal to the criminal of passion,
who is but a species of the other, and who further, with his
neurotic and epileptoid temperament, not infrequently approximates
to the criminal of unsound mind.
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