It is generally stated inaccurately; because they who think, for
instance, that crime is nothing else than a purely and exclusively
social phenomenon in the evolution of which the organic and
psychical anomalies of the criminal have had no part, ignore more
or less consciously the universal correlation of natural forces,
and forget that, in regard to any phenomenon whatsoever, it is
impossible to set an absolute limit to the network of its causes,
immediate and remote, direct and indirect.
To put this question in an arbitrary sense would be like
asking if a mammal is the product of its lungs, or its heart, or
its stomach, or of vegetable constituents, or of the atmosphere;
whereas each of these conditions, internal and external, is
necessary to the life of the animal.
In fact, if crime were the exclusive product of the social
environment, how could one explain the familiar fact that in the
same social environment, and in identical circumstances of
poverty, abandonment, lack of education, sixty per cent. do not
commit crimes, and, of the other forty, five prefer suicide, five
go mad, five simply become beggars or tramps not dangerous to
society, whilst the remaining twenty-five actually commit crimes?
And amongst the latter, whilst some go no further than theft
without violence, why do others commit theft with violence, and
even kill their victim outright, before he offers resistance, or
threatens them, or calls for help, and this with no other object
than gain?
The secondary differences of social condition, which may be
observed even amongst the members of a single family, rotting in
one of the slums of our great towns, or amongst those who are
surrounded by the temptations of money or power, or the like, are
clearly not enough in themselves to explain the vast differences
in the actions which grow out of them, varying from honesty under
the greatest discouragement to suicide and murder.
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