This objection is sound enough if it be taken in a relative sense,
but groundless if it be insisted on absolutely.
It must be considered, in the first place, that the distinctions
of cause and effect are only relative, for every effect has its
cause, and vice versa; so that if wretchedness, material and
moral, is a cause of degeneration, degeneration itself, like
biological anomaly, is a cause of wretchedness. And in this sense
the question would be simply metaphysical, like the famous
Byzantine discussions as to whether there was originally an egg
before a hen or a hen before an egg.
And, in fact, when it was said, in regard to criminal geography,
that the extent and quality of crime in such and such a province,
instead of being the effect of biological conditions (race, &c.)
and physical conditions (climate, soil, &c.), were but the effect
of social and economic conditions (of rural and industrial
pursuits, and the like), I was able to make a very simple reply.
For, apart even from statistical proofs, if the social
conditions of such and such a province, which have an
unquestionable influence, are really the absolute and exclusive
cause of crime, we may still ask whether these social conditions
of the province are not themselves the effect of the ethnical
qualities of energy, intelligence, and so forth, in its
inhabitants, and of the more or less favourable conditions of the
climate and the soil.
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