Professor Manouvrier begins the last section of his study by asking what is the significance of the anatomical peculiarities observed in the so-called born-criminals. “The truth probably is that we do find in a number of criminals in prison more of the lower or abnormal characteristics than in a like number of persons chosen at random. But this in no wise proves that those among the criminals who have such [[172]]characteristics, have been predestined to crime from their physical make-up. Those among them who are not so constituted are nevertheless criminals, and honest men who bear the criminal marks have nevertheless remained honest.
“The truth is that the ‘new school’ consider as criminals only the refuse of this class, the prisoners; just as, when they wanted to depict prostitutes, they took poor syphilitic girls who had been at least three years in brothels, that is to say, the refuse of refuse. Under what family and social conditions these criminals and prostitutes lived during childhood and afterward, it is easy for anyone to imagine who has caught but a glimpse of the slums of manufacturing towns. In order to escape crime and prostitution or mendicity when one has grown up in such an environment, it is necessary to have virtues that are extremely rare among respectable people, so much the more so since, to the temptations that come from poverty in the midst of luxury, is ordinarily added the effect of example, and even of education of the particular kind that is called criminal education. All this may be resisted for some time, but it is only the first step that costs. The good qualities themselves that one possesses become the causes of crime. It may even be maintained that physical excellencies themselves drive men to crime more strongly than defects, when once the external conditions become favorable for crime.”[36]
The fact that we generally find more inferior individuals among the criminals imprisoned than among other men must be attributed to the two following circumstances: first, that criminals who have not been arrested, owe their liberty generally to the fact that they are better endowed; and second, that in all social classes a selection goes on by which those best constituted are always in possession of the most desirable and least painful means of existence, while to those less privileged fall the lowest professions, and they “end sooner or later by falling into the ditch where the influences that drive men to crime reach their maximum frequency and power, while the contrary motives are proportionately weak.” Those who have known better days sometimes prefer suicide to crime; but those who are born in the ditch, know no other life, and are consequently led into crime.
What is much more astonishing than crime is the fact that workmen labor courageously and patiently for ten or twelve hours a day, and notwithstanding this lead only a miserable life. The reason is that they have known nothing but labor since infancy and have always [[173]]had to be content with very simple amusements. It goes without saying that one man is more moved to commit crimes than another, although the conditions under which they are living are the same, just as an athlete will use violence quicker than a weakling. But this is no reason to declare strength a factor of crime, since it serves for useful acts as well. Acts which are contrary to the proper working of society are, therefore, called abnormal and those are called normal that are in harmony with it. But it is not therefore permissible to transfer this distinction to the field of biology, and call the criminal abnormal. “Aptitudes that are very normal physiologically, may be employed for acts that are equally normal physiologically, but which, from a social point of view are classed as abnormal, because contrary to the social prosperity. Yet this is an abuse of the word ‘abnormal’, because society as at present constituted is, in its normal functioning, consistent with innumerable causes of conflict between its own interests and those of individuals. And just as the annoying consequences of our mistakes often make us recognize the truth, so crimes very often serve to indicate to societies the reforms they ought to bring about in order to perfect themselves.
“Every individual has wants to satisfy, wants primordial or secondary, that may become infinitely complicated and clothed in forms as much more various as the environment becomes more complex. Now it happens in every society, and especially in very civilized societies, that the different individuals do not find the same facilities, and further, do not possess the same means of action. There is an evident disproportion between the existing needs and the milder means of satisfying them; whence the struggle for existence and well-being.
“In our estimating the intrinsic worth of criminals, we must not fail to take account of this fact, that most honest men do not deprive themselves of any of the pleasures which are the aim of criminals, and that most criminals, in order to escape crime would have had to have rare virtue. Among the legal means of satisfaction offered by society there are those that are easy and agreeable, among others that of drawing the income from capital amassed by one’s parents. There are also difficult and painful ones, which are the lot of those whom pecuniary heredity has not secured against the so-called criminal heredity. In order to share legally in the pleasures of which they are witnesses, those whom we may call disinherited by fortune, must make efforts of which those born to wealth have no idea. This is why, if the disinherited seek a short-cut, we must ask ourselves, [[174]]before we consider them as monstrous beings, whether under the same circumstances we should be able to keep to the legal path.
“The struggle for existence and well-being is regulated by social laws. If these were perfect, each individual could satisfy his wants in an equitable measure, that is to say in the measure of his faculties, his labor, and the service he renders to the community. Crimes would then be diminished in an enormous proportion, but they would not be suppressed, for there would still be inevitable competitions, and the time will probably never come when, on the one hand, each individual will have just the wants that his social worth will permit him to satisfy legally, and, on the other, will have sufficient virtue to renounce the satisfaction of wants, even factitious ones, which he has once contracted without being able to comply with the conditions which the most just law imposes for this satisfaction.”[37]
The penal law is one of the means the object of which is combating the illegal satisfaction of wants. Everyone knows, however, that this means does not always attain the end sought. The penal law will, in fact, produce a diminution of criminality only when it shall have brought about profound penal changes,—when punishment shall be no more than the useful and necessary reaction against acts that are harmful to the well-being of the community and to the development of society.
It is to be proved that there is, besides the normal, or ordinary, origin of crime, a pathological, or extraordinary, origin. “It is quite superfluous to bring in tendencies atavistically recalled by pathological degeneracy, in order to explain the harmful effects of this degeneracy, and of mental diseases, upon the way in which the degenerate and mentally diseased act. The least functional trouble is enough to alter our sensations, our judgment, our imagination, our deliberations, and consequently, to make us act wrongly.”[38]
The theory of the innate character of crime through atavism is consequently quite erroneous. “It would be unseemly on my part to refer it, through atavism, to original sin or to the call of the blood of the ancient melodramas. I will not even say that it is derived through tradition, which is an environmental influence, from the old phrenological doctrine, although that is an error of the same kind. Errors, in fact, are like crimes; they have no need of atavism nor of immediate heredity, nor even of tradition, in order to repeat themselves. Causes of error or causes of crime, the springs are far from being dried up. They always flow abundantly. It is necessary in [[175]]science to react against errors, and in society to react against crimes. But it must never be forgotten that every man is normally exposed to commit both errors and crimes.”[39]