IV.
P. Näcke.[16]
In his work, “Verbrechen und Wahnsinn beim Weibe”, Dr. Näcke treats the criminal question from the medico-anthropological point of view. However, his remarks upon the connection which exists between economic conditions and crime are very important. In the fifth chapter, entitled, “Die anthropologisch-biologischen Beziehungen zum Verbrechen und Wahnsinn beim Weibe”, he puts the question: can one fix the idea of “crime” anatomically?
According to him the answer must be an absolute negative. “Semal is right when he says: ‘The moral sense is a slow and gradual acquisition of the ages.… The conscience of peoples like that of the individual, calls every act moral that is useful to the agent himself or to others.…’ Every people, then, fixes the concept ‘crime’ according to the moral code prevailing among them at the time; it is consequently not rooted in man physiologically, but is as Manouvrier brilliantly demonstrates, purely sociological. It is therefore really nonsense to seek for anthropological stigmata for a sociological concept.
“But another consideration also leads us to the same result. The stability of a people demands the establishing of certain boundaries, called ‘laws’, the transgression of which might disturb the social order, and therefore must be punished. But the laws form only single boundary marks, not a tight enclosure, so that between them many, consciously or not, pass through without being caught or [[191]]punished. Besides, the laws of a higher morality do not always correspond with the prevailing legal system, so that many things are offenses in the eyes of the moral code that are not such in the eyes of the law, a fact which, as is well known, the conscienceless take advantage of. It is plain, therefore, that there are innumerable transgressions that are not punished, innumerable criminals who pass as honest men, so that we cannot really speak of criminals and honest men, but simply of the punished and the unpunished.
“Punishment is, however, as we have already seen, a poor criterion. Habitual criminals are often not nearly so depraved as many persons of good reputation, especially in certain districts whose moral concepts are of a very elastic kind; or as others who have, to be sure, been punished but once, but who, in all their actions, have always been crafty criminals.”[17]
“As there is to be found no such thing as absolute bodily and mental soundness, so there is no such thing as an absolutely ‘honest’ man. ‘We are altogether sinners’, say the Scriptures with entire truth—and not in thought only—none of us is proof against becoming a criminal, and under certain circumstances, even a great one.”[18]
“There is an unbroken gradation from the purest to the worst man. When we speak simply of ‘criminals’ we mean only those standing on the farthest step, who are not always, however, the worst. It is a question, then, of the refuse of the world, and not of real crime. In every environment there are always individuals who become evil-doers exclusively or chiefly through circumstances—this possibility no mortal can escape—and on the other hand there are those who owe this in part (seldom, however, exclusively) to their inferior psychic personality, which allows them to run counter to the prevailing morality and drives them to breach of the law; these last constitute the criminals in the narrow sense.”[19]
In chapter VI, “Zusammenhang von Verbrechen und Wahnsinn”, the author explains that in case an individual factor exists, it is not ordinarily this alone that leads to crime, but it must be coupled with a social factor.