This is what Dr. Näcke says of the causes of this individual factor: “Indeed it is even probable that in the last analysis the individual factor is dependent upon the environment, since this so influenced the parents, grandparents, etc. that the germ of the next generation must have been injured directly or later through corrupted blood [[192]]or narrow pelvis on the part of the mother (both again dependent upon the environment).”[20]
Further along he makes this idea more specific, when he is examining the different causes of crime. Among these causes the author cites the following:
- 1. Lesion of the germ (favored especially by the marriage of degenerates).
- 2. Alcoholism.
- 3. Syphilis.
- 4. Malnutrition and unhealthy mode of life.
- 5. Excessive labor of women and children.
- 6. Bad domestic life.
- 7. Desertion in which children under age are left.
The author sums up in the following terms: “In what has gone before we have attempted to pick out and follow up some threads of the complex social fabric, in the firm persuasion that only an improvement of the environment in its thousand-fold ramifications will be able effectively to combat crime, and gradually to exert a favorable influence upon the individual factors, which are certainly not to be undervalued.
“If we survey the whole matter, everything comes in the end to the stomach-question; only so long as this is not solved—and perhaps it never can be satisfactorily solved—must we keep the point of view given above practically before us, which, upon the solution of the matter, becomes in large measure no longer necessary.”[21]
V.
Havelock Ellis.[22]
The work of Dr. Havelock Ellis, entitled “The Criminal”, contains only one passage which is of importance for the question of [[193]]criminality considered from the economic point of view. Like most bio-sociologists he considers the social factors as the most important. This is the passage in question:
“The problem of criminality is not an isolated one that can be dealt with by fixing our attention on that and that alone. It is a problem that on closer view is found to merge itself very largely into all those problems of our social life that are now pressing for solution, and in settling them we shall to a great extent settle it. The rising flood of criminality is not an argument for pessimism or despair. It is merely an additional spur to that great task of social organization to which during the coming century we are called.