If we ask what the active anarchists wish to attain by their crimes the answer is principally that they wish to avenge upon society the misery experienced by others and by themselves,[577] they wish to terrorize the ruling classes, in order to force upon them social reforms; they wish to set an example to the working classes and finally, they wish to satisfy their vanity, by making themselves talked of. Once committed, the crime is often the commencement of a vicious circle, since society avenges itself upon the author, who, in turn, is avenged by his friends; imitation thus leading to new crimes.
As in the case of all other crimes, I find for anarchism only social causes, and in the last analysis, only economic causes. To be sure, the individuals who commit these crimes are already predisposed in that direction, but this is true of other crimes also. Only the predisposition in these latter is simple, while that which leads to anarchistic crimes is much more complex. However, this predisposition alone explains nothing. I would ask those who think that only individual factors play any part, whether fanatical persons with [[655]]all the characteristics of the anarchists of our time have not been found in all ages and countries. Everyone, I think, will answer in the affirmative. Well then, anarchistic crimes have occurred only during a certain period and in certain countries. No one can deny that there are as many persons predisposed to anarchistic crimes in a country like Germany, as there are in Italy, for example. Yet anarchistic crimes do not occur in Germany, for the good reason that the material conditions of the proletariat there are so much better than in Italy, and the degree of intellectual development in the working people is so much higher; the German working-man derides the “naïveté” of the anarchists, and detests their futile crimes. It is in the environment alone then that we find the causes of active anarchism, the poverty and ignorance in which the lower classes live. [[656]]
CHAPTER VI.
PATHOLOGICAL CRIMES.
So far we have been examining crime in its relation to the economic and social environment. We have not been able to discover the existence of individual factors; the celebrated formula, “crime = individual factor + social factor,” has been shown to be incorrect if we are seeking for the causes of crime instead of asking why a certain individual has become a criminal. The conclusion obtained by sociology is the same as that arrived at in anthropology by authors like Manouvrier, Baer, and Näcke.
However, when one is trying to determine the cause of crime by sociology, certain cases are at times met with that cannot be explained in this way. For example, one person will steal useless objects which he is perfectly well able to buy; another will assault or kill without provocation, etc. These cases, it is true, are the exception, but they do exist and must not be neglected.[578] We have here, then, real individual factors, factors which are found in certain individuals only. Other crimes, forming the great majority, are committed from motives which form the basis of all human acts, but are stronger with some few than they are with the general body of mankind. It is these individuals who run more danger than most of committing a crime when they live in a certain environment. The great mass of criminals differ only quantitatively from persons who never get into the courts; the criminals we are about to consider on the other hand differ qualitatively also.
One thing more before we ask ourselves what this individual factor is. As many authors have remarked, it very often happens that, even in the cases we are about to treat, there is a social factor.[579] [[657]]The proof of this is that individuals thus disposed to crime, but belonging to the well-to-do classes, seldom get to the point of committing them; because their education being better, the tendency is sooner noticed, they are better watched, and thus their committing a crime is often avoided. Born-criminals, in the sense of those who become criminals whatever the circumstances may be (the only meaning that can properly be given to the word “born” here), are doubtless very rare.[580]
What, then, is the nature of this individual factor? It is especially the Italian school that has busied itself with this problem, and in doing so has rendered a service to science, although it has given an undue importance to this individual factor, attempting to discover it in all crimes. The first hypothesis given by Professor Lombroso was that of atavism, according to which the criminal was an individual in whom reappeared the characteristics of his remote ancestors, the desire to steal, kill, etc. It will not be far from the truth if we assert that almost no reputable scientist now accepts this hypothesis as correct. It has been attacked both from the side of sociology and from that of anthropology. Sociologists have proved that the facts contradict Professor Lombroso’s thesis, for primitive peoples are neither thieves nor murderers, and our ancestors, consequently, may be regarded as cleared of the same charge.[581]
Anthropologists also are strongly opposed to this hypothesis. In his article, “De geboren misdadiger” (the born-criminal) Professor Jelgersma says that most of the anomalies observed in certain criminals have no atavistic character, such as unsymmetrical eyes and ears, abnormal growth of hair, etc.[582] Dr. A. Baer makes the same remark in his “Der Verbrecher in anthropologischer Beziehung”, and goes on as follows: “The number of such abnormalities, which betray a disordered and an apparently genuine atavistic condition, is … so small and so accidental, that no force can be recognized in them that [[658]]might serve for the explanation of criminality, or establish a causal connection with the criminal nature of an individual. Out of this mixture of stigmata of the most various origin and importance, to attempt to find the sole basis in their atavistic character is to do more than permissible violence to the facts.[583]