THE POSITIVE SCHOOL OF CRIMINOLOGY
Three Lectures
Given at the University of Naples, Italy on April 22, 23 and 24, 1901
By Enrico Ferri
Translated by Ernest Untermann
Chicago
Charles H. Kerr & Company
1908
THE POSITIVE SCHOOL OF CRIMINOLOGY
I.
My Friends:
When, in the turmoil of my daily occupation, I received an invitation,
several months ago, from several hundred students of this famous
university, to give them a brief summary, in short special lectures, of
the principal and fundamental conclusions of criminal sociology, I
gladly accepted, because this invitation fell in with two ideals of
mine. These two ideals are stirring my heart and are the secret of my
life. In the first place, this invitation chimed with the ideal of my
personal life, namely, to diffuse and propagate among my brothers the
scientific ideas, which my brain has accumulated, not through any merit
of mine, but thanks to the lucky prize inherited from my mother in the
lottery of life. And the second ideal which this invitation called up
before my mind's vision was this: The ideal of young people of Italy,
united in morals and intellectual pursuits, feeling in their social
lives the glow of a great aim. It would matter little whether this aim
would agree with my own ideas or be opposed to them, so long as it
should be an ideal which would lift the aspirations of the young people
out of the fatal grasp of egoistic interests. Of course, we positivists
know very well, that the material requirements of life shape and
determine also the moral and intellectual aims of human consciousness.
But positive science declares the following to be the indispensable
requirement for the regeneration of human ideals: Without an ideal,
neither an individual nor a collectivity can live, without it humanity
is dead or dying. For it is the fire of an ideal which renders the life
of each one of us possible, useful and fertile. And only by its help can
each one of us, in the more or less short course of his or her
existence, leave behind traces for the benefit of fellow-beings. The
invitation extended to me proves that the students of Naples believe in
the inspiring existence of such an ideal of science, and are anxious to
learn more about ideas, with which the entire world of the present day
is occupied, and whose life-giving breath enters even through the
windows of the dry courtrooms, when their doors are closed against it.
* * * * *
Let us now speak of this new science, which has become known in Italy by
the name of the Positive School of Criminology. This science, the same
as every other phenomenon of scientific evolution, cannot be
shortsightedly or conceitedly attributed to the arbitrary initiative of
this or that thinker, this or that scientist. We must rather regard it
as a natural product, a necessary phenomenon, in the development of that
sad and somber department of science which deals with the disease of
crime. It is this plague of crime which forms such a gloomy and painful
contrast with the splendor of present-day civilization. The 19th century
has won a great victory over mortality and infectious diseases by means
of the masterful progress of physiology and natural science. But while
contagious diseases have gradually diminished, we see on the other hand
that moral diseases are growing more numerous in our so-called
civilization. While typhoid fever, smallpox, cholera and diphtheria
retreated before the remedies which enlightened science applied by means
of the experimental method, removing their concrete causes, we see on
the other hand that insanity, suicide and crime, that painful trinity,
are growing apace. And this makes it very evident that the science which
is principally, if not exclusively, engaged in studying these phenomena
of social disease, should feel the necessity of finding a more exact
diagnosis of these moral diseases of society, in order to arrive at some
effective and more humane remedy, which should more victoriously combat
this somber trinity of insanity, suicide and crime.
The science of positive criminology arose in the last quarter of the
19th century, as a result of this strange contrast, which would be
inexplicable, if we could not discover historical and scientific reasons
for its existence. And it is indeed a strange contrast that Italy should
have arrived at a perfect theoretical development of a classical school
of criminology, while there persists, on the other hand, the disgraceful
condition that criminality assumes dimensions never before observed in
this country, so that the science of criminology cannot stem the tide of
crime in high and low circles. It is for this reason, that the positive
school of criminology arises out of the very nature of things, the same
as every other line of science. It is based on the conditions of our
daily life. It would indeed be conceited on our part to claim that we,
who are the originators of this new science and its new conclusions,
deserve alone the credit for its existence. The brain of the scientist
is rather a sort of electrical accumulator, which feels and assimilates
the vibrations and heart-beats of life, its splendor and its shame, and
derives therefrom the conviction that it must of necessity provide for
definite social wants. And on the other hand, it would be an evidence of
intellectual short-sightedness on the part of the positivist man of
science, if he did not recognize the historical accomplishments, which
his predecessors on the field of science have left behind as indelible
traces of their struggle against the unknown in that brilliant and
irksome domain. For this reason, the adherents of the positive school of
criminology feel the most sincere reverence for the classic school of
criminology. And I am glad today, in accepting the invitation of the
students of Naples, to say, that this is another reason why their
invitation was welcome to me. It is now 16 years since I gave in this
same hall a lecture on positive criminology, which was then in its
initial stages. It was in 1885, when I had the opportunity to outline
the first principles of the positive school of criminology, at the
invitation of other students, who preceded you on the periodic waves of
the intellectual generations. And the renewal of this opportunity gave
me so much moral satisfaction that, I could not under any circumstances
decline your invitation. Then too, the Neapolitan Atheneum has
maintained the reputation of the Italian mind in the 19th century, also
in that science which even foreign scientists admit to be our specialty,
namely the science of criminology. In fact, aside from the two terrible
books of the Digest, and from the practical criminologists of the Middle
Ages who continued the study of criminality, the modern world opened a
glorious page in the progress of criminal science with the modest little
book of Cesare Beccaria. This progress leads from Cesare Beccaria, by
way of Francesco Carrara, to Enrico Pessina.
Enrico Pessina alone remains of the two giants who concluded the cycle
of classic school of criminology. In a lucid moment of his scientific
consciousness, which soon reverted to the old abstract and metaphysical
theories, he announced in an introductory statement in 1879, that
criminal justice would have to rejuvenate itself in the pure bath of the
natural sciences and substitute in place of abstraction the living and
concrete study of facts. Naturally every scientist has his function and
historical significance; and we cannot expect that a brain which has
arrived at the end of its career should turn towards a new direction. At
any rate, it is a significant fact that this most renowned
representative of the classic school of criminology should have pointed
out this need of his special science in this same university of Naples,
one year after the inauguration of the positive school of criminology,
that he should have looked forward to a time when the study of natural
and positive facts would set to rights the old juridical abstractions.
And there is still another precedent in the history of this university,
which makes scientific propaganda at this place very agreeable for a
positivist. It is that six years before that introductory statement by
Pessina, Giovanni Bovio gave lectures at this university, which he
published later on under the title of "A Critical Study of Criminal
Law." Giovanni Bovio performed in this monograph the function of a
critic, but the historical time of his thought, prevented him from
taking part in the construction of a new science. However, he prepared
the ground for new ideas, by pointing out all the rifts and weaknesses
of the old building. Bovio maintained that which Gioberti, Ellero,
Conforti, Tissol had already maintained, namely that it is impossible to
solve the problem which is still the theoretical foundation of the
classic school of criminology, the problem of the relation between
punishment and crime. No man, no scientist, no legislator, no judge, has
ever been able to indicate any absolute standard, which would enable us
to say that equity demands a definite punishment for a definite crime.
We can find some opportunistic expedient, but not a solution of the
problem. Of course, if we could decide which is the gravest crime, then
we could also decide on the heaviest sentence and formulate a descending
scale which would establish the relative fitting proportions between
crime and punishment. If it is agreed that patricide is the gravest
crime, we meet out the heaviest sentence, death or imprisonment for
life, and then we can agree on a descending scale of crime and on a
parallel scale of punishments. But the problem begins right with the
first stone of the structure, not with the succeeding steps. Which is
the greatest penalty proportional to the crime of patricide? Neither
science, nor legislation, nor moral consciousness, can offer an absolute
standard. Some say: The greatest penalty is death. Others say: No,
imprisonment for life. Still others say: Neither death, nor imprisonment
for life, but only imprisonment for a time. And if imprisonment for a
time is to be the highest penalty, how many years shall it last
--thirty, or twenty-five, or ten?
No man can set up any absolute standard in this matter. Giovanni Bovio
thus arrived at the conclusion that this internal contradiction in the
science of criminology was the inevitable fate of human justice, and
that this justice, struggling in the grasp of this internal
contradiction, must turn to the civil law and ask for help in its
weakness. The same thought had already been illumined by a ray from the
bright mind of Filangieri, who died all too soon. And we can derive from
this fact the historical rule that the most barbarian conditions of
humanity show a prevalence of a criminal code which punishes without
healing; and that the gradual progress of civilization will give rise
to the opposite conception of healing without punishing.
Thus it happens that this university of Naples, in which the illustrious
representative of the classic school of criminology realized the
necessity of its regeneration, and in which Bovio foresaw its sterility,
has younger teachers now who keep alive the fire of the positivist
tendency in criminal science, such as Penta, Zuccarelli, and others,
whom you know. Nevertheless I feel that this faculty of jurisprudence
still lacks oxygen in the study of criminal law, because its thought is
still influenced by the overwhelming authority of the name of Enrico
Pessina. And it is easy to understand that there, where the majestic
tree spreads out its branches towards the blue vault, the young plant
feels deprived of light and air, while it might have grown strong and
beautiful in another place.
The positive school of criminology, then, was born in our own Italy
through the singular attraction of the Italian mind toward the study of
criminology; and its birth is also due to the peculiar condition our
country with its great and strange contrast between the theoretical
doctrines and the painful fact of an ever increasing criminality.
The positive school of criminology was inaugurate by the work of Cesare
Lombroso, in 1872. From 1872 to 1876 he opened a new way for the study
of criminality by demonstrating in his own person that we must first
understand the criminal who offends, before we can study and understand
his crime. Lombroso studied the prisoners in the various penitentiaries
of Italy from the point of view of anthropology. And he compiled his
studies in the reports of the Lombardian Institute of Science and
Literature, and published them later together in his work "Criminal
Man." The first edition of this work (1876) remained almost unnoticed,
either because its scientific material was meager, or because Cesare
Lombroso had not yet drawn any general scientific conclusions, which
could have attracted the attention of the world of science and law. But
simultaneously with its second edition (1878) there appeared two
monographs, which constituted the embryo of the new school,
supplementing the anthropological studies of Lombroso with conclusions
and systematizations from the point of view of sociology and law.
Raffaele Garofalo published in the Neapolitan Journal of Philosophy and
Literature an essay on criminality, in which he declared that the
dangerousness of the criminal was the criterion by which society should
measure the function of its defense against the disease of crime. And in
the same year, 1878, I took occasion to publish a monograph on the
denial of free will and personal responsibility, in which I declared
frankly that from now on the science of crime and punishment must look
for the fundamental facts of a science of social defense against crime
in the human and social life itself. The simultaneous publication of
these three monographs caused a stir. The teachers of classic
criminology, who had taken kindly to the recommendations of Pessina and
Ellero, urging them to study the natural sources of crime, met the new
ideas with contempt, when the new methods made a determined and radical
departure, and became not only the critics, but the zealous opponents of
the new theories. And this is easy to understand. For the struggle for
existence is an irresistible law of nature, as well for the thousands of
germs scattered to the winds by the oak, as for the ideas which grow in
the brain of man. But persecutions, calumnies, criticisms, and
opposition are powerless against an idea, if it carries within itself
the germ of truth. Moreover, we should look upon this phenomenon of a
repugnance in the average intellect (whether of the ordinary man or the
scientist) for all new ideas as a natural function. For when the brain
of some man has felt the light of a new idea, a sneering criticism
serves us a touchstone for it. If the idea is wrong, it will fall by the
wayside; if it is right, then criticisms, opposition and persecution
will cull the golden kernel from the unsightly shell, and the idea will
march victoriously over everything and everybody. It is so in all walks
of life--in art, in politics, in science. Every new idea will rouse
against itself naturally and inevitably the opposition of the accustomed
thoughts. This is so true, that when Cesare Beccaria opened the great
historic cycle of the classic school of criminology, he was assaulted by
the critics of his time with the same indictments which were brought
against us a century later.
When Cesare Beccaria printed his book on crime and penalties in 1774
under a false date and place of publication, reflecting the aspirations
which gave rise to the impending hurricane of the French revolution;
when he hurled himself against all that was barbarian in the mediaeval
laws and set loose a storm of enthusiasm among the encyclopedists, and
even some of the members of government, in France, he was met by a wave
of opposition, calumny and accusation on the part of the majority of
jurists, judges and lights of philosophy. The abbé Jachinci published
four volumes against Beccaria, calling him the destroyer of justice and
morality, simply because he had combatted the tortures and the death
penalty.
The tortures, which we incorrectly ascribe to the mental brutality of
the judges of those times, were but a logical consequence of the
contemporaneous theories. It was felt that in order to condemn a man,
one must have the certainty of his guilty, and it was said that the best
means of obtaining tins certainty, the queen of proofs, was the
confession of the criminal. And if the criminal denied his guilt, it was
necessary to have recourse to torture, in order to force him to a
confession which he withheld from fear of the penalty. The torture
soothed, so to say, the conscience of the judge, who was free to condemn
as soon as he had obtained a confession. Cesare Beccaria rose with
others against the torture. Thereupon the judges and jurists protested
that penal justice would be impossible, because it could not get any
information, since a man suspected of a crime would not confess his
guilt voluntarily. Hence they accused Beccaria of being the protector of
robbers and murderers, because he wanted to abolish the only means of
compelling them to a confession, the torture. But Cesare Beccaria had on
his side the magic power of truth. He was truly the electric accumulator
of his time, who gathered from its atmosphere the presage of the coming
revolution, the stirring of the human conscience. You can find a similar
illustration in the works of Daquin in Savoy, of Pinel in France, and of
Hach Take in England, who strove to bring about a revolution in the
treatment of the insane. This episode interests us especially, because
it is a perfect illustration of the way traveled by the positive school
of criminology. The insane were likewise considered to blame for their
insanity. At the dawn of the 19th century, the physician Hernroth still
wrote that insanity was a moral sin of the insane, because "no one
becomes insane, unless he forsakes the straight path of virtue and of
the fear of the Lord."
And on this assumption the insane were locked up in horrible dungeons,
loaded down with chains, tortured and beaten, for lo! their insanity was
their own fault.
At that period, Pinel advanced the revolutionary idea that insanity was
not a sin, but a disease like all other diseases. This idea is now a
commonplace, but in his time it revolutionized the world. It seemed as
though this innovation inaugurated by Pinel would overthrow the world
and the foundations of society. Well, two years before the storming of
the Bastile Pinel walked into the sanitarium of the Salpetriere and
committed the brave act of freeing the insane of the chains that weighed
them down. He demonstrated in practice that the insane, when freed of
their chains, became quieter, instead of creating wild disorder and
destruction. This great revolution of Pinel, Chiarugi, and others,
changed the attitude of the public mind toward the insane. While
formerly insanity had been regarded as a moral sin, the public
conscience, thanks to the enlightening work of science, henceforth had
to adapt itself to the truth that insanity is a disease like all
others, that a man does not become insane because he wants to, but that
he becomes insane through hereditary transmission and the influence of
the environment in which he lives, being predisposed toward insanity and
becoming insane under the pressure of circumstances.
The positive school of criminology accomplished the same revolution in
the views concerning the treatment of criminals that the above named men
of science accomplished for the treatment of the insane. The general
opinion of classic criminalists and of the people at large is that crime
involves a moral guilt, because it is due to the free will of the
individual who leaves the path of virtue and chooses the path of crime,
and therefore it must be suppressed by meeting it with a proportionate
quantity of punishment. This is to this day the current conception of
crime. And the illusion of a free human will (the only miraculous factor
in the eternal ocean of cause and effect) leads to the assumption that
one can choose freely between virtue and vice. How can you still believe
in the existence of a free will, when modern psychology armed with all
the instruments of positive modern research, denies that there is any
free will and demonstrates that every act of a human being is the
result of an interaction between the personality and the environment of
man?
And how is it possible to cling to that obsolete idea of moral guilt,
according to which every individual is supposed to have the free choice
to abandon virtue and give himself up to crime? The positive school of
criminology maintains, on the contrary, that it is not the criminal who
wills; in order to be a criminal it is rather necessary that the
individual should find himself permanently or transitorily in such
personal, physical and moral conditions, and live in such an
environment, which become for him a chain of cause and effect,
externally and internally, that disposes him toward crime. This is our
conclusion, which I anticipate, and it constitutes the vastly different
and opposite method, which the positive school of criminology employs as
compared to the leading principle of the classic school of criminal
science.
In this method, this essential principle of the positive school of
criminology, you will find another reason for the seemingly slow advance
of this school. That is very natural. If you consider the great reform
carried by the ideas of Cesare Beccaria into the criminal justice of
the Middle Age, you will see that the great classic school represents
but a small step forward, because it leaves the penal justice on the
same theoretical and practical basis which it had in the Middle Age and
in classic antiquity, that is to say, based on the idea of a moral
responsibility of the individual. For Beccaria, for Carrara, for their
predecessors, this idea is no more nor less than that mentioned in books
47 and 48 of the Digest: "The criminal is liable to punishment to the
extent that he is morally guilty of the crime he has committed." The
entire classic school is, therefore, nothing but a series of reforms.
Capital punishment has been abolished in some countries, likewise
torture, confiscation, corporal punishment. But nevertheless the immense
scientific movement of the classic school has remained a mere reform.
It has continued in the 19th century to look upon crime in the same way
that the Middle Age did: "Whoever commits murder or theft, is alone the
absolute arbiter to decide whether he wants to commit the crime or not."
This remains the foundation of the classic school of criminology. This
explains why it could travel on its way more rapidly than the positive
school of criminology. And yet, it took half a century from the time of
Beccaria, before the penal codes showed signs of the reformatory
influence of the classic school of criminology. So that it has also
taken quite a long time to establish it so well that it became accepted
by general consent, as it is today. The positive school of criminology
was born in 1878, and although it does not stand for a mere reform of
the methods of criminal justice, but for a complete and fundamental
transformation of criminal justice itself, it has already gone quite a
distance and made considerable conquests which begin to show in our
country. It is a fact that the penal code now in force in this country
represents a compromise, so far as the theory of personal responsibility
is concerned, between the old theory of free will and the conclusions of
the positive school which denies this free will.
You can find an illustration of this in the eloquent contortions of
phantastic logic in the essays on the criminal code written by a great
advocate of the classic school of criminology, Mario Pagano, this
admirable type of a scientist and patriot, who does not lock himself up
in the quiet egoism of his study, but feels the ideal of his time
stirring within him and gives up his life to it. He has written three
lines of a simple nudity that reveals much, in which he says: "A man is
responsible for the crimes which he commits; if, in committing a crime,
his will is half free, he is responsible to the extent of one-half; if
one-third, he is responsible one-third." There you have the
uncompromising and absolute classic theorem. But in the penal code of
1890, you will find that the famous article 45 intends to base the
responsibility for a crime on the simple will, to the exclusion of the
free will. However, the Italian judge has continued to base the exercise
of penal justice on the supposed existence of the free will, and
pretends not to know that the number of scientists denying the free will
is growing. Now, how is it possible that so terrible an office as that
of sentencing criminals retains its stability or vacillates, according
to whether the first who denies the existence of a free will deprives
this function of its foundation?
Truly, it is said that this question has been too difficult for the new
Italian penal code. And, for this reason, it was thought best to base
the responsibility for a crime on the idea that a man is guilty simply
for the reason that he wanted to commit the crime; and that he is not
responsible if he did not want to commit it. But this is an eclectic way
out of the difficulty, which settles nothing, for in the same code we
have the rule that involuntary criminals are also punished, so that
involuntary killing and wounding are punished with imprisonment the same
as voluntary deeds of this kind. We have heard it said in such cases
that the result may not have been intended, but the action bringing it
about was. If a hunter shoots through a hedge and kills or wounds a
person, he did not intend to kill, and yet he is held responsible
because his first act, the shooting, was voluntary.
That statement applies to involuntary crimes, which are committed by
some positive act. But what about involuntary crimes of omission? In a
railway station, where the movements of trains represent the daily whirl
of traffic in men, things, and ideas, every switch is a delicate
instrument which may cause a derailment. The railway management places a
switchman on duty at this delicate post. But in a moment of fatigue, or
because he had to work inhumanly long hours of work, which exhausted all
his nervous elasticity, or for other reasons, the switchman forgets to
set the switch and causes a railroad accident, in which people are
killed and wounded. Can it be said that he intended the first act?
Assuredly not, for he did not intend anything and did not do anything.
The hunter who fires a shot has at least had the intention of shooting.
But the switchman did not want to forget (for in that case he would be
indirectly to blame); he has simply forgotten from sheer fatigue to do
his duty; he has had no intention whatever, and yet you hold him
responsible in spite of all that! The fundamental logic of your
reasoning in this case corresponds to the logic of the things. Does it
not happen every day in the administration of justice that the judges
forget about the neutral expedient of the legislator who devised this
relative progress of the penal code, which pretends to base the
responsibility of a man on the neutral and naive criterion of a will
without freedom of will? Do they not follow their old mental habits in
the administration of justice and apply the obsolete criterion of the
free will, which the legislator thought fit to abandon? We see, then,
as a result of this imperfect and insincere innovation in penal
legislation this flagrant contradiction, that the magistrates assume the
existence of a free will, while the legislator has decided that it shall
not be assumed. Now, in science as well as in legislation, we should
follow a direct and logical line, such as that of the classic school or
the positive school of criminology. But whoever thinks he has solved a
problem when he gives us a solution which is neither fish nor fowl,
comes to the most absurd and iniquitous conclusions. You see what
happens every day. If to-morrow some beastly and incomprehensible crime
is committed, the conscience of the judge is troubled by this question:
Was the person who committed this crime morally free to act or not? He
may also invoke the help of legislation, and he may take refuge in
article 46,[A] or in that compromise of article 47,[B] which admits
a responsibility of one-half or one-third, and he would decide on a
penalty of one-half or one-third.
All this may take place in the case of a grave and strange crime. And on
the other hand, go to the municipal courts or to the police courts,
where the magic lantern of justice throws its rays upon the nameless
human beings who have stolen a bundle of wood in a hard winter, or who
have slapped some one in the face during a brawl in a saloon.
And if they should find a defending lawyer who would demand the
appointment of a medical expert, watch the reception he would get from
the judge. When justice is surprised by a beastly and strange crime, it
feels the entire foundation of its premises shaking, it halts for a
moment, it calls in the help of legal medicine, and reflects before it
sentences. But in the case of those poor nameless creatures, justice
does not stop to consider whether that microbe in the criminal world who
steals under the influence of hereditary or acquired degeneration, or in
the delirium of chronic hunger, is not worthy of more pity. It rather
replies with a mephistophelian grin when he begs for a humane
understanding of his case.
[A] Article 46: "A person is not subject to punishment, if at the moment
of his deed he was in a mental condition which deprived him of
consciousness or of the freedom of action. But if the judge considers it
dangerous to acquit the prisoner, he has to transfer him to the care of
the proper authorities, who will take the necessary precautions."
[B] Article 47: "If the mental condition mentioned in the foregoing
article was such as to considerably decrease the responsibility, without
eliminating it entirely, the penalty fixed upon the crime committed is
reduced according to the following rules:
"I. In place of penitentiary, imprisonment for not less than six years.
"II. In place of the permanent loss of civic rights, a loss of these
rights for a stipulated time.
"III. Whenever it is a question of a penalty of more than twelve years,
it is reduced to from three to ten years; if of more than six years, but
not more than twelve, it is reduced to from one to five years; in other
cases, the reduction is to be one-half of the ordinary penalty.
"IV. A fine is reduced to one-half.
"V. If the penalty would be a restriction of personal liberty, the judge
may order the prisoner to a workhouse, until the proper authorities
object, when the remainder of the sentence is carried out in the usual
manner."
It is true that there is now and then in those halls of justice, which
remain all too frequently closed to the living wave of public sentiment,
some more intelligent and serene judge who is touched by this painful
understanding of the actual human life. Then he may, under the illogical
conditions of penal justice, with its compromise between the exactness
of the classic and that of the positive school of criminology, seek for
some expedient which may restore him to equanimity.
In 1832, France introduced a penal innovation, which seemed to represent
an advance on the field of justice, but which is in reality a denial of
justice: The expedient of _extenuating circumstances_. The judge does
not ask for the advice of the court physician in the case of some
forlorn criminal, but condemns him without a word of rebuke to society
for its complicity. But in order to assuage his own conscience he grants
him extenuating circumstances, which seem a concession of justice, but
are, in reality, a denial of justice. For you either believe that a man
is responsible for his crime, and in that case the concession of
extenuating circumstances is a hypocrisy; or you grant them in good
faith, and then you admit that the man was in circumstances which
reduced his moral responsibility, and thereby the extenuating
circumstances become a denial of justice. For if your conviction
concerning such circumstances were sincere, you would go to the bottom
of them and examine with the light of your understanding all those
innumerable conditions which contribute toward those extenuating
circumstances. But what are those extenuating circumstances? Family
conditions? Take it that a child is left alone by its parents, who are
swallowed up in the whirl of modern industry, which overthrows the laws
of nature and forbids the necessary rest, because steam engines do not
get tired and day work must be followed by night work, so that the
setting of the sun is no longer the signal for the laborer to rest, but
to begin a new shift of work. Take it that this applies not alone to
adults, but also to human beings in the growing stage, whose muscular
power may yield some profit for the capitalists. Take it that even the
mother, during the period of sacred maternity, becomes a cog in the
machinery of industry. And you will understand that the child must grow
up, left to its own resources, in the filth of life, and that its
history will be inscribed in criminal statistics, which are the shame of
our so-called civilization.
Of course, in this first lecture I cannot give you even a glimpse of the
positive results of that modern science which has studied the criminal
and his environment instead of his crimes. And I must, therefore, limit
myself to a few hints concerning the historical origin of the positive
school of criminology. I ought to tell you something concerning the
question of free will. But you will understand that such a momentous
question, which is worthy of a deep study of the many-sided physical,
moral, intellectual life, cannot be summed up in a few short words. I
can only say that the tendency of modern natural sciences, in physiology
as well as psychology, has overruled the illusions of those who would
fain persist in watching psychological phenomena merely within
themselves and think that they can understand them without any other
means. On the contrary, positive science, backed by the testimony of
anthropology and of the study of the environment, has arrived at the
following conclusions: The admission of a free will is out of the
question. For if the free will is but an illusion of our internal being,
it is not a real faculty possessed by the human mind. Free will would
imply that the human will, confronted by the choice of making
voluntarily a certain determination, has the last decisive word under
the pressure of circumstances contending for and against this decision;
that it is free to decide for or against a certain course independently
of internal and external circumstances, which play upon it, according to
the laws of cause and effect.
Take it that a man has insulted me. I leave the place in which I have
been insulted, and with me goes the suggestion of forgiveness or of
murder and vengeance. And then it is assumed that a man has his complete
free will, unless he is influenced by circumstances explicitly
enumerated by the law, such as minority, congenital deaf-muteness,
insanity, habitual drunkenness and, to a certain extent, violent
passion. If a man is not in a condition mentioned in this list, he is
considered in possession of his free will, and if he murders he is held
morally responsible and therefore punished.
This illusion of a free will has its source in our inner consciousness,
and is due solely to the ignorance in which we find ourselves concerning
the various motives and different external and internal conditions which
press upon our mind at the moment of decision.
If a man knows the principal causes which determine a certain
phenomenon, he says that this phenomenon is inevitable. If he does not
know them, he considers it as an accident, and this corresponds in the
physical field to the arbitrary phenomenon of the human will which does
not know whether it shall decide this way or that. For instance, some of
us were of the opinion, and many still are, that the coming and going of
meteorological phenomena was accidental and could not he foreseen. But
in the meantime, science has demonstrated that they are likewise subject
to the law of causality, because it discovered the causes which enable
us to foresee their course. Thus weather prognosis has made wonderful
progress by the help of a network of telegraphically connected
meteorological stations, which succeeded in demonstrating the connection
between cause and effect in the case of hurricanes, as well as of any
other physical phenomenon. It is evident that the idea of accident,
applied to physical nature, is unscientific. Every physical phenomenon
is the necessary effect of the causes that determined it beforehand. If
those causes are known to us, we have the conviction that that
phenomenon is necessary, is fate, and, if we do not know them, we think
it is accidental. The same is true of human phenomena. But since we do
not know the internal and external causes in the majority of cases, we
pretend that they are free phenomena, that is to say, that they are not
determined necessarily by their causes. Hence the spiritualistic
conception of the free will implies that every human being, in spite of
the fact that their internal and external conditions are necessarily
predetermined, should be able to come to a deliberate decision by the
mere fiat of his or her free will, so that, even though the sum of all
the causes demands a no, he or she can decide in favor of yes, and vice
versa. Now, who is there that thinks, when deliberating some action,
what are the causes that determine his choice? We can justly say that
the greater part of our actions are determined by habit, that we make up
our minds almost from custom, without considering the reason for or
against. When we get up in the morning we go about our customary
business quite automatically, we perform it as a function in which we do
not think of a free will. We think of that only in unusual and grave
cases, when we are called upon to make some special choice, the
so-called voluntary deliberation, and then we weigh the reasons for or
against; we ponder, we hesitate what to do. Well, even in such cases, so
little depends on our will in the deliberations which we are about to
take that if any one were to ask us one minute before we have decided
what we are going to do, we should not know what we were going to
decide. So long as we are undecided, we cannot foresee what we are going
to decide; for under the conditions in which we live that part of the
psychic process takes place outside of our consciousness. And since we
do not know its causes, we cannot tell what will be its effects. Only
after we have come to a certain decision can we imagine that it was due
to our voluntary action. But shortly before we could not tell, and that
proves that it did not depend on us alone. Suppose, for instance, that
you have decided to play a joke on a fellow-student, and that you carry
it out. He takes it unkindly. You are surprised, because that is
contrary to his habits and your expectations. But after a while you
learn that your friend had received bad news from home on the preceding
morning and was therefore not in a condition to feel like joking, and
then you say: "If we had known that we should not have decided to spring
the joke on him." That is equivalent to saying that, if the balance of
your will had been inclined toward the deciding motive of no, you would
have decided no; but not knowing that your friend was distressed and not
in his habitual frame of mind, you decided in favor of yes. This
sentence: "If I had known this I should not have done that" is an outcry
of our internal consciousness, which denies the existence of a free
will.
On the other hand, nothing is created and nothing destroyed either in
matter or in force, because both matter and force are eternal and
indestructible. They transform themselves in the most diversified
manner, but not an atom is added or taken away, not one vibration more
or less takes place. And so if is the force of external and internal
circumstances which determines the decision of our will at any given
moment. The idea of a free will, however, is a denial of the law of
cause and effect, both in the field of philosophy and theology. Saint
Augustine and Martin Luther furnish irrefutable theological arguments
for the denial of a free will. The omnipotence of God is irreconcilable
with the idea of free will. If everything that happens does so because a
superhuman and omnipotent power wants it _(Not a single leaf falls to
the ground without the will of God)_, how can a son murder his father
without the permission and will of God? For this reason Saint Augustine
and Martin Luther have written _de servo arbitrio_.
But since theological arguments serve only those who believe in the
concept of a god, which is not given to us by science, we take recourse
to the laws which we observe in force and matter, and to the law of
causality. If modern science has discovered the universal link which
connects all phenomena through cause and effect, which shows that every
phenomenon is the result of causes which have preceded it; if this is
the law of causality, which is at the very bottom of modern scientific
thought, then it is evident that the admission of free thought is
equivalent to an overthrow of this law, according to which every effect
is proportionate to its cause. In that case, this law, which reigns
supreme in the entire universe, would dissolve itself into naught at
the feet of the human being, who would create effects with his free will
not corresponding to their causes! It was all right to think so at a
time when people had an entirely different idea of human beings. But the
work of modern science, and its effect on practical life, has resulted
in tracing the relations of each one of us with the world and with our
fellow beings. And the influence of science may be seen in the
elimination of great illusions which in former centuries swayed this or
that part of civilized humanity. The scientific thought of Copernicus
and Galilei did away with the illusions which led people to believe that
the earth was the center of the universe and of creation.
Take Cicero's book _de Officiís_, or the _Divina Commedia_ of Dante, and
you will find that to them the earth is the center of creation, that the
infinite stars circle around it, and that man is the king of animals: a
geocentric and anthropocentric illusion inspired by immeasurable
conceit. But Copernicus and Galilei came and demonstrated that the earth
does not stand still, but that it is a grain of cosmic matter hurled
into blue infinity and rotating since time unknown around its central
body, the sun, which originated from an immense primitive nebula.
Galilei was subjected to tortures by those who realized that this new
theory struck down many a religious legend and many a moral creed. But
Galilei had spoken the truth, and nowadays humanity no longer indulges
in the illusion that the earth is the center of creation.
But men live on illusions and give way but reluctantly to the progress
of science, in order to devote themselves arduously to the ideal of the
new truths which rise out of the essence of things of which mankind is a
part. After the geocentric illusion had been destroyed, the
anthropocentric illusion still remained. On earth, man was still
supposed to be king of creation, the center of terrestrial life. All
Species of animals, plants and minerals were supposed to be created
expressly for him, and to have had from time immemorial the forms which
we see now, so that the fauna and flora living on our planet have always
been what they are today. And Cicero, for instance, said that the
heavens were placed around the earth and man in order that he might
admire the beauty of the starry firmament at night, and that animals
and plants were created for his use and pleasure. But in 1856 Charles
Darwin came and, summarizing the results of studies that had been
carried on for a century, destroyed in the name of science the superb
illusion that man is the king and center of creation. He demonstrated,
amid the attacks and calumnies of the lovers of darkness, that man is
not the king of creation, but merely the last link of the zoological
chain, that nature is endowed with eternal energies by which animal and
plant life, the same as mineral life (for even in crystals the laws of
life are at work), are transformed from the invisible microbe to the
highest form, man.
The anthropocentric illusion rebelled against the word of Darwin,
accusing him of lowering the human life to the level of the dirt or of
the brute. But a disciple of Darwin gave the right answer, while
propagating the Darwinian theory at the university of Jena. It was
Haeckel, who concluded: "For my part, and so far as my human
consciousness is concerned, I prefer to be an immensely perfected ape
rather than to be a degenerated and debased Adam."
Gradually the anthropocentric illusion has been compelled to give way
before the results of science, and today the theories of Darwin have
become established among our ideas. But another illusion still remains,
and science, working in the name of reality, will gradually eliminate
it, namely the illusion that the nineteenth century has established a
permanent order of society. While the geocentric and anthropocentric
illusions have been dispelled, the illusion of the immobility and
eternity of classes still persists. But it is well to remember that in
Holland in the sixteenth century, in England in the seventeenth, in
Europe since the revolution of 1789, we have seen that freedom of
thought in science, literature and art, for which the bourgeoisie
fought, triumphed over the tyranny of the mediaeval dogma. And this
condition, instead of being a glorious but transitory stage, is supposed
to be the end of the development of humanity, which is henceforth
condemned not to perfect itself any more by further changes. This is the
illusion which serves as a fundamental argument against the positive
school of criminology, since it is claimed that a penal justice
enthroned on the foundations of Beccaria and Carrara would be a
revolutionary heresy. It is also this illusion which serves as an
argument against those who draw the logical consequences in regard to
the socialistic future of humanity, for the science which takes its
departure front the work of Copernicus, Galilei and Darwin arrives
logically at socialism. Socialism is but the natural and physical
transformation of the economic and social institutions. Of course, so
long as the geocentric and anthropocentric illusions dominate, it is
natural that the lore of stability should impress itself upon science
and life. How could this living atom, which the human being is,
undertake to change that order of creation, which makes of the earth the
center of the universe and of man the center of life? Not until science
had introduced the conception of a natural formation and transformation,
of the solar system, as well as of the fauna and flora, did the human
mind grasp the idea that thought and action can transform the world.