756 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of crime — anthropological, physical, and social— laying stress on 

 the social causes that conduce to crime. As a reaction from the 

 aforenamed impression in Italy, Turati, Colajanni, and Battaglia 

 published in 1882 to 1884 pamphlets and volumes maintaining that 

 crime is an exclusively social phenomenon. I replied to Turati — 

 Crime and the Social Question — with the volumes on Socialism and 

 Criminality (1883), now out of print, where I combated: 1. Artis- 

 tic and romantic socialism while recognizing the fundamental truths 

 of scientific socialism. 2. The unilateral theory that crime is the 

 product only of social factors, and that, therefore, with time it must 

 certainly disappear. Continuing to maintain these two propositions, 

 even after my avowed adhesion to scientific socialism, it has come 

 about that in Italy this unilateral thesis has gradually become aban- 

 doned even by socialists. On the other hand, this thesis was taken up 

 again in 1885 at the congress in Rome, and above all in 1889 at 

 Paris, and in 1892 at Brussels by the French anthropological crimi- 

 nal socialists — Lacassagne, Tarde, Topinard, Coree, etc. — who suc- 

 ceeded in spreading the belief that there exists a French criminal an- 

 thropological school founded on the theory that the criminal is an 

 exclusively social phenomenon — a thesis that had, for the matter of 

 that, already been sustained in Italy by the socialists. It is thus that 

 was circulated among the international public, who can not read 

 Italian publications unless they are translated, the impression that 

 opposing the Italian school there was a French school; the former 

 maintaining the exclusively biological origin of the criminal, while 

 the latter regarded his genesis as exclusively social. The congress 

 at Geneva has cleared up this misunderstanding, which has lasted 

 too long. Crime is a phenomenon whose origin is both biological 

 and social. This is the final conclusion which the Italian school has 

 proclaimed since the beginning of its existence." 



It is noteworthy and also significant that almost all thought- 

 ful Italians who have dedicated themselves to the studies of an- 

 thropology in general and criminal anthropology in particular are 

 socialists in politics. Assiduous, dispassionate observation of man- 

 kind would seem to have brought them to this conclusion. A 

 leader in the Italian Parliament in this sense, as well as a 

 gifted criminal anthropologist, is Napoleone Colajanni, by original 

 profession a doctor, but now too absorbed in his political duties 

 to practice. Colajanni is by birth a Sicilian, and has much of 

 the quick, fiery temperament of these islanders, in whose veins 

 the blood courses hotly. A facile orator, his speeches always 

 command attention in Parliament, while his rigid, incorruptible 

 honesty makes him esteemed in a milieu of unscrupulous politi- 

 cians and wire-pullers. As philanthropist, as politician, he was 



