CRIMINAL ANTHROPOLOGY. 637 



The natural genesis of crime obeys a fundamental law by which all 

 crime is only the result of the simultaneous or indivisible concurrence 

 of the conditions of the individual, whether they be biologic or of the 

 surroundings where the individual was born, lived, and acted. 



Every crime, no matter who its author, no matter under what cir- 

 cumstances committed, can be explained iu one of two ways— either as 

 the act or fiat of the individual's free will or as the natural effect of 

 natural causes. The first of these explanations beiug without scientific 

 value, it is impossible to explain scientifically a crime (like every other 

 action, human or animal) if it Is not considered as the product of an or- 

 ganic constitution or psychic personality which is called upon to act 

 under certain conditions, either of physical or social surroundings. 



It is therefore inexact to affirm that the school of criminal positivists 

 can reduce crime to a phenomenon purely and exclusively anthropologic, 

 for, on the contrary, that school has always maintained from its be- 

 ginning that crime is the effect of multifarious conditions, anthro- 

 pological, physical, and social, and that these operate together and may 

 determine the crime by an action simultaneous aud inseparable; and 

 if the researches into the biologic conditions are more abundant or 

 more apparent because of their novelty, that does not contradict the 

 influence of the sociologic condition upon crime. 



We are to consider on this occasion the relative value of these three 

 orders of condition in the natural determination to the commission of 

 crime. A response can not be given absolutely or categorically. Be- 

 sides, the question is frequently misunderstood and misstated. Those 

 who think that crime is nothing but a phenomenon, purely and exclu- 

 sively social, without the concurrence in its determination by the 

 criminal of his organic and psychic anomalies, misunderstand the uni- 

 versal union of natural forces and forget that one can not limit iu an 

 absolute fashion the infinity of causes, which far or near, direct or 

 indirect, may combine or conspire to produce every phenomenon. 

 This position is as erroneous as to say that the life of a mammal is 

 the effect of the action of a single organ, whether lungs, heart, or 

 stomach, or to say that it is maintained alone by food or drink or the 

 oxygen of the atmosphere, and that each of these produces the entire 

 effect without the aid of the other. If crime be the exclusive product 

 of the social surrounding, how is one to explain the fact known 

 to us every day of our lives, that in the same social status and under 

 equal circumstances of misery, poverty, and ignorance, out of each 

 one hundred iudividvals sixty are not criminal, commit no crime, and 

 out of the remaining forty, five prefer suicide to crime, five become 

 insane, five become beggars or vagabonds, and only twenty-five out of 

 the hundred become criminals; and among the latter the crimes com- 

 mitted differ in variety, —from those the most bloodthirsty, frightful, 

 and inexcusable, to those which are the mildest misdemeanor, and for 

 which the prisoner may be discharged with only a reprimand. The 



