opological, telluric and
social. Every crime, from the smallest to the most atrocious, is the
result of the interaction of these three causes, the anthropological
condition of the criminal, the telluric environment in which he is
living, and the social environment in which he is born, living and
operating. It is a vain beginning to separate the meshes of this net of
criminality. There are still those who would maintain the one-sided
standpoint that the origin of crime may be traced to only one of these
elements, for instance, to the social element alone. So far as I am
concerned, I have combatted this opinion from the very inauguration of
the positive school of criminology, and I combat it today. It is
certainly easy enough to think that the entire origin of all crime is
due to the unfavorable social conditions in which the criminal lives.
But an objective, methodical, observation demonstrates that social
conditions alone do not suffice to explain the origin of criminality,
although it is true that the prevalence of the influence of social
conditions is an incontestable fact in the case of the greater number
of crimes, especially of the lesser ones. But there are crimes which
cannot be explained by the influence of social conditions alone. If you
regard the general condition of misery as the sole source of
criminality, then you cannot get around the difficulty that out of one
thousand individuals living in misery from the day of their birth to
that of their death only one hundred or two hundred become criminals,
while the other nine hundred or eight hundred either sink into
biological weakness, or become harmless maniacs, or commit suicide
without perpetrating any crime. If poverty were the sole determining
cause, one thousand out of one thousand poor ought to become criminals.
If only two hundred become criminals, while one hundred commit suicide,
one hundred end as maniacs, and the other six hundred remain honest in
their social condition, then poverty alone is not sufficient to explain
criminality. We must add the anthropological and telluric factor. Only
by means of these three elements of natural influence can criminality be
explained. Of course, the influence of either the anthropological or
telluric or social element varies from case to case. If you have a case
of simple theft, you may have a far greater influence of the social
factor than of the anthropological factor. On the other hand, if you
have a case of mur