g_, by Emanuel
(Leipsic, 1894), gives fresh points of view.

First of all, exceptional legislation should be avoided. It is in no
way justified. Just as the motive of Anarchism to any offence affords
no extentuating circumstances, so, too, it should not make matters
worse. Secondly, we should not indulge in the vain hope that Anarchism
itself, or the criminal results of it, can be combated by mere
condemnation of Anarchist criminals, however just or unjust the
sentence may be. Punishment appears to fanatics who long for the
martyr's crown, no longer a deterrent but an atonement. In France in
less than two years, Ravachol, Henry, and Vaillant were guillotined;
but that did not deter Caserio in the least from his mad act.

Numerous Anarchist crimes are to be regarded merely as means to
indirect suicide, a method by which those who commit them may end
lives that are a burden to them, while they lack the courage to commit
suicide directly. Lombroso, Krafft, Ebbing, and others cite a long
list of political criminals who must certainly be regarded as such
indirect suicides.

We will not enter the controversial province of criminal pathology,
although it seems certain that in the criminal deeds of the Anarchism
of action a large share is taken by persons pathologically diseased or
mentally affected. For these also punishment loses its deterrent
effect. Taken all in all, one cannot expect any other result from the
punishment of Anarchist criminals, except the moral one of having
defended the rights of society. On the other hand, the Anarchists
regard the justification of one of their own party as the strongest
means of propaganda, and it cannot be denied that the Ravachol cult
resulting from the execution of that common criminal, Ravachol, caused
a considerable accession of strength to Communist Anarchism. The State
cannot, of course, allow itself to look on at Anarchist crimes and "to
shorten its arm"; but it must not delude itself that it will remove
such crime or stop the Anarchist movement by means of the guillotine.

Does this mean that society is helpless in face of Anarchism? It is,
if it possesses only force to suppress and not the power to convince;
if society is only held together by compulsion, as the present State
partly is, and the Socialist State would be still more, and threatens
to fall to pieces if the apparatus of compulsion were given up; if the
State, instead of trying to redress the unfortunately un