Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, June 1899: Volume LVVarious
Science
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, June 1899: Volume LV
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
It was, therefore, with justice that Scarfoglio said in explaining the
origin of anarchism, "A good fifth of the population of Italy are
still living in a savage state, dwelling in cabins that the Papuans
would not live in, accommodating themselves to a food which the
Shillooks would refuse, having a vision and an idea of the world not
much more ample than that of the Kaffirs, and running over the land
desiring and seeking servitude."
It may be added that it is because of this condition--that is, of the
defective civilization that results from it--that there is everywhere
a weakened revulsion and diminished horror at blood-crimes, so that
there are now sixty homicides for every one hundred thousand
inhabitants.
We may learn from this what the true remedies should be. The idea of
conquering anarchy by killing anarchists is not valid, because every
epileptic has another ready to take his place, because anarchistic
crimes are to a great extent simply indirect suicides, and because
anarchists think as little of their own lives as of the life of
another. It is rather necessary to change the direction of the disease
by changing the miserable conditions in which it originates.
Not for humanity, therefore, not for exalted social theories, but in
our direct interest, we ought to make a complete change. The
suppression of a dozen anarchists is like killing a thousand microbes
without disinfecting the surroundings that contain milliards of them;
it is that we should look, if we want to be better, to breaking up the
large estates, and ameliorating the conditions of agriculture and
operative industry, and this in the interest of the governing classes.
Typhus, cholera, and plague, it is true, attack chiefly the poor, but
from these the contagion extends also to the rich; and from the
unhealthy habitations in which the rich man permits beggars to crowd
and suffer, the miasm, as if in revenge, is propagated to marble
palaces.
That imbecile idea of some European nations, who, instead of
disinfecting the medium, find it better to put down the doctors who
propose remedies, can not make itself at home except among peoples who
are destined to perish.[S]--_Translated for the Popular Science
Monthly from the Archives di Psichiatria._
[Footnote S: To the charges made against me by M. Gautier (Le procès
Luccheni, 1899) of having formulated a diagnosis without seeing the
patient, which was therefore inexact, and of having described
characteristics of degeneration which did not exist, I answer with the
pages of Forel, certainly the most eminent alienist of our time, who
had him under his eyes during the whole process, and whose diagnosis
differs but little from mine.]
TENDENCIES IN FRENCH LITERATURE.[T]
SUGGESTED BY PROFESSOR DOWDEN'S RECENT BOOK.
BY PELHAM EDGAR, PH. D.
[Footnote T: A History of French Literature. By Edward Dowden, D.
Lit., LL. D., etc. New York: D. Appleton and Company. 1897.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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