Moreover, the phenomena of experimental physiology and pathology, which would otherwise have been most interesting to him, were rendered inaccessible to him in consequence of the elaborate technicalities of the pathological and clinical laboratories. To this category belong racial variability, the hereditary influence of social factors upon social predisposition, the influence of the constitution of the soil, of climate, and of the seasons, upon the most diverse manifestations of human activity, and the significance of cosmic factors. The inevitable result of this was that German biology, and, above all, German psychiatry, which endeavoured to unriddle everything, either at the bedside of the living patient in the hospital or in the brain of the deceased patient in the laboratory, did not understand, and could not understand, what Lombroso was really driving at with his anthropology. Now let me attempt to summarize the matter in a few words. Lombroso’s mind was permeated with the idea of the unity of a universe under the dominion of strict law, of an invariable uniformity of principle throughout the world, within which the human being is subjected to laws identical with those to which crystals, plants, and lower animals are subordinated; and the understanding of these laws could, he was convinced, be obtained only by the establishment of positive facts. In so far as these facts relate to human beings, they comprise in their totality the science of anthropology. Certain human actions by which the safety of society is endangered are no less determined than is the secretion of the urine or the heart’s beat. It is a stupid blunder to allow the social reaction in response to such actions to depend upon the blameworthiness of the offender. The social reaction has one purpose, and one only—the safety of society. Anthropology, utilizing all the methods at its disposal, will throw light on the determining causes of anti-social actions, and thus by anthropology we shall be guided in our choice of means for the preservation of social security. That this view forbids us even to moot the idea of “responsibility” is perfectly obvious.[42] Thus it gives us no basis whatever for establishing or denying responsibility in the individual instance, or of determining its extent if it exists. Lombroso provides a scale of measurement neither for punishment nor for responsibility. CHAPTER VI CRIMINAL JURISPRUDENCE—PELLAGRA—AGRARIAN REFORM