In conclusion, although up to the present, medical men have been disposed to consider hysteria as a disease distinct from epilepsy, careful study of this malady inclined my father to class it as a variation of epilepsy, prevalent among women, who in this disease, as in many others, manifest an attenuated form. CHAPTER IV _CRIMINALOIDS_ We have seen how, owing to disease, alcoholism and epilepsy, physically and psychically degenerate individuals make their appearance in a community of normal persons. But a large proportion of the crimes committed cannot be attributed to lunatics, epileptics, or the morally insane, nor do all criminals show that aggregate of atavistic and morbid characters,--the cruelty and bestial insensibility of the savage, the impulsiveness of the epileptic, the licentiousness, delusions, and impetuosity of the madman,--which we find united in the born criminal. According to statistics obtained by my father, the share contributed to the sum total of criminality by this latter type is only 33%, which appears to be a magic figure for the criminal, since it corresponds to the percentage of the histological anomaly discovered by Roncoroni and to that of all important anomalies, including those of the field of vision. But besides this percentage of born criminals, doomed even before birth to a career of crime, whom all educational efforts fail to redeem and who therefore should be segregated at once; besides the epileptic, hysterical, and inebriate lunatics and those insane from alcoholisation, of whom we have already spoken, there remain a number of criminals, amounting to a full half, in whom the virus is, so to speak, attenuated, who, although they are epileptoids, suffer from a milder form of the disease, so that without some adequate cause (_causa criminis_) criminality is not manifested. The inhibitory centres are somewhat obtuse, but not altogether absent, so that a healthy environment, careful training, habits of industry, the inculcation of moral and humane sentiments may prevent these individuals from yielding to dishonest impulses, provided always that no special temptation to sin comes in their path. We have said that education is not sufficient to convert a criminal into an honest man. Conversely, trials and difficulties and the want of education are powerless to make a criminal of an honest individual. Hypnotism, the most powerful means of suggestion possible, cannot induce a good man to commit a crime during the hypnotic sleep, but vicious training has an enormous influence on weak natures, who are candidates for good or evil according to circumstances. Such individuals were classified by my father as _criminaloids_.