In the same way, from the standpoint of criminal sociology, we may divide the social strata into three analogous categories--the highest, which commits no crimes, organically upright, restrained only by the authority of the moral sense, of religious sentiments and public opinion, together with the hereditary transmission of moral habits. This class, for which no penal code would be necessary, is unfortunately very small; and it is far smaller if, in <p 95>addition to legal and apparent criminality, we also take into account that social and latent criminality through which many men, who are upright so far as the penal code is concerned, are not upright by the standard of morality. Another class, the lowest, is made up of individuals opposed to all sense of uprightness, who, being without education, perpetually dragged back by their material and moral destitution into the primitive forms of the brute struggle for existence, inherit from their parents and transmit to their children an abnormal organisation, adding degeneration and disease, an atavistic return to savage humanity. This is the nursery of the born criminals, for whom punishments, so far as they are legal deterrents, are useless, because they encounter no moral sense which could distinguish punishment by law from the risk which also attends upon every honest industry. Lastly we have the other class of individuals who are not born to crime, but are not firmly upright, alternating between vice and virtue, with imperfect moral sense, education and training, for whom punishment may be genuinely useful as a psychological motive. It is just this class which yields the large contingent of occasional criminals, for whom punishments are efficacious if they are directed in their execution by the axioms of scientific psychology, and especially if they are aided by the social prevention which reduces the number of opportunities of committing crimes and offences. Once again I must express my agreement with M. Garofalo, who, in dealing with this subject, <p 96>insists on the necessity of distinguishing between the different classes of criminals before deciding as to the efficacy of punishments. Yet this conclusion as to the very limited efficiency of punishments, which is forced upon us by facts, and which, as Bentham said, is confirmed by the application of each punitive act, precisely because its previous application did not succeed in preventing crime, is directly opposed to general public opinion, and even to the opinion of jurists and legislators.