No plant draws what is to be contained in its cells and in its fruits from itself, but rather from the soil it sprang from and from the atmosphere it breaths. A human being is also a plant in this respect. Though not being physically attached to one spot, we are nevertheless mentally and spiritually rooted, deeply rooted, very deeply, more deeply than many a giant tree in the the Californian soil. Therefore, nobody can be held fully responsible for whatever he does while he is still in the process of development. To hold him fully accountable for all of his mistakes, would be just as wrong as pretending that he had obtained all of his good qualities entirely on his own. Only he who precisely knows and correctly assesses the native soil and the adolescent atmosphere of a "developed" one, is capable to prove with some amount of certainty, which parts of his lot in life are the product of the given circumstances and which of the purely individual intentions of the person concerned. It has been one of the worst cruelties of the past, to burden every poor devil who was led to a violation of the law by his circumstances, in addition to his own, possibly minor, guilt, with the entire, heavy load of the circumstances as well. Unfortunately, there are still more than enough people today who, even now, still commit this cruelty, without even suspecting that they are the ones who would have to share in bearing the responsibility, if there were laws to that effect. And usually, it are not at all the remote people, but even more so the dear "neighbours", who cast stone upon stone on one of them, though the influences he succumbed to where most of all coming from them as well. Thus, they also bear part of the guilt themselves, which they cast upon him. When I am now taking on the task of putting the circumstances which shaped me through an unbiased examination, this is not done with the intension to cast any part of my own guilt from me and upon others, but only to demonstrate for once by an expressive example how careful someone has to be who would want to endeavour on a precise investigation of the origin and development of a single human being.