"For example, I am not an unconditional adversary of capital punishment,
at least when it is a question of the criminal born, whose existence is
a constant danger to worthy people. Consequently, I should not have
hesitated to condemn Pini[K] and Ravachol. On the other hand, I believe
that capital punishment or severe or merely ignominious penalties are
not suited to the crimes and the offenses of the anarchists in general.
First, many of them are mentally deranged, and for these it is the
asylum, and not death or the gallows, that is fitting. It is necessary
also to take account, in the case of some of these criminals, of their
noble altruism which renders them worthy of certain regard. Many of
these people are souls that have gone astray and are hysterical, like
Vaillant and Henry, who, had they been engaged in some other cause, far
from being a danger, would have been able to be of use in this society
which they wished to destroy....
"As to indirect suicides, is it not to encourage them and to make them
attain the end that they desire when we inflict on all those so disposed
a spectacular death?... For many criminals by passion, unbalanced by an
inadequate education, and whose feeling is aroused by either their own
misery or at the sight of the misery of others, we would no more award
the death penalty if the motive has been exclusively political, because
they are much less dangerous than the criminal born. On the other hand,
commitment to the asylum of the epileptic and the hysteric would be a
practical measure, especially in France, where ridicule kills them.
Martyrs are venerated and fools are derided."[10]
Of course, Lombroso is endeavoring to prescribe a method of treatment
for the terrorist that will not breed more terrorists. He sees in the
present punitive methods an active cause of violence. However, it is
perhaps impossible to hope that society will adopt any different
attitude than that which it has taken in the past toward these
unbalanced souls. In fact, it seems that a savage _lex talionis_ is
wholly satisfying to the feudists on both sides. Neither the one nor the
other seeks to understand the forces driving them both. They are bent on
destroying each other, and they will probably continue in that struggle
for a long time to come. However, if we learn little from those actually
engaged in the conflict, there are those outside who have labored
earnestly to understand and explain the causes of terrorism. Ethics,
religion, psychology, criminal pathology, sociology, economics,
jurisprudence--all contribute to the explanation. And, while it is not
possible to go into the entire matter as exhaustively as one could wish,
there are several points which seem to make clear the cause of this
almost individual struggle between the anarchists above and the
anarchists below.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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