Section 85. I. The Influence of Nurture.
Criminologically the influence of nurture on mankind is important
if it can explain the development of morality, honorableness, and
love of truth. The criminalist has to study relations, actions, and
assertions, to value and to compare them when they are differentiable
only in terms of the nurture of those who are responsible for them.
The most instructive works on this problem are those of
Tarde,[1]
and Oelzelt-Newin.[2] Among
the older writers Leibnitz had already
said, "If you leave education to me I'll change Europe in a century."
Descartes, Locke, Helvetius assign to nurture the highest possible
value while Carlyle, e. g., insists that civilization is a cloak in which
wild human nature may eternally burn with hellish fire. For moderns
it is a half-way house. Ribot says that training has least effect at
the two extremes of humanity—little and transitively on the idiot,
much on the average man, not at all on the genius. I might add
that the circle of idiots and geniuses must be made extremely large,
for average people are very few in number, and the increase in
intellectual training has made no statistical difference on the curve
of crime. This is one of the conclusions arrived at by Adolf
Wagner[3]
which corroborates the experience of practicing lawyers and we
who have had, during the growth of popular education, the opportunity
to make observations from the criminalistic standpoint,
know nothing favorable to its influence. If the general assertion
is true that increased national education has reduced brawling,
damages to property, etc., and has increased swindling, misappropriations,
etc., we have made a great mistake. For the psychological
estimation of a criminal, the crime itself is not definitive;
there is always the question as to the damage this individual has
done his own nature with his deed. If, then, a peasant lad hits his
neighbor with the leg of a chair or destroys fences, or perhaps a whole
village, he may still be the most honorable of youths, and later grow
up into a universally respected man. Many of the best and most
useful village mayors have been guilty in their youth of brawls,
damages to property, resistance to authority, and similar things.
But if a man has once swindled or killed anybody, he has lost his
honor, and, as a rule, remains a scoundrel for the rest of his life. If
for criminals of the first kind we substitute the latter type we get
a very bad outlook.
Individuals yield similar experiences. The most important
characteristic of a somewhat cultivated man who not only is able
to read and to write, but makes some use of his knowledge, is a
loudly-expressed discontent with his existence. If he once has acquired
the desire to read, the little time he has is not sufficient to satisfy
it, and when he has more time he is always compelled to lay aside
his volume of poetry to feed the pigs or to clean the stables. He
learns, moreover, of a number of needs which he can not satisfy
but which books have instilled in him, and finally, he seeks illegal
means, as we criminalists know, for their satisfaction.
In many countries the law of such cases considers extenuating
circumstances and defective bringing-up, but it has never yet occurred
to a single criminalist that people might be likely to commit
crime because they could not read or write. Nevertheless, we are
frequently in touch with an old peasant as witness who gives the
impression of absolute integrity, reliability, and wisdom, so much so
that it is gain for anybody to talk to him. But though the black
art of reading and writing has been foreign to him through the whole
of his life, nobody will have any accusation to make against him
about defective bringing-up.
The exhibition of unattainable goods to the mass of mankind is
a question of conscience. We must, of course, assume that deficiency
in education is not in itself a reason for doubting the witness, or
for holding an individual inclined to crime. The mistakes in bringing-up
like spoiling, rigor, neglect, and their consequences, laziness,
deceit, and larceny, have a sufficiently evil outcome. And how far
these are at fault, and how far the nature of the individual himself,
can be determined only in each concrete case by itself. It will not
occur to anybody to wish for a return to savagery and anarchy
because of the low value we set on the training of the mind. There
is still the business of moral training, and its importance can not be
overestimated. Considering the subject generally, we may say that
the aim of education is the capacity of sympathizing with the feeling,
understanding, and willing of other minds. This might be supplemented,
perhaps, also with the limitation that the sympathy must
be correct, profound, and implicative, for external, approximate, or
inverted sympathy will obviously not do. The servant girl knows
concerning her master only his manner of quarreling and his manner
of spitting but is absolutely unaffected by, and strange to his inner
life. The darker aspects of culture and civilization are most obvious
in the external contacts of mankind.
When we begin to count an intelligent sympathy, it must follow
that the sympathy is possible only with regard to commonly conceivable
matters; that we must fundamentally exclude the essential
inward construction of the mind and the field of scientific morality.
Hence we have left only religion, which is the working morality of
the populace.
According to Goethe, the great fundamental conflict of history
is the conflict of belief with doubt. A discussion of this conflict is
unnecessary here. It is mentioned only by way of indicating
that the sole training on which the criminalist may rely is that
of real religion. A really religious person is a reliable witness,
and when he is behind the bar he permits at least the assumption
that he is innocent. Of course it is difficult to determine
whether he is genuinely religious or not, but if genuine
religion can be established we have a safe starting point.
Various authors have discussed the influence of education, pro
and con. Statistically, it is shown that in Russia, only 10% of
the population can read and write, and still of 36,868 condemned
persons, no fewer than 26,944 were literate. In the seventies the
percentage of criminals in Scotland was divided as follows, 21%
absolutely illiterate, 52.7 half educated; 26.3% well educated.
The religious statistics are altogether worthless. A part of them
have nothing to do with religion, e. g., the criminality of Jews.
One part is worthless because it deals only with the criminality of
baptized Protestants or Catholics, and the final section, which might
be of great interest, i. e., the criminality of believers and unbelievers,
is indeterminable. Statistics say that in the country A in the year
n there were punished x% Protestants, y% Catholics, etc. Of what
use is the statement? Both among the x and the y percentages
there were many absolute unbelievers, and it is indifferent whether
they were Protestant or Catholic unbelievers. It would be interesting
to know what percentage of the Catholics and of the
Protestants are really faithful, for if we rightly assume that a true
believer rarely commits a crime, we should be able to say which
religion from the view point of the criminalist should be encouraged.
The one which counts the greater percentage of believers, of course,
but we shall never know which one that is. The numbers of the
"Protestant" criminals, and those of the "Catholics," can not
help us in the least in this matter.
[[ id="n85.1"]]
G. Tarde: La Philosophie Pénale. Lyon 1590 La Criminalité
Comparée
1886. Les Lois de l'Imitation. 1890. Psych. Economique. 1902
[[ id="n85.2"]]
Kosmodicee. Leipzig and Vienna 1897.
[[ id="n85.3"]]
A. Wagner: Statistisch-anthropologische Untersuchung. Hamburg 1864.