The teachers of classic
criminology, who had taken kindly to the recommendations of Pessina and
Ellero, urging them to study the natural sources of crime, met the new
ideas with contempt, when the new methods made a determined and radical
departure, and became not only the critics, but the zealous opponents of
the new theories. And this is easy to understand. For the struggle for
existence is an irresistible law of nature, as well for the thousands of
germs scattered to the winds by the oak, as for the ideas which grow in
the brain of man. But persecutions, calumnies, criticisms, and
opposition are powerless against an idea, if it carries within itself
the germ of truth. Moreover, we should look upon this phenomenon of a
repugnance in the average intellect (whether of the ordinary man or the
scientist) for all new ideas as a natural function. For when the brain
of some man has felt the light of a new idea, a sneering criticism
serves us a touchstone for it. If the idea is wrong, it will fall by the
wayside; if it is right, then criticisms, opposition and persecution
will cull the golden kernel from the unsightly shell, and the idea will
march victoriously over everything and everybody. It is so in all walks
of life--in art, in politics, in science. Every new idea will rouse
against itself naturally and inevitably the opposition of the accustomed
thoughts. This is so true, that when Cesare Beccaria opened the great
historic cycle of the classic school of criminology, he was assaulted by
the critics of his time with the same indictments which were brought
against us a century later.
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