The
man, having been turned away from the doors of ten offices, feels his
dignity as an honest laborer assailed in the very bosom of his own
family, because he has vainly asked society for honest employment. And
the bonds of affection and union are loosened in that family. Its
members no longer agree. There are too many children, and when the poor
old mother approaches her son, she reads in his dark and agitated mien
the lack of tenderness and feels in her mother heart that her boy,
poisoned by the spectre of want, is perhaps casting evil looks at her
and harboring the unfilial thought: "Better an open grave in the
cemetery than one mouth more to feed at home!"
It is true, that want alone is not sufficient to prepare the soil in the
environment of that suffering family for the roots of real crime and to
develop it. Want will weaken the love and mutual respect among the
members of that family, but it will not be strong enough alone to arm
the hands of the man for a matricidal deed, unless he should get into a
pathological mental condition, which is very exceptional and rare. But
the conclusions of the positive school are confirmed in this case as in
any other. In order that crime may develop, it is necessary that
anthropological, social and telluric factors should act together.
We generally forget the conditions of the physical environment in which
we live, because supernatural prejudice tells us that the body is a
beast which we must forget in order to elevate ourselves into a
spiritual life.
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