Note 4 — CRIMINALITY.

Crime is an act.4 The question which presents itself first of all is this: Is crime considered from a biological point of view an abnormal act? The answer to this, which is of the highest importance for the etiology of crime, must be negative. From a biological point of view almost all crimes must be ranked as normal acts. The process which takes place in the brain of the gendarme when he kills a poacher who resists arrest is identical with that which takes place in the brain of the poacher killing the gendarme who pursues him. It is only the social environment which classes the second act rather than the first as a crime. From the biological point of view homicide is not an abnormal act. Sociology and history prove that men have always killed when they thought it necessary. No one would maintain, for example, that those who take part in a war are biologically abnormal.