Note 7 — Chapter I · THE PRECURSORS. AUTHORS WHO TREATED THE SUBJECT BEFORE THE BIRTH OF MODERN CRIMINAL SCIENCE.

“Every division of goods, whether equal or unequal, and all individual appropriation of the portions so formed are what Horace calls ‘Summi materiam mali.’ All political or moral phenomena are the effects of this pernicious cause. It is by this that we can explain all theorems and problems with regard to the origin, development, connection, and affinity of virtues or vices, disorders, and crimes; also with regard to the true motives of good or bad actions, the determinations and perplexities of the human will, the depravity of the passions, the inefficacy of precepts and laws to restrain them; and, finally, with regard to the monstrous creations resulting from the aberrations of the mind and the heart. The reason, I say, for all these things can be ascribed to the general obstinacy of legislators about breaking or letting any one else break the cord with which sociability was first bound by those who usurped to their own use soil that ought to belong indivisibly to all humanity.”7