Note 46 — Chapter III · THE ITALIAN SCHOOL.1

The author draws the following conclusion: “As little as a change of environmental conditions can change an individual of one kind immediately into an individual of another kind, as little as we ever, under however modified circumstances, see a chimpanzee change himself into a gorilla, so little do social factors change a normally endowed man into a criminal. In isolated cases it may appear as if passion or opportunity had caused a crime; social forces do indeed have their effect upon the individual, but they do not essentially change his fundamental attributes—which include his character; the slight modifications through environment that individuals experience, must constantly recur, heap themselves up in the course of generations, until a socially significant change of type has arisen. Accordingly it is the permanent social distresses, the chronic evils of society which influence criminality, because by unnoticeable influences they go on for generations gnawing at the inmost kernel of man; misery and intellectual and moral neglect must be as long continued as in the Papal States, in the Kingdom of Naples, in Ireland, and among the Poles, drained by the territorial nobility for centuries, before an entire people becomes inoculated with the ‘penchant for crime.’ ”46