Note 27 — Chapter IV · THE FRENCH SCHOOL (THE SCHOOL OF THE ENVIRONMENT).

Notwithstanding the bond between phrenology and the positivist school, this school does not rely upon the theory in question, but upon the transformist theory, i.e. upon the theory that gives its attention to environment. The cause of this is that the fundamental error that forms the point of departure is still universally prevalent. “This error consists in believing that acts sociologically defined, like crimes, can be connected with the anatomical conformation, without being first referred by a psychological analysis to their psychological elements, the only ones, whether normal or pathological, that depend directly upon anatomy. The same error consists in confusing the combinations of aptitudes formed under the influence of environment, with the elementary aptitudes resulting from the native organization or its successive modifications. It also leads to a misunderstanding of the primary fact that two individuals similarly constituted can be led, in consequence of the influence of dissimilar environments to which they have been subjected since their birth, to conduct themselves in different, and even quite opposite, ways, without their acts ceasing to be, on that account, conformed to their anatomical constitution.”27