Note 36 — Chapter IV · THE FRENCH SCHOOL (THE SCHOOL OF THE ENVIRONMENT).
Henry P. (Henry Pomeroy) Horton translation
“The truth is that the ‘new school’ consider as criminals only the refuse of this class, the prisoners; just as, when they wanted to depict prostitutes, they took poor syphilitic girls who had been at least three years in brothels, that is to say, the refuse of refuse. Under what family and social conditions these criminals and prostitutes lived during childhood and afterward, it is easy for anyone to imagine who has caught but a glimpse of the slums of manufacturing towns. In order to escape crime and prostitution or mendicity when one has grown up in such an environment, it is necessary to have virtues that are extremely rare among respectable people, so much the more so since, to the temptations that come from poverty in the midst of luxury, is ordinarily added the effect of example, and even of education of the particular kind that is called criminal education. All this may be resisted for some time, but it is only the first step that costs. The good qualities themselves that one possesses become the causes of crime. It may even be maintained that physical excellencies themselves drive men to crime more strongly than defects, when once the external conditions become favorable for crime.”36