Note 584 — Chapter VI
Henry P. (Henry Pomeroy) Horton translation
After this beginning the Italian school put forth another explanation, to which it attached the more importance as the hypothesis of atavism fell into discredit: the criminal is either an epileptic or morally insane. Although the correctness of this hypothesis has not been proved any more than the other,584 the Italian school here found itself in a field recognized by criminal-anthropologists as its true one. At present one has even the right to say that the opinion in this regard is almost unanimous.585 The origin of the tendencies of part of the criminals is to be found in the pathological nature of the individuals themselves.586 These are disordered or degenerate, not, as some authors would have us believe, individuals differing more or less from the average, but persons who suffer from mental diseases, or whose nervous system is affected.587