legislation this flagrant contradiction, that the magistrates assume the
existence of a free will, while the legislator has decided that it shall
not be assumed. Now, in science as well as in legislation, we should
follow a direct and logical line, such as that of the classic school or
the positive school of criminology. But whoever thinks he has solved a
problem when he gives us a solution which is neither fish nor fowl,
comes to the most absurd and iniquitous conclusions. You see what
happens every day. If to-morrow some beastly and incomprehensible crime
is committed, the conscience of the judge is troubled by this question:
Was the person who committed this crime morally free to act or not? He
may also invoke the help of legislation, and he may take refuge in
article 46,[A] or in that compromise of article 47,[B] which admits
a responsibility of one-half or one-third, and he would decide on a
penalty of one-half or one-third.

All this may take place in the case of a grave and strange crime. And on
the other hand, go to the municipal courts or to the police courts,
where the magic lantern of justice throws its rays upon the nameless
human beings who have stolen a bundle of wood in a hard winter, or who
have slapped some one in the face during a brawl in a saloon.
And if they should find a defending lawyer who would demand the
appointment of a medical expert, watch the reception he would get from
the judge. When justice is surprised by a beastly and strange crime, it
feels the entire foundation of its premises shaking, it halts for a
moment, it calls in the help of legal medicine, and reflects before it
sentences. But in the case of those poor nameless creatures, justice
does not stop to consider whether that microbe in the criminal world who
steals under the influence of hereditary or acquired degeneration, or in
the delirium of chronic hunger, is not worthy of more pity. It rather
replies with a mephistophelian grin when he begs for a humane