to begin a new shift of work. Take it that this applies not alone to
adults, but also to human beings in the growing stage, whose muscular
power may yield some profit for the capitalists. Take it that even the
mother, during the period of sacred maternity, becomes a cog in the
machinery of industry. And you will understand that the child must grow
up, left to its own resources, in the filth of life, and that its
history will be inscribed in criminal statistics, which are the shame of
our so-called civilization.

Of course, in this first lecture I cannot give you even a glimpse of the
positive results of that modern science which has studied the criminal
and his environment instead of his crimes. And I must, therefore, limit
myself to a few hints concerning the historical origin of the positive
school of criminology. I ought to tell you something concerning the
question of free will. But you will understand that such a momentous
question, which is worthy of a deep study of the many-sided physical,
moral, intellectual life, cannot be summed up in a few short words. I
can only say that the tendency of modern natural sciences, in physiology
as well as psychology, has overruled the illusions of those who would
fain persist in watching psychological phenomena merely within
themselves and think that they can understand them without any other
means. On the contrary, positive science, backed by the testimony of
anthropology and of the study of the environment, has arrived at the
following conclusions: The admission of a free will is out of the
question. For if the free will is but an illusion of our internal being,
it is not a real faculty possessed by the human mind. Free will would
imply that the human will, confronted by the choice of making
voluntarily a certain determination, has the last decisive word under
the pressure of circumstances contending for and against this decision;
that it is free to decide for or against a certain course independently