November than in the six months which follow. There is, therefore,
less disease at the very time when there is most crime. In the face of
this fact it cannot be contended that disease, generally, pushes the
population into criminal courses in summer.

But while this is so, it may yet be true that some special enfeeblement
(generated by the rise of temperature) which does not assume the acute
form usually implied in the name, disease has the effect of
stimulating impulses of a criminal character, or of weakening the
barrier which prevents these impulses from breaking out and carrying
all before them. It is a perfectly well-established fact that a high
temperature not only produces physical enfeeblement, but that it also
impairs the usual activity and energy of the brain. In other words,
a high temperature is invariably accompanied by a certain loss of
mental power. In most persons this loss is comparatively trifling, and
has hardly any perceptible effect on their mode of life and conduct;
in others, it assumes more serious proportions. In some who are
susceptible to cosmical influences, and for one reason or another are
already on the borderland of crime, the decrease of mental function
involved in a rise of temperature becomes a determining factor, and a
criminal act is the result. Through the agency of climate the mental
forces which are normally capable of holding the criminal instincts in
check, lose for a time their accustomed power, and it is whilst this
temporary loss endures that the person subject to it becomes most
liable to be plunged into disaster. It is in this manner, in my
belief, that temperature deleteriously operates upon human conduct.

The results of my investigations do not, however, bear out the
commonly accepted view that crimes against property increase in the
depth of winter. As far as this law relates to crime in France it may