persons, committed by a riotous mob or induced by alcoholism, etc., it
is the social environment which becomes the preponderating factor,
though it is, notwithstanding, impossible to deny the influence of the
physical environment and of the anthropological factor.

We may repeat the same reasoning--in order to make a complete
examination of the objection brought against socialism in the name of
Darwinism--on the subject of the ordinary diseases; crime, moreover, is
a department of human pathology.

All diseases, acute or chronic, infectious or not infectious, severe or
mild, are the product of the anthropological constitution of the
individual and of the influence of the physical and social environment.
The decisiveness of the personal conditions or of the environment varies
in the various diseases; phthisis or heart disease, for instance, depend
principally on the organic constitution of the individual, though it is
necessary to take the influence of the environment into account;
pellagra,[17] cholera, typhus, etc., on the contrary, depend principally
on the physical and social conditions of the environment. And so
phthisis makes its ravages even among well-to-do people, that is to say,
among persons well nourished and well housed, while it is the badly
nourished, that is to say, the poor, who furnish the greatest number of
victims to pellagra and cholera.

It is, consequently, evident that a socialist regime of collective
property which shall assure to every one human conditions of existence,
will largely diminish or possibly annihilate--aided by the scientific
discoveries and improvement in hygienic measures--the diseases which are
principally caused by the conditions of the environment, that is to say
by insufficient nourishment or by the want of protection from inclemency