l violence have only a very feeble
power of social transformation; they are, moreover, anti-social and
anti-human, because they re-awaken the primitive savage instincts, and
because they deny, in the very _person_ whom they strike down, the
principle with which they believe themselves animated--the principle of
respect for human life and of solidarity.

What is the use of hypnotizing oneself with phrases about "the
propaganda of the deed" and "immediate action?"

It is known that anarchists, individualists, "amorphists" and
"libertarians" admit as a means of social transformation _individual
violence_ which extends from homicide to theft or _estampage_, even
among "companions;" and this is then merely a political coloring given
to criminal instincts which must not be confounded with political
fanaticism, which is a very different phenomenon, common to the extreme
and romantic parties of all times. A scientific examination of each case
by itself, with the aid of anthropology and psychology, alone can
decide whether the perpetrator of such or such a deed of violence is a
congenital criminal, a criminal through insanity, or a criminal through
stress of political fanaticism.

I have, in fact, always maintained, and I still maintain, that the
"political criminal," whom some wish to class in a special category,
does not constitute a peculiar anthropological variety, but that he can
be placed under one or another of the anthropological categories of
criminals of ordinary law, and particularly one of these three: the
_born_ criminal having a congenital tendency to crime, the
_insane_-criminal, the criminal by stress of fanatical _passion_.

The history of the past and of these latter times afford us obvious
illustrations of these several categories.

In the Middle Ages religious beliefs filled the minds of all and colored
the criminal or insane excesses of many of the unbalanced. A similar
insanity was the efficient cause of the more or less hysterical
"sanctity" of some of the saints. At the close of our century it is the
politico-social questions which absorb (and with what overwhelming
interest!) the universal consciousness--which is stimulated by that
universal contagion created by journalism with its great
sensationalism--and these are the questions which color the criminal or
insane excesses of many of the unbalanced, or which are the determining
causes of instances of fanaticism occurring in men who are thoroughly