from being a palliative to the fanaticism
and the nervous diseases of others, exalts them, on the contrary, by
exciting their altruistic aberration and their thirst for martyrdom. In
order to heal these anarchist wounds there is, according to some
statesmen, nothing but hanging on the gallows and prison. For my part, I
consider it just indeed to take energetic measures against the
anarchists. However, it is not necessary to go so far as to take
measures which are merely the result of momentary reactions, measures
which thus become as impulsive as the causes which have produced them
and in their turn a source of new violence.

"For example, I am not an unconditional adversary of capital punishment,
at least when it is a question of the criminal born, whose existence is
a constant danger to worthy people. Consequently, I should not have
hesitated to condemn Pini[K] and Ravachol. On the other hand, I believe
that capital punishment or severe or merely ignominious penalties are
not suited to the crimes and the offenses of the anarchists in general.
First, many of them are mentally deranged, and for these it is the
asylum, and not death or the gallows, that is fitting. It is necessary
also to take account, in the case of some of these criminals, of their
noble altruism which renders them worthy of certain regard. Many of
these people are souls that have gone astray and are hysterical, like
Vaillant and Henry, who, had they been engaged in some other cause, far
from being a danger, would have been able to be of use in this society
which they wished to destroy....

"As to indirect suicides, is it not to encourage them and to make them
attain the end that they desire when we inflict on all those so disposed
a spectacular death?... For many criminals by passion, unbalanced by an
inadequate education, and whose feeling is aroused by either their own
misery or at the sight of the misery of others, we would no more award
the death penalty if the motive has been exclusively political, because
they are much less dangerous than the criminal born. On the other hand,
commitment to the asylum of the epileptic and the hysteric would be a
practical measure, especially in France, where ridicule kills them.
Martyrs are venerated and fools are derided."[10]

Of course, Lombroso is endeavoring to prescribe a method of treatment
for the terrorist that will not breed more terrorists. He sees in the
present punitive methods an active cause of v