of this in the eloquent contortions of
phantastic logic in the essays on the criminal code written by a great
advocate of the classic school of criminology, Mario Pagano, this
admirable type of a scientist and patriot, who does not lock himself up
in the quiet egoism of his study, but feels the ideal of his time
stirring within him and gives up his life to it. He has written three
lines of a simple nudity that reveals much, in which he says: "A man is
responsible for the crimes which he commits; if, in committing a crime,
his will is half free, he is responsible to the extent of one-half; if
one-third, he is responsible one-third." There you have the
uncompromising and absolute classic theorem. But in the penal code of
1890, you will find that the famous article 45 intends to base the
responsibility for a crime on the simple will, to the exclusion of the
free will. However, the Italian judge has continued to base the exercise
of penal justice on the supposed existence of the free will, and
pretends not to know that the number of scientists denying the free will
is growing. Now, how is it possible that so terrible an office as that
of sentencing criminals retains its stability or vacillates, according
to whether the first who denies the existence of a free will deprives
this function of its foundation?

Truly, it is said that this question has been too difficult for the new
Italian penal code. And, for this reason, it was thought best to base
the responsibility for a crime on the idea that a man is guilty simply
for the reason that he wanted to commit the crime; and that he is not
responsible if he did not want to commit it. But this is an eclectic way
out of the difficulty, which settles nothing, for in the same code we
have the rule that involuntary criminals are also punished, so that
involuntary killing and wounding are punished with imprisonment the same
as voluntary deeds of this kind. We have heard it said in such cases
that the result may not have been intended, but the action bringing it
about was. If a hunter shoots through a hedge and kills or wounds a
person, he did not intend to kill, and yet he is held responsible
because his first act, the shooting, was voluntary.

That statement applies to involuntary crimes, which are committed by
some positive act. But what about involuntary crimes of omission? In a
railway station, where the movements of trains represent the daily whirl
of traffic in men, things, and