ve you even a glimpse of the
positive results of that modern science which has studied the criminal
and his environment instead of his crimes. And I must, therefore, limit
myself to a few hints concerning the historical origin of the positive
school of criminology. I ought to tell you something concerning the
question of free will. But you will understand that such a momentous
question, which is worthy of a deep study of the many-sided physical,
moral, intellectual life, cannot be summed up in a few short words. I
can only say that the tendency of modern natural sciences, in physiology
as well as psychology, has overruled the illusions of those who would
fain persist in watching psychological phenomena merely within
themselves and think that they can understand them without any other
means. On the contrary, positive science, backed by the testimony of
anthropology and of the study of the environment, has arrived at the
following conclusions: The admission of a free will is out of the
question. For if the free will is but an illusion of our internal being,
it is not a real faculty possessed by the human mind. Free will would
imply that the human will, confronted by the choice of making
voluntarily a certain determination, has the last decisive word under
the pressure of circumstances contending for and against this decision;
that it is free to decide for or against a certain course independently
of internal and external circumstances, which play upon it, according to
the laws of cause and effect.

Take it that a man has insulted me. I leave the place in which I have
been insulted, and with me goes the suggestion of forgiveness or of
murder and vengeance. And then it is assumed that a man has his complete
free will, unless he is influenced by circumstances explicitly
enumerated by the law, such as minority, congenital deaf-muteness,
insanity, habitual drunkenness and, to a certain extent, violent
passion. If a man is not in a condition mentioned in this list, he is
considered in possession of his free will, and if he murders he is held
morally responsible and therefore punished.

This illusion of a free will has its source in our inner consciousness,
and is due solely to the ignorance in which we find ourselves concerning
the various motives and different external and internal conditions which
press upon our mind at the moment of decision.

If a man knows the principal causes which determine a certain
phenomenon, he sa