For instance, the province of Benevent is surrounded by other provinces which show a maximum of crimes due to conditions of blood, while it registers a smaller number.  Naples, again, shows a considerably smaller number of such cases than the provinces surrounding it, but it has a greater number of unpremeditated cases of manslaughter.  Messina, Catania and Syracuse have a remarkably smaller number of blood crimes than Trapani, Girgenti and Palermo.  It has been attempted to claim that this difference in criminality is due to social condition’s, because the agricultural conditions in eastern Sicily are less degrading than those of Girgenti and Trapani, where the sulphur mines compel the miners to live miserably.  But we should like to ask the following question in opposition to this idea:  Why and in what respect are the agricultural conditions in some provinces better than in others?  This condition is merely itself a result, not a cause of the first degree.

Since the theory of historical materialism, which I prefer to call economic determinism, has demonstrated that political, moral and intellectual phenomena are reactions on the economic conditions of any time and place, the attempt has been made to interpret this theory very narrowly and to pretend that the economic condition of a nation is a primary cause and not determined by any other.  For my part, ever since I have demonstrated the perfect accord between the Marxian and the Darwinian theories, I have said:  Very well, the economic conditions of a nation explain its political, moral, intellectual conditions, but the economic condition is in its turn the result of other factors.  For instance, how can the industrialism of England in the nineteenth century be explained?  Take away the coal mines (the telluric environment), and you could not have the economic conditions of England as they are.  For the economic conditions are a result of favorable or unfavorable telluric conditions which are acted upon by the intelligence and energy of a certain race.  Catania, Messina, Syracuse, are in a better economic condition, because they have better geographical conditions and a different race (of Grecian blood) than the other Sicilian provinces.  So it is in Apulia and Naples, which have likewise a considerable mixture of Grecian blood.  The northern tourists are still attracted by our art and visit the ruins of Taormina or Pesto, which are the relics of the Grecian race.  And it is the Grecian blood which explains the lesser frequency of bloody crimes in those provinces.  This is therefore evidently the influence of the race.  And I maintain that the same fact is due in the province of Benevent to the admixture of Langobardian blood.  For the Duchy of Benevent has had an influx of Langobardian elements since the seventh century.  And as we know that the German and Anglo-Saxon race has the smallest tendency towards bloody crimes, the beneficial influence of this racial character in Benevent explains