the bonds of affection and union are loosened in that family.  Its members no longer agree.  There are too many children, and when the poor old mother approaches her son, she reads in his dark and agitated mien the lack of tenderness and feels in her mother heart that her boy, poisoned by the spectre of want, is perhaps casting evil looks at her and harboring the unfilial thought:  “Better an open grave in the cemetery than one mouth more to feed at home!”

It is true, that want alone is not sufficient to prepare the soil in the environment of that suffering family for the roots of real crime and to develop it.  Want will weaken the love and mutual respect among the members of that family, but it will not be strong enough alone to arm the hands of the man for a matricidal deed, unless he should get into a pathological mental condition, which is very exceptional and rare.  But the conclusions of the positive school are confirmed in this case as in any other.  In order that crime may develop, it is necessary that anthropological, social and telluric factors should act together.

We generally forget the conditions of the physical environment in which we live, because supernatural prejudice tells us that the body is a beast which we must forget in order to elevate ourselves into a spiritual life.  Manzoni could designate the Middle Ages by the term “dirty.” because they neglected the demands of elementary hygiene, and thus of human morality.  For where the requirements of our physical body are neglected or offended, there no flower can bloom.  The telluric environment has a great influence on our physical activity, by way of our nervous system.  We feel differently disposed, according to whether a south or a north wind blows.  When Garibaldi was on the Pampas, he observed that his companions were irascible and prone to violent quarrels, when the Pampero blew, and that their behavior changed, when this wind ceased.  The great founders of criminal statistics, Quetelet and Guerry, observed that the change of seasons carried with it a change in criminality.  Sexual crimes are less frequent in winter than in spring and summer.  And with reference to this point I have maintained, and still maintain, that it is due to the combined effects of temperature and social conditions, if crimes against property increase in winter.  For lack of employment, the want of food and shelter, intensify the misery and lead to attacks on property.  On the other hand, the cold by itself reduces sexual crimes and personal assaults.  And those who claim that the longer intercourse between people in summer time has also a social influence, are also partly in the right.