Another illustration.  In the Middle Ages, up to the eve of our modern civilization, piracy was in vogue.  Is there anything that was not tried to suppress piracy?  The pirates were persecuted like wild beasts.  Whenever they were caught they were condemned to the most terrible forms of death.  Yet piracy continued.  Then came the application of steam navigation, and piracy disappeared as by magic.  And robbery and brigandage?  They withstood the death penalty and extraordinary raids by soldiers.  And we witness today the spectacle of a not very serious contest between the police who wants to catch a brigand, Musolino; and a brigand who does not wish to be caught.

Wherever the woods are not traversed by railroads or tramways, brigandage carries on its criminal trade.  But wherever railroads and tramways exist, brigandage is a form of crime which disappears.  You may insist on death penalties and imprisonment, but assault and robbery will continue, because it is connected with geographical conditions.  Use on the other hand the instrument of civilization, without sentencing any one, and brigandage and robbery will disappear before its light.  And if human beings in large industrial centers are herded together in tenements and slum hotels, how can a humane judge aggravate the penalties against sexual crimes?  How can the sense of shame develop among people, when young and old of both sexes are crowded together in the same bed, in the same corrupted and corrupting environment, which robs the human soul of every noble spark?

I might stray pretty far, if I were to continue these illustrations of social hygiene which will be the true solution of the problem and the supreme systematic, daily humane, and bloodless remedy against the disease of criminality.  However, we have not the simple faith that in the near or far future of humanity crimes can ever be wholly eradicated.  Even Socialism, which looks forward to a fundamental transformation of future society on the basis of brotherhood and social justice, cannot elevate itself to the absolute and naive faith that criminality, insanity, and suicide can ever fully disappear from the earth.  But it is our firm conviction that the endemic form of criminality, insanity, and suicide will disappear, and that nothing will remain of them but rare sporadic forms caused by lesion or telluric and other influences.

Since we have made the great discovery that malaria, which weighs upon so many parts in Italy, is dependent for its transmission on a certain mosquito, we have acquired the control of malarial therapeutics and are enabled to protect individuals and families effectively against malaria.  But aside from this function of protecting people, there must be a social prevention, and since those malarial insects can live only in swampy districts, it is necessary to bring to those unreclaimed lands the blessing of the hoe and plow, in order to remove the cause and do away with the