It is known that anarchists, individualists, “amorphists” and “libertarians” admit as a means of social transformation individual violence which extends from homicide to theft or estampage, even among “companions;” and this is then merely a political coloring given to criminal instincts which must not be confounded with political fanaticism, which is a very different phenomenon, common to the extreme and romantic parties of all times.  A scientific examination of each case by itself, with the aid of anthropology and psychology, alone can decide whether the perpetrator of such or such a deed of violence is a congenital criminal, a criminal through insanity, or a criminal through stress of political fanaticism.

I have, in fact, always maintained, and I still maintain, that the “political criminal,” whom some wish to class in a special category, does not constitute a peculiar anthropological variety, but that he can be placed under one or another of the anthropological categories of criminals of ordinary law, and particularly one of these three:  the born criminal having a congenital tendency to crime, the insane-criminal, the criminal by stress of fanatical passion.

The history of the past and of these latter times afford us obvious illustrations of these several categories.

In the Middle Ages religious beliefs filled the minds of all and colored the criminal or insane excesses of many of the unbalanced.  A similar insanity was the efficient cause of the more or less hysterical “sanctity” of some of the saints.  At the close of our century it is the politico-social questions which absorb (and with what overwhelming interest!) the universal consciousness—­which is stimulated by that universal contagion created by journalism with its great sensationalism—­and these are the questions which color the criminal or insane excesses of many of the unbalanced, or which are the determining causes of instances of fanaticism occurring in men who are thoroughly honorable, but afflicted with excessive sensibility.

It is the most extreme form of these politico-social questions which, in each historical period, possesses the most intense suggestive power.  In Italy sixty years ago it was Mazzinnianisme or Carbonarisme; twenty years ago, it was socialism; now it is anarchism.

It is very easy to understand how there occurred in each period, in accordance with their respective dominant tendencies, deeds of personal violence....  Felice Orsini, for example, is one of the martyrs of the Italian Revolution.

In each case of individual violence, unless one is content with the necessarily erroneous judgments begotten by emotion to reach a correct decision it is necessary to make a physio-psychical examination of the perpetrator, just as it is in the case of any other crime.