We now come to a new sphere of morality. In the earlier lectures we studied the duties that men have towards one another because they belong to a certain definite social group, or because they are part of the same family or guild or State. But there are other duties independent of any particular grouping. I have to respect the life, the property, the honour of my fellow-creatures, even when they are not of my own family or my own country. This is the most general sphere in the whole of ethics, for it is independent of any local or ethnic conditions. It is also the noblest in concept. The duties we are going to review are considered by all civilized peoples as the primary and most compelling of all. The supremely immoral acts are murder and theft, and the immorality of these acts is in no way diminished if they are committed against those of another country. The field of domestic morals, professional ethics and civic morals is certainly not so grave a matter. Whoever fails in one of these duties seems to us as a rule less of an offender than the man who commits one of the other offences. This idea is so general and so deeply engraved in men’s minds that crime, to the ordinary consciousness, consists in essence or almost solely in killing, wounding or stealing. When we form an image of a criminal, it always takes the shape of a man who makes an assault on the property or the person of another. All the work of the Italian school of criminology rests precisely on the postulate, seen as an axiom, that this is the whole of crime. Establishing the type of an offender consists, for instance, in establishing the type of the homicide or thief, with their respective variants.
In this connexion, morals of the present day are in complete contrast with those of ancient times. A real transposition or reversal in the hierarchic order of duties has come about, especially since the coming of Christianity. In the altogether primitive societies and even under the regime of the City State, the duties we are going to consider, instead of being at the highest point of all morals, were only on the threshold of ethics. Instead of being set above all others, these duties, or some of them, had a kind of optional character. The proof of the slight moral dignity attached to them is seen in the lack of any severe penalties for their infringement. Very often, in fact, no penalty followed. In Greece, even the murderer was punished only on the demand of the family, who might be satisfied with a monetary indemnity. In Rome and in Judea, any coming to terms or compromise on homicide was prohibited, since it was considered a public felony, but it was not the same in the case of wounding or theft. It was for the injured individuals to pursue their own redress, and they could if they liked allow the guilty man to buy himself off by a sum of money. On the whole, therefore, there were only quasi-civic sanctions for such acts; very often they only entailed some sort of damages; in any case, even when the sentence on the guilty one carried a physical penalty, such crimes did not appear grave enough for the State itself to take repressive action. It was the individuals who had to take the initiative in doing this. The society did not itself feel immediately involved or threatened by these outrages that are repellent to us. It might even happen that this slight measure of protection was only given by the society to its own members and withheld when the victim belonged to another country.
The true crimes, then, were those carried out against the family or religious and political orders. All that threatened the political structure of the society, any shortcoming towards the public divinities, which were only the symbolic forms of the State, and any breach of family duties, were fraught with penalties that might indeed be terrible.
This development, that has had the effect of raising to the highest point in morals something that began by lying at the lowest, is a result of the parallel development that came about in collective sensibility, which we have often noted. Originally, the strongest collective sentiments, those that least tolerate opposition, are those concerned with the group itself, whether it be the political group as a whole or the family group. Hence the exceptional authority of religious sentiments and the severe penalties that ensured respect for them, the sacred things being but the symbol of the collective entity. This entity was personified in the form of God and of every kind of sacred being, and it is this collective entity that is the object of the respect and worship which appear to be offered to the imaginary beings of religion. On the other hand, social sensibility is not at all acutely affected by all that concerns the individual. The suffering of the individual makes little impact on the feelings, for his well-being is only of small account. Nowadays, on the contrary, it is individual suffering that is the hateful thing. The notion that a man suffers without deserving it is intolerable to us, but as we see, even suffering deserved oppresses and pains us and we try to ease it. The reason is that these sentiments that centre on man, the human being, become very strong, whilst those that link us direct with the group pass into the background. The group no longer seems to have value in itself and for itself: it is only a means of fulfilling and developing human nature to the point demanded by the current ideals. It is the supreme aim, compared with which all others are but of secondary value. That is why morals of individual man have come to transcend all others. We have so often pointed out the reasons underlying this decline of certain collective sentiments and the advance of others, that there is no need to review them again. They derive from those causes put together which, by increasing the diversities of the members of all societies, have left them with no essential characteristics in common except those they get from their intrinsic quality of human nature. It is this quality that quite naturally becomes the supreme object of collective sensibility.
The general features of the branch of ethics we are now tackling have thus been set out. We must next look at the detail in order to study the main rules, that is, the main duties it lays down.
The first and most imperative is the one forbidding any attempt on the life of a human being and prohibiting homicide, except in cases allowed by law (i.e. in case of war, in legally pronounced conviction and in legitimate self-defence). The reasons for the prohibition of homicide and for the increasing severity of those terms need not be dealt with here, after all we have said. Given that the goal of the individual is moral well-being and that to do good is to do good to others, it is clear that an act that results in depriving a human being of his life, that is, of the condition on which every other boon depends, must of necessity seem to be the most heinous of all crimes. We must not linger to give an account of the origin of the rule prohibiting murder. It is more to the point to trace how the rule operates in our present-day societies and the causes of the sway, great or small, that it holds over the consciousness, and of the respect, great or small, attached to it. In this quest, statistics must be brought in to help us. They will enlighten us on the conditions that cause the rate of homicide in society to vary: this rate indicates the degree of authority with which the rule prohibiting murder is clothed. This enquiry will make us understand the nature of the crime better and the same time throw light on the distinctive features of our morality.
On these considerations, it might seem true to say that the causes on which the tendency to homicide depends are obvious and have no need of being further defined. The reason why homicide is prohibited nowadays under threat of the most severe penalties provided by our code of law, is that the human person is the object of a sacred respect that was formerly attached to very different things. Should we not conclude that the reason why a certain nation has a bent towards murder in a greater or lesser degree is that this respect is widespread to a greater or lesser extent, and that a greater or lesser value is attached to all that concerns the individual? One fact seems to confirm this interpretation: ever since we have been able to follow the course of homicide by figures, we can see that it has gradually declined.
In France the rate for the period 1826–30 was 279; the rate decreases by degrees as follows: 282 (1831–35); 189 (1836–40); 196 (1841–45); 240 (1846–50); 171 (1851–55); 119 (1856–60); 121 (1861–65); 136 (1866–70); 190 (1871–75); 160 (1876–80); that is, a decrease of 62 per cent, in 55 years, a fall that is all the more remarkable since the population increased in the same period by more than one-fifth. We find the same decline in all civilized nations, to a greater or less degree according to the country. Thus it appears that with the progress of civilization homicide decreases. This seems to be confirmed by the other fact that it is the more widespread where countries are less civilized. Italy, Hungary and Spain are in the lead, followed by Austria. The three first-named are certainly amongst those that are least advanced: they are the backward countries of Europe. They stand in contrast with the nations that have a high standard of culture—Germany, England, France and Belgium, where homicidal crimes amount to between 10 and 20 per thousand inhabitants, whilst Hungary and Italy have a rate of more than 100, or say, 5 to 10 times as many. Finally, there is a similar varying incidence to be found within each separate country. Homicide is mainly a crime of rural districts. It is amongst workers on the land that we find the highest incidence. There is no doubt at all that the respect and the value attached to the person by public opinion grow with civilization. Might we then not say that the homicide rate varies according to the relative position of the individual in the mounting scale of moral ends?
We can be confident that this reading is on fairly sure ground although it be far too general. There is no doubt the growth of individualism has some connection with the decrease in the rate of homicide, but it does not bring it about direct. If it had this effect, it would be equally manifest in other kinds of criminal attack to which the individual is exposed. Thefts, fraud and embezzlement inflict pain on the victims that is sometimes as acute as purely physical injuries. A commercial fraud, a serious swindle, can often work more distress at one stroke in the evil effects they cause than an isolated murder. All these particular evils, instead of diminishing, only go on increasing as civilization grows. Thefts, which amounted to 10,000 in 1829, stood already at 21,000 by 1844, at 30,000 in 1853, at 41,522 in 1876–80, that is to say, an increase of 400 per cent. Bankruptcies rose from 129 to 971. There are also the physical offences, that show the same rise: first, sexual offences against children, and also assault and battery, which went up from 7—8,000 in the period 1829–33 to from 15—17,000 in 1863–69. Respect for the person should nevertheless protect it equally against injury by wounding and a mortal assault. That this increase could have come about, on the other hand, argues that this sentiment in itself can have had only a fairly weak inhibitive force. It cannot, then, be this sentiment, we might say, that accounts for the inhibitive spirit that the homicidal current encounters at a given moment. Amongst the circumstances that go with the advance of moral individualism, there must be some that are especially inimical to murder but do not reveal an equal antagonism to other forms of assault on the person. What may these circumstances be?
We have seen that, parallel with the progress of the collective sentiments whose interest is mankind in general, the human ideal and the material and moral wellbeing of the individual, there was a retreat, a weakening of those collective sentiments whose interest is the group or family or the State (independently of the advantage that individuals may derive from them). These two movements are not only parallel but are closely bound up. If the sentiments we attach to the individual in general are growing, it is precisely because the others are weakening and because the groups can no longer have any purpose other than the interests of the human person. If homicide is diminishing, it is rather that the mystic cult of the State is losing ground than that the cult of the human being is gaining. Indeed the sentiments that lie at the base of the cult of the State are in themselves stimulants to murder. Furthermore, they are of great intensity, like all collective sentiments; therefore when offence is given, they tend to react with a force in ratio to their intensity. If the offence is a serious one, it may lead the man touched closely by the offence to destroy his adversary. It may be all the more likely to have this result since these kinds of feelings, on account of their own particular nature, are especially liable to silence all feelings of pity and sympathy which in other circumstances would be enough to restrain the hand of the murderer. For when these other feelings are strong, those of pity are weak. When the fame and greatness of the State appear as the supreme good, when the society is the sacred and living thing, to which all else is subordinate, its importance so far transcends the individual that the sympathy and compassion he may inspire fail to counterbalance and curb the exigent demands of the offended sentiments that are so much more impelling.
When it is a matter of defending a father or of avenging a God, can the life of a man count in the scale? It counts indeed very little when offset against objects of such value and weight. This is why political beliefs, the sentiment of family honour, the sentiment of caste, and religious faith—all these may often in themselves carry the seeds of homicide. The great number of murders in Corsica are due to the surviving practice of the vendetta: the vendetta itself, however, derives from the fact that the point of family honour is still a very live issue—that is, the feelings that link the Corsican to his clan still have great force. The reputation of the family name still stands above all else.
Not only may these various sentiments lead to murder, but they produce, when they are strong, a kind of chronic moral disposition, of itself in a general way inclining to homicide. Once, under the influence of all these moral states of mind, we come to attach such little value to individual life, then we become used to the notion that it should and can be sacrificed to all sorts of things. Then, a very slight impetus is enough to lead to murder. All these tendencies have in themselves something violent and destructive, that incline the individual in a general way to destroy: they predispose him to violent demonstrations and bloody acts. That is the cause of the uncouth harsh temperament that is a feature of the lower societies. It has often been held that this uncouthness is a remaining vestige of brutishness, a survival of the tooth-and-claw instincts of animal nature. In reality it is the product of a well-defined moral culture. Animals themselves are not as a rule violent by nature, but only when the conditions of their life make it necessary.
Why should it be otherwise with man? He has remained for long ages harsh to his fellow creatures. Not because he was close to the animal: it was the nature of the social life he led that so shaped him. The practice of pursuing moral aims that were foreign to human interests made him relatively insensitive to human suffering. All these sentiments just discussed can in fact only be satisfied by imposing suffering on the individual. The gods we worship live only on the privations and sacrifices to which mortals subject themselves. Sometimes, human victims even are exacted and it is this toll that expresses in a mystic form what society exacts from its members. We can imagine that such training over generations is likely to leave in the consciousness a disposition to cause suffering. Moreover, all these sentiments are, too, very vivid passions, since they will tolerate no opposition and brook no question. Characters formed in this way are therefore in essence a product of the passions: they are driven by impulse. Passion leads to violence and tends to break all that hampers it or stands in the way.
The decline in the rate of homicide at the present day has not come about because respect for the human person acts as a brake on the motives for homicide or on the stimulants to murder, but because these motives and these stimulants grow fewer in number and have less intensity. These stimulants are the very collective sentiments that bind us to objects which are alien to humanity and the individual, that is, which bind us to groups or to things that are a symbol of these groups. At the same time, I do not mean to say that the sentiments which formerly lay at the base of moral consciousness are destined to pass away; they will persist and must persist but they will be fewer and have far less strength than they had formerly. And this is what causes the rate of mortality by homicide to have a downward trend in civilized countries.
Moreover, this interpretation can easily be verified. If it is accurate, all the causes that reinforce these kinds of sentiment must increase the rate of murder. War is obviously one of these causes. It reduces societies, even the most cultivated, to a moral condition that recalls that of the lower societies. The individual is obscured; he ceases to count; it is the mass which becomes the supreme social factor; a rigid authoritarian discipline is imposed on all volitions. Love of country and the attachment to the group cast into the background all feelings of sympathy for the individual. What is the result?
Whilst theft, fraud and embezzlement decline appreciably, owing to various causes, homicide either increases or, at best, remains stationary. In France, in 1870, thefts decreased by 33 per cent., falling from 31,000 to 20,000 and robbery with violence from 1,059 to 871. There was only a slight fall in murder; the figure fell from 339 to 307. And yet this decline is only apparent and conceals a rise that is very likely appreciable. Indeed this decrease in general criminality in time of war, derives (in one respect, not to be over-rated or denied)—especially if the country is invaded—from a cause that must inevitably affect homicide; that is, the state of disorder in the administration of the law. The prosecution of crime must be less efficiently carried out when the country is invaded and all is upside down. That is not all. The age at which most crimes of homicide are committed is from 20 to 30 years. The incidence of homicide in this age group is in the ratio of 40 per million per annum. All young men of this age at that time had been called to the colours; the crimes they did commit, or would have committed in times of peace are not given in the statistics. If the rate of homicide fell a little in spite of these two causes, we can be certain that in reality it had seriously increased. The proof of this is that in 1871, when the troops were disbanded and the courts of law could attend to their duties in a more regular way (but without there being any great difference in the moral state of the country) a considerable rise is to be noted. After standing at 339 in 1869 and at 307 in 1870, the rate of homicide rises to 447, that is, an increase of 45 per cent. It had not reached such a high level since 1851, an exceptional year, as we shall see.
Political crises have the same effect. In 1876, the elections for the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies took place; the cases of homicide went up from 409 to 422; but in 1877, political disturbances becoming intensified—during the ‘Sixteenth of May period’—a formidable increase took place. The rate rose at one stroke to 503, a figure not recorded since 1839. During the years of restiveness that run from 1849 to the time when the Second Empire was finally consolidated, the same phenomenon occurs. In 1848, the numbers for homicide stand at 432, at 496 in 1849, at 485 in 1850 and 496 in 1851; in 1852 the fall began, although the figures still remain very high until 1854. During the first years of the reign of Louis-Philippe, rivalries were violent amongst the political parties. Meanwhile the curve continued to rise from 462 in 1831 to 486 in 1832. The highest point in the century was reached in 1839 (569.)
It is a well-known fact that the Protestant religion is more individualistic than the Catholic. Every member can adapt his own faith more freely and with more reliance on himself or his own views. The result is that the collective sentiments common to all members of the Protestant Church are fewer and less strong, or, at least, that they inevitably take the individual as their chief concern. Now, the tendency to homicide remains without comparison stronger in Catholic than in Protestant countries. On an average, the Catholic countries of Europe account for 32 cases of homicide per thousand, the Protestant countries not even four. The three countries standing in the lead for the whole of Europe are not only Catholic, but dyed-in-the-wool Catholic—Italy, Spain and Hungary.
To sum up, then, a fruitful soil for the growth of homicide is a state of public consciousness arising from the passions—a state that has a natural echo in the consciousness of individuals. It is a crime made up of a lack of reflection, of instinctive fears and of impulse. In one sense, all passions lead to violence and all kinds of violence to homicidal forces, although these latter, especially, have an effect which goes beyond the individual in its ends. Therefore, the rate of homicide is the greatest proof that our immorality is becoming something less passive and more thought out, more calculated. Such indeed are the features of our immorality, which is remarkable for its astuteness rather than violence. These features of our immorality are at the same time the features of our morals. They, too, are becoming increasingly cold, reflective, rational; sensibility has a more and more limited part to play, and this is what Kant interpreted in setting passion beyond any morals. The moral act seems to us to-day to be an act of reason. Moreover there is nothing surprising in the alikeness we observe in the features of morals and of immorality. Indeed, we know that they are facts of the same nature and that they throw light one on the other. Immorality is not the opposite of morality any more than sickness is the opposite of health, both being different forms of one and the same state—two forms of moral life, two forms of physical life.
Thus, all that raises the temperature of the passions, in public life, raises the level of homicide. Public holidays and days of festival of course have the effect of intensifying collective life and of causing over-excitement. Out of 40 crimes of homicide noted by Marro, 19 were committed on public holidays, 14 on ordinary days, 7 were doubtful. It is a very limited number of cases to go on, but the predominance of public holidays is so marked that it could not be accidental. In the whole year, there are in fact only about 60 days of public holiday or festival. They should therefore account for one-sixth of the cases on other days of the week. The incidence in respect of public holidays is appreciably higher than for other days: on this random calculation of homicide, it follows that the rate of such crime must in general be very high indeed. A strict analysis of homicide suggests a similar conclusion. It is all the more surprising to find homicide thus associated with a particular state of activity, since so high a level of activity could ordinarily pass as normal. But this is exactly what follows from the fact that crime is not outside the normal conditions of life. By the very fact that a certain amount of activity deriving from the passions is always inevitable, crimes are always occurring. The main thing is that the rate should correspond to the existing state or state of mind of the society. A society without homicide is no more innocent than a society without passions.1
Note
1 The chapter ends with four illegible lines: the sense, however, seems complete without them.