Abnormal Man: A Novel
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(190) The responsibility of the criminal must be divided among these factors. It is one of the most tremendous facts in human life that, for every action, every impulse, every thought, every temptation resisted or victorious, we are fastening not only ourselves but those who may come after us in remote generations.
(42) The individual study of the criminal and crime is a necessity if we are to be protected from ex-convicts, the most costly and the most dangerous class we have. But the criminal can not be studied without being seen and examined.
(41) If a nerve of a normal organism is cut, the organs in which the irregularities are produced are those which the nerve controls. In this way the office of a nerve in the normal state may be discovered. The criminal is, so to speak, the severed nerve of society, and the study of him is a practical way (though indirect) of studying normal men. And since the criminal is seven-eighths like other men, such a study is, in addition, a direct inquiry into normal humanity.
(41) Crime can be said, in a certain sense, to be nature’s experiment on humanity.
(52) Insanity is the involuntary blindness of the mind by the passions, which inspire false ideas; but its essence is the absence of moral opposition, of reason, and of light, clarifying the mind.
(201) Insanity, as well as that form of aberration which is called criminality, is not possible with a normal brain.
(201) The anomalies of the hemispheres are either arrests of developments or acquired alterations. The first are all prenatal, the latter are either contracted before birth, during birth, or during life. See: (238) Insanity, Idiocy, Imbecility, Cretinism, Feeble-mindedness, etc. (271) Morphinism, Opium habit, Chloralism; Ether, hashish, or cocaine mania.
(31) Criminal hypnology concerns those hypnotic and partially hypnotic conditions in which crime is committed.
(44) Nature is responsible for the born criminal, society (in a great measure) for the criminal by occasion.
(44) If punishment rests on free will, the worst men, the criminals by nature, should have a very light punishment or none.
(190) There are three ways in which we may deal with a bad man. In the first place, we may get rid of him altogether by death or exile.
(45) One class of criminals are those with regressive, arrested moral development, innate criminals; for these society has but one remedy, elimination.
(191) A bad man can be and ought to be made a good man by the very process which may also at once appease popular indignation caused by his behavior, and strengthen others when tempted to imitate him. This can not be applied to all men. There are some whom no form of penal discipline will ever make estimable or useful, or even harmless.
(163) Ethics in the widest sense of the term means regulation of action; in the more definite sense it represents those duties which must be performed in the interest of society.
(200) Dr. Jacobi, of New York, spoke on brain crime and capital punishment: the composing parts of the brain must have been developed simultaneously and equally; essential organs and functions, particularly reasoning power and will, must not be disturbed... however great the number of hitherto unrecognized anomalies in the brain will become in the future, they will belong to two large classes, such as inflammation and humors. To these two classes belong the local disorders which have been found in the brains of criminals. They have been denominated criminal brains. The constitutional criminal is a tainted individual, and has the same relation to crime as the epileptic to convulsions—he can't help it.
(202) If only one mistake were made in a hundred convictions and death sentences, society could not afford to make that mistake. You and I may blunder, but the state cannot afford the brutality of capital punishment as long as the convicted criminal is certainly anomalous, possibly diseased. The place for transgressors is the place of safekeeping. Let us have done with killing. Let us see to it that the new century may have no reason to look upon our shortsighted barbarism as we review with painful awe the century of the torturer and witch-burner.
(53) According to these principles, individuals deprived of free will should not be punished, but treated morally; individuals who possess free will, and who at the same time freely commit faults, should be punished, in spite of their sincere regret, for these punishments are merited.
(75) "It is a bad quarter of an hour to pass," said Cartouche in speaking of his approaching execution.
(161) The natural striving of men is to obtain the most frequent, intensive, and long-enduring happiness.
(161) The supreme question is, as to whether the world unrolls fatally, so that man has no more influence over his destiny than over the course of the stars; or, is a part of the plan of the world adapted to liberty, the knowledge of which imposes action.
(7) You want to tell her about how when you were just a little kid you used to think the moon followed you. In fact, you open your mouth and you are about to say that very thing, but you don’t. Because it would be a lie. The truth is that you still think that the moon follows you. And you always will… and that makes you believe. You believe that this is real.
The Moon.
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