MURDER STATISTICS AND FREE WILL
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—Is there any possible way of reconciling the remarkable uniformity of the annual number of murders with the theory of Free Will ?
Every year hundreds of thousands of people must have more reason to commit murder than some of those who do commit murder, for murder is committed for trivial reasons. Now, if all these people have a free choice—free both ways—it must be impossible to forecast how many murders will be committed during the next twelve months. Free Will is inconsistent with prophecy ; yet any statistician can forecast with remarkable accuracy—say, with a margin of deviation from the mean of less than x per million of the population—not only how many murders are to be committed, but how many by men and how many by women, with the approximate ages of the murderers.
If we adopt the determinist theory that murderers commit murder because they cannot help it, it is easy in many cases to say why they could not help it. Thus Ruxton was under the control of a mixture of jealousy and anger of insane intensity. The man who committed "murder by motor" was a case of homicidal epilepsy. The boxer who was hanged for shooting two women was "punch drunk," a condition which deprived him of his normal power of self-control.—I am, &c., J. M.
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