We are to recall that the Frankenstein family tradition has been to enter into public
service, most particularly acting in the capacity of syndics, or magistrates (I:1:1).
Thus Alphonse Frankenstein's sense of rectitude may be advanced here as a standard
whereby to measure that of his son, also that of his society. At the same time, as
a man who is so completely bound by the system he has served that he cannot conceive
that it might act wrongly, or who is so unprepared to recognize injustice as a potential
outcome of the weighing of purely circumstantial evidence, Alphonse Frankenstein,
the representative citizen of Geneva, may have so narrow a perspective on truth that,
even were it to appear self-evident, it might still never be wholly just.