is repeated with modifications, in the part_. This is a necessary
consequence of the Unity of Nature. We ought to expect therefore and
do find, that the order of the use of the factors of evolution is
the same in the evolution of the _organic kingdom_, in the evolution
of _each species_, and in the evolution of _each individual_. In all
these the physical factors are first powerfully operative, then become
subordinate to organic factors, and these in their turn to psychical
and rational factors. Therefore, as the individual in its early stages,
i. e. in embryo and infancy, is peculiarly plastic under the influence
of the physical environment and afterwards becomes more and more
independent of these: so a species when first formed is more plastic
under the influence of the Lamarckian factors and afterwards becomes
more rigid to the same. And so also the organic kingdom was doubtless
at first more plastic under Lamarckian factors, and has become less
so in the present species, especially of the higher animals. The
principal reason for this, as we have already seen, is the increasing
differentiation of germ and somatic cells, and the removal of the
former to the interior where they are more and more protected from
external influence.
II.
Some evolutionists—the materialistic—insist on making human evolution
identical in all respects with organic evolution. This we have shown is
not strictly true. The very least that can be said is that a new and
far more potent factor is introduced with man, which modifies greatly
the process. But we may claim much more, viz. that evolution is here on
a wholly different and higher plane. The factors of organic evolution
are indeed still present and condition the whole process; but they are
not left to be used by nature alone. On the contrary, they are used in
a new way and for higher purposes by Reason.
But by a revulsion from the materialistic extreme, some have gone to
the opposite extreme. They would place human progress and organic
evolution in violent antagonism, as if subject to entirely different
and even opposite laws. But we have also shown, that although the
distinctive human factor is indeed dominant, yet it is underlaid and
conditioned by all the lower factors—that these lower factors are
still necessary as the agents used by Reason.
III.
We have already alluded to Weismann's and Wallace's views, but there is
one important aspect not yet touched.
If Weismann and Wallace are right, if natural selection be indeed the
only factor used by nature in organic evolution and therefore available
for use by Reason in human evolution, then alas for all our hopes of
race-improvement, whether physical, mental, or moral! All enlightened
schemes of _physical culture_ and of _hygiene_, although directed
indeed primarily for the strength, health, and happiness of the
_present generation_, yet are sustained and ennobled by the conviction
that the physical improvement of the individual, by inheritance enters
into a similar improvement of the race. All our schemes of _education_,
intellectual and moral, although certainly intended mainly for the
improvement of the individual, are glorified by the hope that the
race is also thereby gradually elevated. It is true that these hopes
are usually extravagant; it is true that the whole improvement of the
individuals of one generation is not carried over by inheritance into
the next; it is true therefore that we cannot by education raise a
lower race up to the plane of a higher race _in a few generations_; but
there must be a small residuum, be it ever so small, carried forward
by inheritance and accumulated from age to age, which enters into the
slow growth of the race. If it be true that reason must direct the
course of human evolution, and if it be also true that selection of the
fittest is the only method available for that purpose; then, if we are
to have any race-improvement at all, the dreadful law of _destruction
of the weak and helpless_ must with Spartan firmness be carried out
voluntarily and deliberately. Against such a course all that is best
in us revolts. The use of the Lamarckian factors, on the contrary,
is not attended with any such revolting consequences. All that we
call education, culture, training, is by the use of these. Our hopes
of race-improvement therefore are strictly conditioned on the fact
that the Lamarckian factors are still operative, that changes in the
individual, if in useful direction, are to some extent inherited and
accumulated in the race.
IV.
We have said that the new factor introduced with man is a voluntary
co-operation in the process of evolution, a conscious upward striving
toward a higher condition, a pressing forward toward an ideal. Man
contrary to all else in nature is transformed, not in _shape_ by
external environment, but in _character by his own ideals_. Now this
capacity of forming ideals and the voluntary pursuit of such ideals,
whence comes it? When analysed and reduced to its simplest terms, it
is naught else than the consciousness in man of his relation to the
infinite and the attempt to realise the divine ideal in human character.
JOSEPH LE CONTE.
ILLUSTRATIVE STUDIES IN CRIMINAL ANTHROPOLOGY.
III.
THE PHYSIOGNOMY OF THE ANARCHISTS.
One of the most curious applications, and perhaps the most practical,
of Criminal Anthropology, (of that new science which has associated
itself with sociology, psychiatry, and history,) is that which flows
from the study of the physiognomy of the political criminal. For not
only does it appear to succeed in furnishing us with the juridical
basis of political crime, which hitherto seemed to escape all our
researches, so completely that until now all jurists had ended by
saying that there was no political crime; but it seems also to supply
us with a method for distinguishing true revolution, always fruitful
and useful, from utopia, from rebellion, which is always sterile. It
is for me a thoroughly established fact, and one of which I have given
the proofs in my "Delitto Politico,"[71] that true revolutionists,
that is to say, the initiators of great scientific and political
revolutions, who excite and bring about a true progress in humanity,
are almost always geniuses or saints, and have all a marvellously
harmonious physiognomy; and to verify this it is sufficient simply to
look at the plates in my "Delitto Politico." What noble physiognomies
have Paoli, Fabrizi, Dandolo, Moro, Mazzini, Garibaldi, Bandiera,
Pisacane, la Petrowskaia, la Cidowina, la Sassulich! Generally we see
in them a very large forehead, a very bushy beard, and very large and
soft eyes; sometimes we meet with the jaw much developed, but never
hypertrophic; sometimes, finally, with paleness of the face (Mazzini,
Brutus, Cassius); but these characteristics seldom accumulate in the
same individual to the extent of constituting what I call the criminal
type.
[71] 1890.
In a study that I have made with three hundred and twenty-one of our
Italian revolutionists, (against Austria etc.,) nearly all males,
(there were twenty-seven women to one hundred men,) the proportion of
the criminal type was 0·57 per cent.; i. e. 2 per cent. less than in
normal men. Out of thirty celebrated Nihilists, eighteen have a very
fine physiognomy, twelve present some isolated anomalies, two only
present the criminal type (Rogagiew and Oklasdky), that is to say 6·8
per cent. And if from these unfortunate men who represent to us, even
psychologically, the Christian martyrs, we pass to the regicides, to
the presidenticides, such as Fieschi, Guiteau, Nobiling, and to the
monsters of the French Revolution of 1789, such as Carrier, Jourdan,
and Marat, we there at once find in all, or in nearly all, the criminal
type. And the type again frequently appears among the Communards and
the Anarchists. Taking fifty photographs of Communards I have found the
criminal type in 12 per cent.; and the insane type in 10 per cent. Out
of forty-one Parisian Anarchists that I have studied with Bertillon at
the office of the police of Paris, the proportion of the criminal type
was 31 per cent.
In the rebellion of the 1st of May last I was able to study one
hundred Turin Anarchists. I found the criminal type among these in the
proportion of 34 per cent., while in two hundred and eighty ordinary
criminals of the prison at Turin the type was 43 per cent.
TABLE OF PERCENTAGE OF CHARACTERISTICS.
================================+==========+=========
| TURIN | ORDINARY
CHARACTERISTICS. |ANARCHISTS|CRIMINALS
--------------------------------+----------+---------
Exaggerated plagiocephaly | 11 | 21
Facial asymmetry | 36 | 60
Other cranial anomalies | |
(ultra-brachycephaly etc.) | 15 | 44
Very large jaw | 19 | 29
Exaggerated zygomas | 16 | 23
Enormous frontal sinus | 17 | 19
Dental anomalies | 30 | 20
Anomalies of the ears | 64 | 75
Anomalies of the nose | 40 | 57
Anomalous coloration of skin | 30 | 8
Old wounds | 10 | 26
Tattooing | 4 | 10
Neuro-pathological anomalies | 8 | 26
Among the 100 individuals arrested on the 1st of May, 30 per cent. were
recidivists for common crimes; among the others, 50 per cent. Of true
prison _habitués_ there were 8 among the former and 20 among the latter.
Thanks to the assistance of Dr. Carus of _The Open Court Publishing
Company_, who has sent me many curious data and also the work of
Schaack, "Anarchy and Anarchists" (Chicago, 1889), which is very
partial, although rich in facts, I have been able to study the
photographs of 43 Chicago anarchists, and I have found among them
almost the same proportion of the criminal type, that is 40 per cent.
The ones that presented this type are the two Djeneks, Potoswki, Cloba,
Seveski, Stimak, Sugar, Micolanda, Bodendick, Lieske, Lingg, Oppenheim,
Engel and his wife, Fielden, G. Lehm, Thiele, and Most. Especially
in Potowski, Sugar, and Micolanda I mark facial asymmetry, enormous
jaws, developed frontal sinus, protruding ears; and the same (except
the asymmetry) in Seveski and Novak. Fielden has a turned up nose
and enormous jaws; Most has acrocephaly and facial asymmetry. On the
contrary a very fine physiognomy has Marx, with his very full forehead,
bushy hair and beard, and soft eyes; and likewise Lassalle, Hermann,
Schwab, the two Spies, Neebe, Schnaubelt, Waller, and Seeger.
In studying the chief anarchists separately,—the martyrs of the
Chicago anarchists, it might well be said,—there is found in them
all an anomaly, very frequent in normal men as well; that is to say
the ears are without lobes; the ears are also developed a little more
than normally in all (except in Spies), they are protruding in Lingg,
Fischer, and Engel; the jaw is much developed in Lingg, Spies, Fischer,
and Engel; all have, however, except Spies,[72] the forehead fine
and full, with great intelligence. In the plates of the journal _Der
Vorbote_ we find a Mongolic cast of feature in Engel and Lingg, both
of whom should have much of the degenerative characters, enormous jaw
and zygoma, and Lingg oblique eyes. But these characters are much less
apparent in the photographs that I received from _The Monist_ and in
which the jaw of Fischer even decreases. Perhaps these photographs
were taken some years before the crime, when they were very young.
Certainly in both instances (in the _Vorbote_ and the photographs from
_The Monist_) I find a very noble and truly genial physiognomy in
Parsons and Neebe. The physiognomy of August Spies is morbid. He has a
senile auricle, voluminous jaw bones and a strongly developed frontal
sinus. And, it is necessary to remark, the physiognomy corresponds with
his autobiography, written with a fierce fanaticism; whilst in the
posthumous writings of Parsons and in the writings of Neebe we remark a
calm and reflective enthusiasm.
[72] Thus according to the portrait in Schaack's book; but
according to information which I later received from General
Trumbull of Chicago, this portrait is not true to life. It
would seem, then, that the features upon which my opinion is
based do not exist.
Schwab has the physiognomy of a _savant_, of a student; he much
resembles the nihilist Antonoff, beheaded in Russia. (See Plate IV in
my "Delitto Politico.") Neebe is quite like an Italian economist well
known in America, Luigi Luzzatti.
Fielden has a wild physiognomy, not without sensuality. Parsons
resembles Bodio, the great Italian statistician, and in the upper part
of the face, Stanley.
When I say that the anarchists of Turin and of Chicago are frequently
of the criminal type, I do not mean that political criminals, even the
most violent anarchists, are true criminals; but that they possess the
degenerative characters common to criminals and to the insane, being
anomalies and possessing these traits by heredity; as a fact, the
father of Booth was called Junius Brutus, and gave to his son the name
of a revolutionist, Wilkes. The fathers of Guiteau and of Nobiling,
and the mother of Staps were religious lunatics; and Staps also, like
Ravaillac, Clement, Brutus, had hallucinations. In the autobiographies
of the _Vorbote_ I find that Parsons had a very religious Methodist
mother and a father who had much to do with the movement of the
Temperance League. Indeed, the Parsons since 1600 had as a family taken
part in all revolutionary movements. A Tompkin, a relation of his
mother, had taken part in the battles of Brandywine and of Monmouth; a
General Parsons was an officer in the Revolution of 1776, and a captain
Parsons engaged in the battle of Bunker Hill.
Spies was born in a chateau celebrated for feudal robberies—called on
that account the "Raubschloss."
The father of Louis Lingg suffered through his labor as a workman a
concussion of the brain—according to the _Vorbote_.
The father of Fielden, an orator of power notwithstanding his
occupation as a workman, was one of the agitators of the question
of agricultural lands for workingmen in England; he was one of the
founders of the "Consumers' Co-operative Society" and a prime mover in
the society of "Odd Fellows." For those who will object that in many
of these relations they see only geniuses, I have only to cite my work
"L'Homme de Génie," where I have proved how often genius is nervous
epilepsy, and how almost all the sons of men of genius are lunatics,
idiots, or criminals.
This hereditary influence is seen also in the great number of brothers
charged together, the two Spies, the two Djeneks, the two Fieldens, and
the two Lehms. According to their autobiographies also their fathers or
their mothers died early; from which we may presume that they were old
or diseased.
The morbid impressibility of Engel has been admitted by himself. "I
cannot," he said to his wife, "hold within me what I feel. I must
explode. The enthusiasm takes possession of me; it is a disease."
Lingg could not remain quiet an instant; in his room he always
had some dynamite in store. Bodendick was a thief and a mattoid;
full of cunning, mischief and mad tricks, even according to the
_Arbeiter-Zeitung_. He was always dreaming of new explosives. Though
insane he was a genius as appears from his poetry, which is published
by Schick and is in the style of the celebrated "Song of the Shirt."
The suicide of Lingg with dynamite shows his moral insensibility, as do
the words of Parsons addressed to the society of anarchists: "Strangle
the spies and throw them out of the window." In Lingg we see a truly
ungovernable epileptoid idea driving him to political action. "I cannot
control myself;" he said, "it is stronger than I."
I repeat that among the anarchists there are no true criminals;
even Schaack, the police historian, can name but two criminals, and
certainly he would not have spared them if he could have stigmatised
them.
Their heroic-like deaths, with their ideal on their lips, proves that
they were not common criminals. Nevertheless the psychology of the
leaders of the Commune shows in them a true moral insensibility, an
innate cruelty, which found a pretext and a scope in politics; and
which accords too well with their criminal physiognomies. Marat demands
two hundred and ten thousand heads; Vallés speaks of his family with a
true hatred; Carrier wrote, "We will make a cemetery of France"; Ferré
smiled while by his orders they killed Veisset; and Rigault said in
slang to his pistol, "Il faut peter sur le chipau." The last words of
Spies before the court express a ferocious hatred towards the rich; and
the project of the anarchists of Chicago (if it is true) to blow up a
part of the city with bombs attests an absence of the moral sense. We
know that many anarchists regard brigands and thieves, such as Pini,
Kammerer, and Gasparoni, as their brothers in arms. Booth had for
accomplice Payne, a true murderer by profession. See also the journal
published at Geneva _L'Explosion_, and the Como journal _Le Poignard_.
But it is necessary to note that hereditary anomaly, if it provokes an
anomaly in the moral sense, also suppresses misoneism, the horror of
novelty which is almost the general rule of humanity; it thus makes
of them innovators, apostles of progress, though the education is too
rude: and the fight with relative misery of which all the anarchists
of Chicago except Neebe have been the victims, not affording material
for useful novelties made of them only failures and rebels, hindering
them from comprehending that humanity as a part of nature, which it is,
cannot progress at a gallop, _non facit saltus_. Spies on his last day
discovered that humanity is misoneic, the slave of custom, and said,
quoting the lines in German, "I now understand the poet's words,
'_Denn aus Gemeinem ist der Mensch gemacht,
Und die Gewohnheit nennt er seine Amme._'"
[Man has been shaped of what is common,
And habit is the nurse by whom he's reared.]
Evidently if he had understood it before he would not have been an
anarchist. Whoever has observed in asylums the conduct of lunatics,
will understand that one of their characteristics is originality, just
as in men of genius; only the originality of the insane and of moral
lunatics, or of born criminals, is very often absurd or unavailable.
This is why I, although I am an extremist in my partisanship for the
death-penalty, cannot approve the shooting of the Communards and the
hanging of the anarchist martyrs of Chicago. I deem it highly necessary
to suppress born criminals, when they reach the persuasion that being
born for evil they can do nothing but evil; and I believe that their
death thus saves the lives of many honest men. But we have to do with a
very different thing here, where the criminal type is, as shown above,
less frequent than among born criminals.
It is also necessary to consider here the youthful condition of almost
all these persons—Lingg 23 years, Schwab 33 years, Neebe 32 years.
For at this age men are at the maximum point of their audacity and
misoneism; and I remember a leading Russian Nihilist saying to me
that there was not an honest man in Russia who was not a nihilist at
20 years of age and ultra-moderate at 40 years. If the inclination to
evil here exists in greater proportion than in law-abiding men, it
nevertheless takes an altruistic turn, which is quite the contrary
to that which is observed among born criminals, and which commands
our admiration and arouses our just pity. This inclination, in
associating itself with the want of the new, which is also abnormal in
humanity, could, if it were properly directed and were not crossed by
misery, prove itself of great value to humanity; it could trace for
it new routes, and in every case be practically useful to it. A born
criminal imprisoned for life will kill some gaoler, in a colony will
ally himself with the savages, and will never work; while political
criminals in a colony will become more useful pioneers even than
law-abiding men. An example is seen in Louise Michel, who in New
Caledonia was the most charitable of the sick nurses.
And then there is no political crime against which the punishment of
death can be directed. An idea is never stifled with the death of its
abettors: it gains with the death of the martyrs if it is good, as
is the case in revolutions; and it falls at once into vacuity if it
is sterile, as is the case, perhaps, with the anarchists. And then,
as judgment cannot be formed of a great man during his life, so a
generation cannot in its ephemeral life judge with certainty of the
justice of an idea, and for that reason it is not proper to inflict so
radical a punishment on its abettors.
CESARE LOMBROSO.
INNOVATION AND INERTIA IN THE WORLD OF PSYCHOLOGY.
I. MISONEISM.
In the moral world the law which is seen to dominate all the others
is the law of inertia. This law of inertia is so powerful that even
after having been overcome by the friction of ages it always leaves,
even among beings that have most progressed, traces of its original
oscillation, in survivals, in rudimentary organs, when it is not
renewed in all its completeness in certain atavistic forms.
_Inertia in the moral world._—Granting that it were possible and
desirable to contest this law in the organic world, it could certainly
not be done in the moral world. In fact, although we are thought to
be making great progress, yet if we form a graphic chart showing the
progress made on the globe, we shall see to what miserable proportions
it is reduced. It may be said that all Africa, except certain points
encroached on by the Aryans, Australia, and a good half part of
America, are almost in the prehistoric state, or at best in the state
of the great Asiatic empires of the earliest historic epochs. Or
perhaps (as in South America, Hayti, and Siberia) civilisation has
only changed the appearances of primitive life, by substituting for
immobility an unstable equilibrium, which is almost worse still.
The most certain proof of the extension and of the predominance in the
moral world of the law of inertia, is the hatred of novelty, so little
noticed, which we call Misoneism, and which arises from the effort
and the repugnance we experience when we have to substitute a new
sensation for an old one. And this is so common among animals that it
can be regarded as a physiological character.
Minds feeble, enfeebled, or primitive in character, show themselves the
most susceptible of repugnance to what is novel; it being understood,
however, that it is not a question here of small innovations, such
as fashion for women, the change from the elliptic to the circular,
tattooing for savages, and sports for children; for not only have the
latter no dread of such changes, but on the contrary they wish heartily
for them, as they excite the nervous centres, which require change,
without irritating them, and without causing pain.
But when the innovation is too radical, it is not merely the savage and
the child who repel it with dread; the great majority of men, for whom
misoneism is a law of nature, are sensible of a feeling of repugnance,
as the result of the pain produced by the necessity in which they
are placed of causing their brains to be traversed by too rapid
transitions, a task not within their power, inertia and the repetition
of movements (individual or atavistic) before performed, being natural
to ordinary men, as to all animals.
_Misoneism in manners._—This may be seen, for example, in the manners
and customs of the modern Greeks; notwithstanding the vicissitudes of
time, we find in them the ancient Greek.
The French of the nineteenth century are still in many respects such as
they are depicted by Strabo (IV, 4), and by Cæsar (De Bello Gallico,
IV, 5), lovers of arms and of ostentation, incurably vain, facile of
speech, easily carried away by words, and imprudent in their resolves.
_Misoneism in religion._—As much can be said of this in relation
to religion, literature, and art, where we see misoneism triumph.
With respect to religion it can even be affirmed that this is the
institution most completely based on misoneism; to the extent that we
see the Christian religion preserve of ancient religions, not only
musical harmony (the chant), sacred vestments (the mitre and fibula
of the Egyptian priests), the scapular and the sandals of the Roman
plebeian, etc., but also the Mithraic legends in certain dogmas which
have relation to the sun, and even to ancient fetichism.
_Misoneism in morality._—The misoneistic instinct, fed by religion,
may leave traces profound enough to form a morality _sui generis_, and
provoke among savages remorse at having failed in a brutal custom, be
it ever so repugnant, such as among us is provoked in good men by crime.