While I have had the privilege of making several indirect studies of
anarchists by means of the data furnished by legal processes, the
journals, and the handwriting of the subjects, I have only rarely
been able to examine one directly and make those measurements and
craniological determinations upon him without which any study can be
only approximate, or, we might even say, hypothetical. I had, however,
an opportunity a short time ago to observe a real anarchist in person,
and study him according to the methods of my criminological clinic.
The results have been singular, and it seems to me that they should
cast some light upon the dark world of these agitators, and especially
upon the phenomena of the strange contradictions presented in their
life; manifestations which jurists and police officers, intent only
on achieving the judicial triumph of a conviction, consider and call
simulations and falsehoods.
[Illustration: (Unclear handwritten inscription)]
He was a fellow who had caused a great excitement, during the crowded
days of the exposition at Turin, by saying that he wanted to kill
the king. In fact, he gave himself up to the police, saying that the
anarchists of Alexandria were seeking the assassination of the king,
and had written him a letter directing him to arm himself, but that he,
wishing anything else than to commit regicide, had surrendered in order
to denounce the scheme. There was no real basis of criminal intent, but
our police put him in prison, and there I found him.
His physiognomy presented all the characteristics of the born criminal
and of the foolhardy and sanguinary anarchist. He had flaring ears,
premature and deep wrinkles, small, sinister eyes sunk back in their
orbits, a hollowed flat nose, and small beard--in short, he presented
an extraordinary resemblance to Ravachol, as may be seen from their
portraits.
The cranium was a little smaller than the normal, and the upper part
of the skull was much rounded and deformed, with a cephalic index of
91--considerably more rounded than the head of Luccheni. The horizontal
fold of the hand was of a type much like that of Ravachol.
I add that the biological study, which was made directly, and therefore
more satisfactorily than was practicable with Caserio and Luccheni,
revealed a series of very singular anomalies; a touch six times more
obtuse than the normal--six millimetres on the right, five on the
left; a remarkably blunt sensitiveness to pain and dull perception of
location; an extraordinarily reduced visual field, particularly in
the left eye; a somewhat tremulous handwriting, and slight defects of
articulation in speech; and thin hair. There was nothing very striking
in his affective nature. He spoke kindly of his parents, whom he would
be glad to see. But he had a blunt moral sense, and had committed
frequent thefts, especially against his family, so that he had been
put into a house of correction. And it was just while he was still in
this establishment, at sixteen years of age, that he pretended to have
been invited to attend a meeting of about thirty anarchists at Brescia,
where he was made to swear, kissing a dagger, to kill the king. He
described the room, and spoke of the individual persons present, and
then said that he thought no more of the matter after he returned to
the house; but a few days ago it had come into his mind to go to the
post office, and there he had found a letter from the anarchists of
Alexandria, urging him to arm himself to kill the king.
He repeated this story minutely and with great persistence,
notwithstanding the postal authorities denied having given him the
letter, in the face of the asseverations of the prefects that there
were not thirty anarchists in Brescia, where he was in correction, and
although all the facts were against him. Observe that he was in prison,
that he had been there three months, and that he was told he would be
likely to stay there as long as he adhered to his story.
[Illustration: RAVACHOL.]
Efforts to account for the phenomenon were unsuccessful, because his
friends and relatives made no mention of any traces of insanity. Light
began to break upon the case when it was learned that he had attempted
suicide, a few years before, in grief at the death of his mother, and
also that on the day before he gave himself up he had stolen a small
sum from his drunken brother. These, however, were only distant hints.
The matter was fully explained when, after he had drunk a litre of wine
in the prison, he began to exclaim, “_Viva l’anarchio!_” (Hurrah for
anarchy!), “_Morte al Re!_” (Death to the king!), to kiss a dagger,
to break various things against imaginary guards, and, after a short
period of quiet, to swear and forswear himself that his companions had
done what he had done, that they had shouted for anarchy, had broken
the vases, and had desired to kill the king.
[Illustration: VISUAL FIELD (LEFT EYE) OF CHIE ... GIAC ...
The thin line indicates the normal visual field (left eye).
The thick line indicates the visual field (left eye) under
alcoholic excitement.
]
This cleared up the matter at once for me, but I wished to complete the
elucidation with an experiment. I began by giving him ten, then twenty,
then thirty, then forty grammes of alcohol, up to eighty. I observed
that his personality began to change after forty grammes. He became
somewhat insolent and suspicious, and had vague delirious imaginings
of persecutions. When invited to sing anarchistic songs he refused,
evidently fearing to compromise himself, but sang them voluntarily in
an undertone. When the dose of alcohol was increased to ninety grammes
his personality seemed immediately to undergo a full change; his
touch became twice as fine (three millimetres), and his visual field
increased threefold; he declared that there was a spy around. When
put into his cell he sang anarchistic hymns, threatened death to the
king, handled a box as if brandishing a dagger, climbed to a window and
insulted the sentinel, resisted five men who tried to disarm him, and
continued in this condition for eight hours.
The next day he denied having done any of these things, avowed that
he was a good monarchist and a good citizen, and declared distinctly
that he had not done what he had done, in the face of the concurrent
testimony of several witnesses. On renewing the experiment a few
days afterward with eighty grammes of alcohol, the same series of
phenomena recurred--a real anarchistic raving, a genuine mania for
regicide, which would certainly have ended in some act if he had not
been restrained by force; and this person, who had at first presented
an evident obtusity of touch and an extraordinary contraction of the
visual field, now exhibited an almost normal touch of three millimetres
and a visual field enlarged to triple its extent when he was sober.
On the day after this he recollected none of all the things that
had happened the day before. This double personality was determined
in him by alcohol, as it is in others by misery or by fanaticism,
while it rests with all upon a congenital basis. The fact helps us
to explain how some inoffensive man may have a type of physiognomy
quite similar to that of Ravachol, showing how often there are true
criminals in potency, whose physiognomy, or rather the anomalies of it,
bears a prophetic relation to the crime which breaks out on the first
determining circumstance. And we have here another explanation of such
contradictory characters as those of Ravachol, Caserio, and Luccheni,
who, having been once well-behaved, end by becoming criminals.
* * * * *
Applied science was defined by Sir W. Roberts Austen, in his
presidential address to the Iron and Steel Institute, 1899, as
“nothing but the application of pure science to particular classes
of problems.”