OPPOSITION TO LOMBROSO’S VIEWS—WOMAN AS CRIMINAL—THE POLITICAL
CRIMINAL—CRIMINAL PSYCHOLOGY
In the first fierce campaign against criminal anthropology two
objections are repeatedly encountered. One of these points out the
absence of distinctive anthropological characters in female criminals;
the other contests the conceivability of the anthropological unity of a
social group whose sole link of union consists of a concept so variable
in time and place as is the concept of crime.
The latter of these two objections was, of course, controverted by
Lombroso in part on purely conceptual grounds; but in addition to this
he has shown that the criminal group in which the idea of crime is so
relative that the criminal of yesterday may be the judge to-day, whilst
the judge of yesterday may to-day be the criminal—to wit, the category
of political criminals—he has shown that this criminal group may, with a
little criticism, readily be resolved into geniuses, enthusiasts, fools,
rogues (and, finally, the crowd these carry along with and after them);
and that in every revolution—even the most desirable one—old-established
professional rascality and newly-awakened cruelty find a most suitable
field for the display of their dangerous attributes. By means of the
study of a large number of regicides, and also that of the most notable
personalities of the French Revolution at the end of the eighteenth
century, of the fight for Italian unity, the uprising of the Paris
Commune, and the Russian terrorism of our own day, he demonstrates this
truth beyond dispute.
The other objection, regarding the lack of distinctive anthropological
characters in female offenders, demanded for its answer very
comprehensive studies in a previously neglected field; these researches
were undertaken in co-operation with G. Ferrero, and resulted in the
publication in 1893 of the widely read work on “Woman as Criminal and
Prostitute.”[16]
The Introduction to this book, 180 pages in length, appears to me to be
the most interesting and remarkable piece of work Lombroso ever issued.
Even his opponents never denied his all-embracing culture and
extraordinarily wide reading, nor his brilliant intuitive powers and
bold faculty for combination; on the other hand, his most zealous
advocates and adherents have always complained of his obvious neglect of
critical examination of his sources of information, of analytical
treatment and systematic arrangement of his material, and of
comprehensive presentation and definitive architectonic. But nowhere
else are his merits so strikingly manifest, and nowhere else are his
defects less conspicuous, than they are in this brilliant description of
the biological and physiological characteristics of woman and accurate
survey of the differences between the sexes. In part, indeed, the work
under consideration may owe its conspicuous merits in point of style and
arrangement to the fact that Lombroso’s own deficiencies in these
respects were supplemented by the assistance of his collaborator and
subsequent son-in-law, G. Ferrero, the author of the celebrated “History
of the Roman Empire.” However this may be, Lombroso in this work
penetrates deeply into the science of general biology, and endeavours,
having regard to the characters found by him to differentiate woman from
man, to formulate a comprehensive law of sexual differentiation in
general.
He refers this differentiation to the fact that the whole organization
of woman is predestined to motherhood, and to the fact that any other
professional activity of whatever kind is hardly possible to her, or, if
possible, only on account of an abnormal and degenerative
predisposition.
With this dominant position of motherhood in woman he correlates also
two facts of great importance in the anthropology of the female
offender. The first of these is the much lesser variability of
women,[17] owing to which women in general exhibit less marked special
differentiation than men; consequently such deviations from type as do
occur in women are far more significant than similar deviations
occurring in men, and therefore in women very great importance must be
attached even to isolated theromorphs. The second fundamental fact is
the lesser general sensibility and lesser sensibility to pain of women
as compared with men.
Both these phenomena of sexual differentiation are more strongly marked
among civilized races than they are among savages. Thus, according to
Lombroso’s investigations, the female skull, especially in the civilized
races, resembles rather the skull of the child than that of the adult
male, and this is especially the case as regards its frontal and facial
portions.
Lombroso made an exhaustive study of the problem of the origin of the
greater development of sympathy in the female sex, and discussed how,
notwithstanding this fact, the frequent tendency to cruelty in women can
be explained: he sees in this one of those contrasts which are common in
the sphere of the emotional life, but which, with progress in
civilization, tend to disappear, owing to the development of sympathetic
feelings. The rest of the emotional life of woman is also adapted to her
profession of motherhood; and this is true, above all, of the sexual
feelings, which thus seem to be constructed almost entirely upon a
“masochistic” basis. Strong erotic feelings, when they do occur in
women, are, according to Lombroso, an approximation to the masculine
type; they are, that is to say, abnormal in women. In respect to moral
development, he regards woman as inferior to man. “We cannot, indeed,
say that woman displays to the same degree as the child the lineaments
of moral idiocy, for she is saved from this by her endowment with
maternal love and with sympathy. Fundamentally, however, woman remains
non-moral, and this often precisely in consequence of her sympathy. She
exhibits numerous traits of character ... which prevent her from
approaching to the same degree as man that balance between rights and
duties, between egoism and altruism, which is the ultimate goal of moral
development.”
By means of historical and ethnological data, the importance of which,
notwithstanding the criticism of Westermarck, has not been shaken,
Lombroso endeavours to prove that during the long ages of the life of
prehistoric humanity certain conditions were generally dominant in the
sexual life which are now regarded as constituting prostitution—that is
to say, he considers that prostitution and prostitutes at the present
day are reversionary or atavistic phenomena. The intimate description
given by Lombroso of the psychical life of the prostitute has notably
contributed to our interpretation of prostitution in the atavistic
sense. This explains why it is that among prostitutes the criminal type
is found more frequently and more markedly than it is even among female
criminals.
Thus, for Lombroso, the prostitute, even more than the homicidal robber,
is the genuine typical representative, the prototype, of criminality—the
counterpart of the male major criminal; and in social co-operation with
the latter, the prostitute gives rise to the institution of
soutenage.[18]
The world of feminine crime, in so far as it is not allied to
prostitution, is regarded by Lombroso as constituted only to a very
slight extent of true criminal natures: “A small group of women, marked
with very severe stigmata of degeneration, almost more numerous than
such stigmata are in male criminal types, is sharply distinguished from
the great majority of women criminals, who exhibit few and uncertain
stigmata of degeneration; similarly, from the psychological standpoint,
we have to distinguish from the great mass of female criminals a small
group of women in whom we recognize more severe and more unnatural moral
anomalies than are met with in male criminals. The ordinary woman
criminal has usually been lured to crime, either by hetero-suggestion or
by very powerful temptation, and her moral sense will often be found to
be unimpaired, or, at any rate, not entirely destroyed.”
In other words, women criminals—who in civilized countries are only from
one-fifth to one-tenth as numerous as men criminals[19]—are, as a rule,
criminals by passion or occasional criminals. A woman of the genuinely
criminal type is either at the same time a prostitute as well as a
criminal, or else—if her social position has saved her from becoming a
professional prostitute—she exhibits a marked anthropological and
psychological similarity to a prostitute.
By reference to a large number of cases personally examined by himself,
and with the aid of extensive statistical material, Lombroso endeavours
to establish the thesis that, as a general rule, female delinquents come
under the ban of the penal law, either from affective causes (criminals
by passion) or else from the pressure of unfavourable economic
circumstances or other external conditions (occasional criminals); that
their offences are for the most part the outcome of a normal feminine
psychical life, and are in no respect the product of emotional or moral
abnormality; that alike in the general conduct of their life and in the
particular offences for which they have been condemned we can trace the
characteristic lineaments of the womanly nature; that above all, in the
majority of them, the mother-sense is in no way diminished, or if
diminished, only to a very trifling degree, and that an increase of the
sexual impulse is in them hardly ever demonstrable.
He then goes on to prove, by the examination of an extensive material,
which he has subjected to a most careful analysis, that prostitutes and
genuinely criminal feminine types (“rea nata”) are characterized by an
utter lack of the mother-sense; that in women condemned for major crimes
an increased sexual impulse is almost invariably present, and that this
fact notably contributes to their criminal development; whereas
prostitutes are, as a rule, conspicuous for sexual frigidity, and from
childhood onwards are characterized by a lack of the sense of shame.
The case-histories, of which the book contains an abundance, show,
indeed, that genuine women criminals are endowed with the same
fundamental peculiarities which Lombroso has so fully described in male
criminals, and the prostitute is exhibited no more than as a slightly
divergent variety of the woman criminal; but the peculiar part which the
female sexual life and the endowment of the woman criminal with the
attributes of motherhood play in her psychology, give to the general
picture of the female criminal certain peculiarities which justify a
separate treatment of feminine criminal psychology.
This thesis of Lombroso’s, that among women criminals the number of
genuinely criminal types is small, whilst the number of occasional
criminals is very large, is supported by the following considerations
(quoted by him in the book we are now studying). Some years before the
publication of “La donna delinquente,” an anthropological investigation
undertaken in prisons for women by other authors showed that in women
the various characters commonly found in male criminals were less
frequently present. Varieties of the skull and of the external ear,
abnormalities of dentition, of the growth of the hair, etc., were found
only in from 10 to 20 per cent. of female prisoners, as compared with 40
to 60 per cent. of male prisoners, whereas the well-marked “criminal
characteristics” are actually more frequently present in prostitutes
than they are in male criminals.
Another important objection to Lombroso’s views on the nature of the
criminal is answered in his work on political crime and revolutions.
The very title of this book, “Il delitto politico e le rivoluzioni”
(Bocca, Turin), shows that Lombroso, whose investigations had hitherto
been concerned with the criminal only, not with crime itself, was now
working in a wider field. Although in this book the sections dealing
with the individual factors of political crime, and the descriptions of
the criminaloid, degenerate, and mentally-disordered protagonists of
political disturbance, are the fullest and at the same time the most
successful; none the less, Lombroso’s investigations into the historical
nature of revolutions and revolts, and his explanation of their
etiology, deserve our consideration, and in many cases our admiration.
Unquestionably, this is a field of ideas to which a positive mode of
treatment is especially applicable; and in this portion of his work
Lombroso has utilized with profit and ability, and not seldom with true
genius, the method of Buckle and the conceptions of the doctrine of
evolution.
Occasionally, indeed, we cannot fail to notice the lack of adequate
criticism of his sources of information, and that too often he has
failed to refer on his own account to the ultimate sources. We can
excuse him for accepting the authority of Mommsen, Grote, and Curtius,
when he is compiling a statistical survey of the political disturbances
of the ancient world; but when he came to study the great French
Revolution, it was certainly unwise to accept Taine as an authority. He
has no lack of sources of information regarding more recent history;
above all, as regards the Paris Commune, the still enduring epidemic of
assassinations and attempted assassinations of Kings and Presidents, as
regards Russian nihilism, anarchism, and the revolts and revolutions in
the Central and South American Republics—all these provide him with a
veritable superfluity of material for the study of the etiology and
psychical anthropology of revolutions and revolts. In the chapters based
upon such information as this the treatment often assumes a merely
anecdotal form, which will induce in many readers a critical frame of
mind, although the majority will find this portion also of the book
alike stimulating and interesting; and, indeed, we must not forget that
a thorough study and elucidation of the peculiar individual factors of
political disturbances is hardly possible in default of the description
of an abundance of individual traits. Thus, we read that Most exhibits
the following “stigmata of degeneration”: “repulsive ugliness, an
asymmetrical and enormous upper jaw, the eyes of a toad, flaccid skin.”
Or we are told of the misdeeds of the Communard, Allix, and are then
informed that “he had invented a telegraph, based upon the reciprocal
sympathy of twenty-four pairs of snails, each pair representing a single
letter of the alphabet.”
Lombroso begins his demonstration with a purely psychological study; he
describes the origin and effect of an impulsive tendency, deeply rooted
in human nature, to which he gives the name of “misoneism” (hatred of
novelty).[20] In the wounding of this misoneism he sees the essence of
political crime, in the glorious defeat of this sentiment, which opposes
itself to the most necessary progress, to the very being of social
evolution. Thus the political criminal appears on the one hand as a
transgressor against the most legitimate, and organically the most
deeply rooted, social tendency of human nature, and, on the other hand
(and simultaneously), as the prime advocate of every advance in
civilization.[21]
Misoneism has its roots deep in the organic life, and is merely the
expression in the social sphere of _vis inertiæ_ in the physical. For
this reason it is most powerful, not where it has made its appearance in
consciousness, or has been erected into a system of conservative
principles, but where it is dominant without those guided by this
sentiment being aware of the fact; indeed, it is most effective
precisely where, in theory and in all good faith, people aim at
progress. Thus Lombroso finds the most intensive misoneism among the
French, “who prefer the novelty of innovation, who have always loved
rather the stormy movement of revolution than its useful results ... for
everything novel that the French take to their bosoms must be of such a
kind that it does not disturb them in their habitudes. They gladly
change their fashions, their ministers of state, and their external
forms of government, but continue to cling all the while to Druidism and
Cæsarism.”
Inasmuch, therefore, as any and every advance in the condition of
humanity can be effected only very slowly, and in the face of opposition
both from within and from without, and in view of the fact that human
society instinctively clings to what is old-established, Lombroso draws
the conclusion that efforts towards progress, characterized by rapid and
violent means, are in their very nature abnormal. Even if for an
oppressed minority such methods are inevitable, they are still
anti-social in their nature—that is to say, they are criminal in
character, and often uselessly criminal, because they incite misoneism
to bring about a reaction, which will carry things back past the
original starting-point. If any innovation is to be adopted, even if in
its nature it is unquestionably progressive, it must come quite slowly,
and after long preparation. We see this fact quite as clearly in science
and in the practical arts as we do in public life. Every step out of the
beaten path, every innovation which does not correspond to a generally
felt need, and which has not had the way prepared for it by the
establishment of a new tradition, is an assault upon the power of
misoneism; and in the eyes of those—and they form the great majority—who
cling to all that is old-established, such an assault demands the
application of the penal law.
But there have been successful revolutions. How shall we, at the outset,
distinguish from these, mere frivolous attacks upon the inevitable
inertia of social life? Lombroso’s book endeavours to find an answer to
this question by means of the anthropological (physical and psychical)
study of revolutionaries, and by means of a special statistical
examination of the historical material, in search of certain factors
independent of the individual human being. The answer is expressed in
the terms of “cosmic determinism.”
We cannot fully understand the matter and the manner of this
investigation unless we are acquainted with certain earlier writings of
Lombroso’s, and more especially with his researches concerning the
nature of genius; it is necessary also to give an anticipatory account
of his ideas concerning the nature of revolution.
“Revolution is the historical expression of evolution; it is the chicken
which has outgrown the embryonic stage, and is ready for life in the
open, breaking through the shell.” This is a metaphor to which Lombroso
returns again and again. If the new development is one with whose idea
the generality have become familiar, if the old forms have become
rotten, the evolutionary impulse spontaneously breaks into fresh
channels. It is true that even then in some cases some force has to be
applied to overcome the resistance of the adherents of the old ways;
for, owing to the universality of misoneism, and to the law of inertia,
such adherents will always be found, however cogent the need for
innovation. Now, the characteristic of genius is its freedom from that
which furnishes obstacles to progress, its freedom from misoneism—at
least, in respect of progress in that particular direction towards which
the particular type of genius is directed. In genius, therefore,
Lombroso recognizes at once the source of all those tendencies which
gradually swell to form the irresistible flood of revolution, and the
helper through whose instrumentality the ultimately mature embryo is
assisted to its birth. And just as, on the one hand, the genius
accompanies a genuine revolutionary movement, one capable of
development, from its first small beginnings down to its victorious
close; so, on the other hand, the pseudo-genius, the “mattoid” criminal
or the lunatic, excites revolts which oppose themselves in vain to the
_vis inertiæ_ of society, and whose sole result is to hinder the general
course of evolution.
In this section of this remarkable book we find a notable stimulus, and
the brilliant exposition leads us to formulate all kinds of speculation.
We are induced to attempt also to draw up a prognosis. We ask ourselves
what will be the outcome of such a movement as that which was initiated
in Germany by Lassalle—half genius, half-moral eccentric—a movement
which has found its fool and its half-fool in Neve and Most
respectively, and among whose adherents even now the question is being
discussed whether the old Prussian suffrage system shall be and can be
destroyed and rebuilt by means of street-demonstrations and the general
strike.
Lombroso utilized the relations between genius and revolution in a most
remarkable manner for the purpose of studying the nature of revolution.
A notable portion of his material, and unquestionably the most
trustworthy portion, is constituted by the official statistics of the
French elections to the Chamber of Deputies in the years 1877, 1881, and
1885. In a nation whose disposition and development have been of so
monarchical a character, Lombroso proceeds, a republican vote signifies
adhesion to a revolution. “In these elections we have the numerical
expression of revolution in its legitimate form—a form entirely free
from any criminal or insurgent features.”
In a very detailed manner he then proceeds to demonstrate the complete
parallelism in France between genius and revolution—that is to say,
republican sentiment—which, if not easy to display numerically,
nevertheless is and has been universally dominant. Reference is also
made to a kind of statistical statement of genius, which was given by
Lombroso in another work, “L’uomo di genio,” 1888.[22] From these
statistics he derives an “index of genius” for every department in
France, and according to the size of this index the departments are
arranged in groups. These will be seen to correspond in a most striking
manner with the groups we obtain by classifying the departments
according to their republican or monarchical proclivities.
This analogy is pursued yet further. In a number of interesting tables,
diagrams, and charts, the French departments are grouped according to
their configuration (mountains, hills, and plains), the geological
character of their soil (granitic and other primary formations—jurassic,
cretaceous, alluvial, etc.), according to the racial origin of their
inhabitants (Ligurian, Iberian, Cymric, Ruthenian, Gaelic, Belgic,
etc.), and for each group the predominant political tendency and the
index of genius are determined. In this way also he deduces an analogy
bordering on identity between republicanism and genius.
Apart from such analogies as these, his analysis of the electoral
results in France, and his grouping of the republican and the
monarchical departments according to the configuration of the surface,
the geological character of the soil, and the origin of the population,
are of the greatest interest; and the interest is further increased by
the accompanying commentary dealing with a mass of facts relating to
other countries. Thus, of thirty-six departments of a mountainous
character, twenty-five are republican; whereas of ten departments in the
plains, four only are republican. Lombroso gives numerous examples to
show that the inhabitants of mountainous districts are inclined to more
rapid evolutionary changes than the inhabitants of the plains, who are
more averse to novelty. On the other hand, at very lofty altitudes
indeed, an apathetic temperament and political indolence are dominant.
Thus, in Mexico, the inhabitants of districts at an altitude of over
2,000 metres (6,560 feet) above the sea-level are characterized by
passivity. The inhabitants of the capital city, which is situated at
about this altitude, are politically indifferent, and take hardly any
part in the revolutions of the country. It is the troops only, recruited
from other parts of the country, which issue the _pronunciamentos_.
The monotonous scenery of the plains induces an equable internal state
in the inhabitants, and thus strengthens in them the sentiment of
misoneism. Only the proximity of large rivers, on which great industrial
towns grow up, encourages a political vitality in the plains. Factors of
another order may intervene, and may counteract this monotonizing
influence of the plains. Here, above all, we note the effect of the
crossing of races, in consequence of which the Poles, through contact
and intermixture with the Germans, have undergone a notable development
in civilization and political life in advance of so many other Slavonic
races. In this connection, Lombroso lays especial stress upon the first
effects, the nascent state, of such intercrossing of races, and refers
the rapid decline in Polish evolution to disappearance of this _status
nascendi_. (This notion of Lombroso’s is supported by the fact that the
partition of Poland was followed by a renewed crossing of the Polish
with the German stock, and there ensued upon this, in the middle third
of the nineteenth century, and again to-day, in addition to the
blossoming of a quite unexpected industrial, scientific, and literary
quickening of the race, a recrudescence of the Polish revolutionary
spirit. For a long time the force produced by the nascent state seemed
exhausted, and the revolutionary spirit of the Poles appeared to have
become metamorphosed into clericalism.)
In addition to the permanent factors of soil and race, by means of which
a nation is rendered capable of pursuing a successful course of
development through a series of fortunate revolutions, there are other
and variable influences which give rise to a continuous rebellious
unrest. Pre-eminent among these influences is a climate characterized by
periods of rapidly rising temperature, whereas a tropical climate
induces absolute indolence in the inhabitants, so that in tropical
countries history has nothing to record regarding class-struggles,
conspiracies, and serious insurrections.
The hot season in the southern regions of the temperate climes is a
cardinal factor in the production of political disturbances. Lombroso
has proved this by the utilization of material whose official origin
appears to him to render it entirely trustworthy—namely, the data
recorded in the Calendar of Gotha for the years 1791 to 1880. In this
period we find an account of 836 revolts, rebellions, insurrections,
etc., of which 495 took place in Europe. The maximum of the European
disturbances took place in the month of July, whilst of the South
American revolts, the maximum occurred in the corresponding month of the
southern hemisphere—viz., January. The more recent records, relating to
outbreaks in Argentina and Chile, confirm this conclusion. The smallest
number of revolts occurred—in Europe, in November and December, and in
South America, in May and June. If we examine the records of the
individual European nations, we find that among all the nations of
Southern Europe the summer is the principal time of disturbance. In the
case of five nationalities (the Norwegians, Swedes, Danes, Poles, and
Irish) the spring predominates. In one case only was there a maximum of
revolts in winter; this was Switzerland, in which ten out of twenty-four
recorded outbreaks occurred during the winter season.
Another tabulation of the figures displays the predominance of the
nationalities of Southern Europe in the statistics of insurrection. In
Greece there were 95 revolts per 10,000,000 inhabitants, this being the
maximum; in Russia, down to the year 1900, there were 0·8 per 10,000,000
inhabitants, this being the minimum. Dividing Europe into three zones,
we find that in Northern Europe there were 12 revolts, in Central Europe
25, and in Southern Europe 56, per 10,000,000 inhabitants.
Even richer in facts, and more engrossing in consequence of vivid
description and apt characterization, is the analysis, in chapters vii.
to xii., of the individual factors of political crime. The significance
of age and sex are studied, and we find a detailed description of the
female protagonists of Russian nihilism, who are depicted as the noblest
examples of the “revolutionist by passion.” A description is then given
of the born criminals and the morally diseased among rebels and
insurgents, with a full account of their individual peculiarities. Proof
is submitted of the great part played in all important insurrectionary
movements by the insane and the partially insane (“mattoids”). An
elaborate account is given of the characteristics and influence of the
“political occasional criminals and political criminals by passion,” who
are closely allied to the revolutionary genius, and commonly exhibit a
noble type of character. Whereas among the French revolutionaries of
1793, among the revolters in South America, the rioters of the Paris
Commune, and the modern anarchists, Lombroso finds the most bestial
criminal natures and the most horrible moral insanity predominant, among
the heroes of the prolonged Italian struggle for freedom and among the
so-called nihilists he describes a number of anthropologically normal
and noble figures, from whom nothing is more remote than degeneration,
criminality, or mental disorder. The chapter is illustrated by a large
number of portraits, including those of Louise Michel, Ibarbar,
Reinsdorf, and Hödel, as criminal physiognomies; and contrasted with
these are the noble countenances of Mazzini, Bakunin, Scheljabow, Wjera,
Sassulitsch, Perowskaja, etc.
At the end of this first part of his book, Lombroso sums up the whole of
his material for a differential diagnosis between revolution and revolt.
Then follows the second part, which was written in collaboration with a
young jurist, the Veronese advocate Laschi. Here we have an historical
account of the genesis of political crime, with a description of the
earlier and more recent methods of dealing with it, both national and
international; and an attempt is made, from the standpoint gained in the
first part, to formulate juridically the principal elements of political
criminology, and to reconstruct the foundations of its penal repression.
The conclusion consists of a detailed account of the economic and
political prophylaxis of “political crime,” in which from time to
time—and more especially in the criticism of Italian parliamentary
government and party politics—Lombroso’s original modes of thought are
strikingly manifest. For the most part, however, these prophylactic
prescriptions have reference merely to co-operative associations,
insurance against unemployment, and a number of political measures of a
more or less “State-Socialist” character of no particular originality,
and derived, as it seems to me, in part from the ideas of Luigi Luzzati
(the present Minister President), and in part from those of Achille
Loria.
The chief merits of the book are not found here, but in its
historico-philosophical ideas, which in this concluding portion are but
slightly sketched, and in the masterly manner in which, with the aid of
a vast material, the foundations are laid of our knowledge of the
psychology of the rebel, whose lineaments are depicted with the truest
perception of nature and of history.
Lombroso’s daily contact with prisoners awaiting trial, owing to his
official position as medical officer to the prison at Turin, the
criticisms passed from the legal side upon his doctrine of the “born
criminal,” and the continued exchange of ideas with so distinguished an
expert in the theory of jurisprudence as Enrico Ferri, led him in twenty
years’ ensuing work, in which he accumulated an enormous mass of
observations of his own, and utilized the entire international
literature of the subject, to study the criminal by passion, the
occasional criminal (economic etiology of crime), the habitual criminal,
and other abnormal categories of criminals (in addition to the born
criminal)—criminal alcoholics, criminal lunatics, and criminal
epileptics. The results of all this work were incorporated in the third,
fourth, and fifth editions of “L’uomo delinquente.” From the year 1880
onwards he was assisted in this gigantic undertaking by able personal
assistants, and from this year dates the issue of his _Archivia di
psichiatria_, in the production of which he enjoyed the collaboration of
an international circle of colleagues. At the same time, the doors of
all Italian prisons were open, not to him only, but also to his pupils
and fellow-workers—an advantage which I myself occasionally enjoyed.
Beltrani-Scalia,[23] the chief of the Italian prison administration,
placed at Lombroso’s disposal the entire official material of his
department; and Lombroso utilized this, not only to strengthen and
develop his theories, but also for the foundation of a unique criminal
museum, and for the preparation of carefully-thought-out plans of penal
reform. From every quarter materials streamed in, by which hundreds of
heads and hands were kept busy. Lombroso’s grown-up daughters, Paola and
Gina, became readers, translators, actuaries, and sub-editors; and the
house in the great square of Turin, from which in the evening can be
seen the sunset glow on the peaks of the western Alps, became, not only
the collecting centre of the materials pouring in from every direction
(ultimately even from the slowly-moving Anglo-Saxon world), not only the
source of an extensive journalistic propaganda (in Germany furthered by
Maximilian Harden’s paper, _Zukunft_, which even then had a wide and
increasing circulation), but, in addition, the meeting-place of numerous
foreign investigators engaged in the study of the social and biological
sciences. Here the heavy red wine of Piedmont, which was supplied with
no sparing hand, loosened many tongues; but wine was assuredly not the
sole enlivening element in the house, in which distinguished simplicity
and a patriarchal atmosphere combined to melt the chill reserve no less
of the Prussian Privy Councillor than of the English University
Professor, so that the conversation of all was brilliant and
unrestrained.
These years of propaganda and of practical efforts on behalf of
reform—1885 to 1900—undoubtedly owed a part of their brilliancy and of
their practical fruitfulness to Lombroso’s daughters, who first by means
of their women friends (among whom I may give the leading place to the
social reformer, Madame Kuliszew), and subsequently by means of their
affianced husbands (G. Ferrero and M. Carrara), brought fresh worlds of
ideas into contact with that of their father. To the elements already
enumerated were added music and the plastic arts, and the friendship of
such artists as Bistolfi—drawings and sketches by living artists, and
casts of celebrated sculptures were dispersed among the skulls and the
books with which almost every room in the house was filled. The glorious
harmonies of Beethoven and Wagner were not only re-echoed in the hearts
alike of young and old among the audience, but also resounded from the
skulls of ancient Peruvians and from painted prison-utensils. This was
the environment from which came the masterly sketch of the nature of
woman; and thus it came to pass that the anthropology of calculus and
measuring-rule receded into the background, and was replaced by a
profound psychological insight. As a result of such stimuli, and of
others too numerous to mention, there originated the intimate analysis
of the criminal mentality, in consequence of which the criminal is no
longer regarded merely as the savage and atavistic descendant of the
prehistoric mammoth-hunter, but rather as one in whom the observer now
perceives also, and depicts with the sure hand of a master, the
lineaments of an unfortunate being impelled to crime by his passions, by
the pressure of want, by exploitation and impoverishment. At the same
time the psychological description of the born criminal nature gained
additional clearness of detail and sharpness of outline. We must look
for this description, not only in the last edition of the chief work,
but also in the numerous monographs on individual criminals whose
offences attracted public attention during these years of Lombroso’s
ripest knowledge and fullest creative force. The last of these figures
was the Parisian, Madame Steinheil.[24]
Lombroso’s criminal psychology deserves much more attention than it has
hitherto received. In relation to the practical problems of criminal
jurisprudence it is more important than were his purely anthropological
investigations, although these latter have attracted far greater popular
notice. Alike to the expert in forensic medicine and to the
psychiatrist, criminal psychology possesses greater diagnostic
importance; for it is often necessary to determine whether, in a certain
individual, acquired mental infirmity, congenital mental infirmity, or
some special and peculiar type of degeneracy, predominates. It is not
permissible for the medical jurist to argue as follows: “This individual
has remarkable physical characters and incomprehensible psychical
peculiarities, and he is therefore ill and irresponsible.” The
incomprehensible character of a crime or the enigmatical character of a
personality is not rarely used as an argument for the belief that mental
disorder, and consequent irresponsibility, exists. But this is not a
valid inference. A knowledge of the psychology of the respectable
bourgeois and of that of the ordinary philistine, or a limited
acquaintance with the insane confined in institutions, does not provide
any experience of the interweaving of complicated and peculiar motives
and feelings in the psyche of the criminal nature. A thorough knowledge
of criminal psychology, which is rare to-day,[25] and which, for obvious
reasons, is difficult to obtain, is an essential preliminary for the
distinction of criminal natures from the insane and from imbeciles.
Not infrequently it is maintained that the performer of a criminal act
cannot be normal if we are unable to discover any profit which he could
have derived from his act. The characteristic of a criminal, it is held,
is to injure others to gain a personal advantage; but to injure others
simply for the sake of doing injury is said to be characteristic of
psychological anomaly.
This assumption is contradicted by two fundamental traits of the
criminal nature—recklessness of consequences and cruelty. The
recklessness of the criminal nature leads him rather to yield to
momentary impulses than to pursue a deliberate purposive plan. The cruel
individual, not only as criminal, but also as savage, as despot, as
violent leader of a mob, takes a positive pleasure in others’ suffering.
Nothing, for example, is commoner in the school and the barrack than
such a phenomenon as this. To a certain degree, indeed, we find it in
the average man, in the normal philistine and the pedant, perhaps, more
than all, although only in a low degree of intensity. Many criminal
natures undoubtedly possess this tendency to a very high degree, and
take a positive delight in the thought of being able to inflict pain and
fear on others. But herein they merely exhibit, after their _own_
fashion, a general tendency of human nature to find pleasure in the
possession and exercise of power, and thus to feel superior to others,
and to manifest this superiority by means of the infliction of pain.
In this sphere of cruelty there is certainly no more than a quantitative
difference between the criminal nature and the normal philistine, and
least of all will one who is really familiar with the erotic life of
mankind, which is the principal sphere of the mutual infliction of
suffering, maintain that in its association with cruelty there is
anything that can be termed pathological.
Unquestionably, many crimes are committed because the injury inflicted
upon another is in some way profitable to the criminal. This, indeed, is
little more than a matter of business. But just as many crimes are
committed because the injury of another is painful to that other, and
because the criminal—the usurer, for example—actually experiences
pleasure in having given rise to others’ pain.
The profound psychologist, Friedrich Nietzsche, has detected the roots
of this phenomenon in average human nature. He speaks of the “horrible
beautiful” of crime—of the happiness of one who has completely freed
himself from the lower instincts of compassion and from the evil beast
“conscience.”
Abundant as are the materials for a special psychology of certain
specialities in crime, and extensive as was Lombroso’s acquaintance with
individual criminals, none the less his account of the elementary
qualities of the criminal nature is extremely simple. The differences
between individual criminals, who at first sight appear extremely
unlike, frequently depend merely upon the fact that the inclination to
enrich their own personality at the expense of another is associated in
the one case with a favourable, and in the other with an unfavourable,
economic position. The thievish proletarian will steal anything he sees
lying about or anything that he finds in someone else’s pocket. The
millionaire similarly disposed will not steal single purses, but will
find ways and means of emptying very numerous and very large purses. The
criminal proletarian is a petty thief or a burglar; the criminal
bourgeois founds fraudulent banks and limited liability companies, or
transforms sound undertakings into swindles, or he systematically
swindles his partners. Fraudulent bankruptcy is the leading field of
typical bourgeois criminality. Thus we get an insight into the operation
of many of the so-called “economic factors” of crime, which in
essentials amount to this, that in times of economic depression a large
number of unscrupulous persons seize opportunities for stealing bread
that has risen in price or the money that is needed for the purchase of
bread—a larger number than in more prosperous times; whereas in times of
commercial expansion the talents of the swindler on the large scale and
of the millionaire plunderer find their greatest opportunity. Moreover,
it is clear that one who has no regard for his personal reputation will,
if he is a poor man, more readily turn to the commission of offences
against property; but if he is well-to-do, he is more likely to commit
offences against the person. This is shown by the fact that those who
are well off more often offend against the health, life, and sexual
freedom of others; whilst those who are ill off more frequently commit
offences against property. And it is further shown by the fact that when
wages are rising, and the prices of the necessaries of life are falling,
crimes against the person increase in number, whilst the number of
thefts and embezzlements diminishes. This tendency is still more clearly
manifested if the rise in wages and the fall in prices are simultaneous.
In addition to cruelty, which we encounter not only in offenders against
the person, but also see frequently in the form of a lack of sympathy,
in usurers and cheats, the comparative psychology of criminals enables
us to recognize in them as permanent qualities a recklessness and
remorselessness,[26] and, in most cases, also an entire lack of
integrity—that is to say, merely negative qualities—due to deficiency in
the development of sensibility. Among positive qualities, a
characteristic one is the fatuous vanity of many habitual criminals. It
is a phenomenon of worldwide familiarity that that which in the life of
a human being was at first a means merely, ultimately becomes an
independent end—indeed, the sole aim. This we find also in the career of
the criminal, to whom crime becomes a field for vain display. The art of
pocket-picking, of housebreaking, of poisoning, ultimately becomes one
pursued for its own sake. Some have thought this almost demoniacal; but
there is nothing very singular in the practice of an acquired facility
from the pure pleasure of its clever performance—art for art’s sake.
Moreover, we see the same thing also in criminals who secretly destroy
property or secretly commit arson. Here the art of remaining
undiscovered is cultivated for its own sake.
Lombroso gives a very elaborate description of several other psychical
characters of criminals—of their religious life, and of their poetry and
their literature, which latter, in bloodthirstiness and savage
sensuality, closely resemble the tribal songs of the Australian blacks.
In his subtle observation and description of the criminal psyche, in
which he took note of the smallest details, and at the same time
combined these details into a most effective general picture, making use
alike of apparently trifling scrawls on prison walls and of
comprehensive historical studies of crime, is certainly to be found his
chief service. Here we find one of the finest examples known to modern
psycho-pathology of the minute observation of details. Lombroso shows
himself to be a true interpreter of nature, and a genius to whom, in the
depth of his insight into human nature, we can, among the moderns,
compare only Dostoieffsky, and, among those of an earlier day, only the
brilliant criminal psychologist Shakespeare.
An important circumstance in the development of the individual criminal
is the existence of a professional rascality with ancient traditions,
representing a kind of syndicated organization of the criminal
interests, associated with the equally old traditions of the receivers,
vagabonds, prostitutes, and gipsies. This has introduced into the life
of crime a conventional element, which would naturally not be able to
maintain itself unless it corresponded to the innermost nature of the
criminal. The old national capitals—Venice, Madrid, Paris, London—still
possess ancient traditions of this character; but the colossal growth of
the modern industrial towns has given rise, in addition, to the
existence of a criminal world without traditions, one which knows little
or nothing of the three leading features of the ancient
tradition—thieves’ jargon, tattooing, and soutenage. Southern Italy and
Sicily have preserved criminal organizations in the Camorra and the
Maffia, out of which there has developed a systematic taxation of the
propertied classes, and which even possess Parliamentary powers.
Side by side with the ancient thieves’ jargon, almost venerable in view
of its genuine antiquity, as shown by numerous words and phrases derived
from the Hebrew and Romany tongues, there has arisen the ever-changing
speech of the canaille, to which contributions are continually
furnished, first, by prostitutes, through whose intermediation is
effected a contact between the most diverse classes of society;
secondly, by submerged individuals originally belonging to the upper
classes; and, thirdly, by the artist world. These jargons are naturally
in a perpetual flux. They possess their classic writers, as does, for
instance, the argot of contemporary Paris in the talented Bruant, to
whom every new variation of the jargonization of speech streams down
from the summit of Montmartre, and whose songs are diffused throughout
France from thousands of small music-halls, just in the same way as
François Villon, four and a half centuries ago, disseminated the jargon
of his day in shameless but inspired songs.
Now, unquestionably, every argot possesses a criminal psychological
interest. The canaille will take the new-coined word to its heart only
when the thing or the relation described by this word expresses
something of great or supreme importance to the blackguard or the cheat.
To the burglar, the baby is important principally as a “screecher,” so
he accepts this new-coined word. To the thief, in the same way, the
fingers are “hooks,” or, in the argot of Poland, _grabka_—that which
grips. To the naturalism of the vagabond, the cook from whom he begs may
be most aptly described as _finkelmusch—finkel_ being the fireside, and
_musch_, a Hebrew word for the vulva.
The humour of every jargon lies in this—that its words are formed by the
naming of that part of the denominated whole which appears to the
name-giver to be the most important element of that whole. The
astonishing vividness and speech-forming power often recognizable in
such jargon is really somewhat atavistic when compared with the
wearisome newspaper jargon (“journalese”) of our modern books among all
civilized peoples. By means of precisely such a word-formation, directed
towards the vivid and important, did the colloquial speech of
prehistoric man originate.[27]
In tattooing we recognize allied qualities of originality and force.
Many criminals depict on their own skins their fate and their
philosophy. Naturally, most of them adorn themselves with merely
professional designs, devoid of all trace of originality; but the
standard specimens of this decorative art naturally correspond to the
taste of the customers, just as the standard specimens of any other
decorative art correspond to the taste of the public that demands it.
Æsthetically, in fact, a criminal who has his skin tattooed stands
nearer to the savage Fiji Islander than he does to the European
decorative taste of the common people, as displayed in the shops of the
working-class quarters in which chimney “ornaments” are sold. It must be
admitted that æsthetic sentiments are not very closely allied to
ethical. Nevertheless, the former are emotional stirrings, and it is in
this sphere that we must look for the fundamental traits of the criminal
nature. It is in this that we find the significance of the tattooings so
often met with in criminals, even in those who have never been
convicted, who have never been in a barrack, a shop, or a factory. In
Lombroso’s atlas we find reproductions of numerous fantastic tattooed
designs.
Thus the most important element in the psychology of the criminal is a
rudimentary development of the life of feeling in general.[28]
In an elaborate analysis of the mind of the criminal,[29] I have
endeavoured to show that this mind is dominated by the sovereignty of
the moment, a feature in which it resembles the mind of the child and
the savage. Here we have an indication that in the criminal, as in the
child and the savage, inhibition—the most important function of the
brain—is not developed[30]; for inhibition operates under the influence
of our previous experiences and of the continuous consideration of the
future consequences of our present actions. Undoubtedly, it is also
characteristic of the criminal by passion that, at the time of the deed,
the momentary motives drive out or paralyze all past experiences and all
considerations for the future. But that which, in the case of the
criminal by passion, occurs but once or a few times only during life, is
in the born criminal a continuous state, one which characterizes his
non-criminal as well as his criminal activities.
It is obvious that alcoholism—from which almost all habitual criminals
suffer—must favour the failure of inhibition. The psychology of the
criminal is, as a rule, so interpermeated with the characteristics of
alcoholism that it is often necessary to grope back into the childhood
of the individual in order to ascertain the original lineaments of his
character.[31]
The parasitism of the existence of the criminal is mainly an outcome of
economic conditions, and not an elementary feature of crime. In this
respect, criminality closely resembles prostitution, which, at least in
the modern large town, is through and through a product of parasitic
luxury.
Passing on now to consider the pressing question of the causal
connection between the psychical and the physical fundamental
characteristics of the criminal, we find that it is not possible from
the physical characters to deduce with certainty a corresponding
development of feeling. But it may well be that both series of phenomena
result from a common cause—viz., the arrest of development at a not
completely human stage of evolution. This conception of Lombroso’s—which
I myself regard as correct—is readily comprehensible by every
evolutionist, for the evolutionist must assume the inheritance of social
feelings, and therewith also the inheritance of the organic substratum
of these feelings.
In accordance with the modern standpoint of physiological psychology, we
have every reason to regard the vasomotor nervous system as a part, at
least, of the organic substratum in which, alike in the individual and
in the race, the development of feeling runs its course. A very strong
reason for believing that the predisposition to crime is based upon a
definite congenital tendency is to be found in the fact that the
inheritance of criminal tendencies is manifested also in cases in which
neither environment, nor education, nor example, suffice to account for
the phenomenon. A very large mass of materials has been collected
bearing upon this thesis, a part of which will be found in Lombroso’s
own writings, a part in Ribot’s celebrated work on “Heredity,” and a
part in my own “Natural History of the Criminal.” The most frequent
manifestations of criminal heredity take the form of a tendency to
fraud, to arson, and to sexual crime. Cruelty, also, is very frequently
inherited; and this tendency sometimes finds expression in the desire,
as a hospital nurse, to see as many operations as possible, or, at
least, to witness as many confinements as possible. The inheritance of
criminal tendencies is also shown by the frequency of criminal acts in
children; and at the present day, in the enormous increase of youthful
criminality, the primitive and original character of criminal tendencies
is most clearly manifested.
Finally, the incorrigibility of many criminals, and their innumerable
relapses into crime, afford a proof, not merely of the uselessness of
our penal systems, but also of the organic nature of the predisposition
to crime. All the experience hitherto recorded shows that those
individuals who, anthropologically speaking, exhibit the most severe
stigmatization, are also the most hopeless recidivists.
It is a point much open to dispute whether the congenital tendency to
crime is essentially a morbid predisposition; but the discussion is
profitless. Unquestionably the professional criminal throughout his life
exhibits a marked tendency to mental disorder. Many of Lombroso’s
adherents are inclined to regard insanity as a professional disease of
prisoners. It must not, however, be forgotten that debauchery, poverty,
alcoholism, and close confinement—conditions inseparable from the
criminal life—would suffice of themselves, and in the absence of any
predisposition to insanity, to induce mental disorder.
This has nothing whatever to do with the problem of the responsibility
of the born criminal. In the most exceptional case we can admit that the
criminal is strongly predisposed to become insane.
This is a suitable place in which to draw attention to the fact that
Lombroso himself emphasizes the relationships between epilepsy and the
criminal nature; and, indeed, that he draws an analogy between the
permanent psychical state of the born criminal and the conditions of
brain giving rise to epilepsy. To some extent, indeed, he regards the
two conditions as identical. His account of these relationships exhibits
the characteristic features of his mode of thought. He possessed the
impassioned tendency of the great investigator of Nature, as it was also
embodied in Darwin; and he possessed at the same time the patience of
the collector. He knew, also, how to demonstrate his results forcibly
and vividly; but he was less richly endowed with the faculty of sifting
his data, and of grouping them in accordance with a natural, and not
merely superficial, criterion. Thus it happened often enough that,
perceiving intuitive analogies, his lively imagination led him falsely
to regard them as identities. He tells us that in the criminal, as in
the epileptic, he discovered the following characteristics: “Tendency to
lead a vagabond life, inclination to obscenity, uncleanness, pride in
evil actions, a passion for scribbling, a tendency to neologism,
tattooing, dissimulation, lack of definite character, easily aroused to
wrath, megalomania, vacillations of thought and feeling, cowardice. In
epileptic and criminal alike, we find a lengthening of the personal
equation (reaction-time), when compared with the normal human being; the
same vanity, the same tendency to self-contradiction and to universal
exaggeration.” He considered that this identity was confirmed by the
similarities which can be detected between criminals and epileptics in
respect of certain forms of blunting of cutaneous sensibility and other
sensory perceptions. It must also be remembered that Lombroso’s
conception of epilepsy was a very wide one: “To-day, in fact, in
accordance with the completely harmonious results of clinical and
experimental pathological research, epilepsy has been resolved into a
circumscribed stimulation of the cerebral cortex, resulting in
paroxysms, sometimes momentary, sometimes of long duration, but always
periodic, and always superposed upon a degenerate foundation, whether
this foundation be inherited, or acquired through the abuse of alcohol,
in consequence of injury to the skull, etc.”
As regards this theory that epilepsy is a basic element in the criminal
nature, Lombroso finds a link between epilepsy and criminality in
certain types of character which, long before his time, certain
alienists—especially those of England—had described as quite specific,
and as differing entirely from ordinary insanity. As the psychiatric
name for these types, the English phrase “moral insanity” has been
widely accepted. Such cases are regarded by Lombroso as developmental
stages on the way to the formation of the criminal nature. Writing on
this subject, he says (German edition, p. 521): “Just as moral insanity
passes insensibly into its higher degree—born criminality—so also the
epileptic criminal, when his liability to acute or to larval paroxysms
has become chronic, exhibits the more advanced manifestation of moral
insanity. In the less developed periods we cannot distinguish between
these types; and just as two things which are equal to the same thing
are equal to one another,[32] so also, undoubtedly, born criminality and
moral insanity are both of them nothing more than variants of epilepsy
(Griesinger terms them “epileptoid states”).”
In order to give us a more vivid idea of these epileptoid states,
Lombroso groups them as follows:
First degree, larval epilepsy.
Second degree, chronic epilepsy.
Third degree, moral insanity.
Fourth degree, congenital criminality.
Fifth degree, criminality by passion.
This view has been opposed in various quarters on the ground that
Lombroso, in other parts of his leading work, explains criminality as an
atavistic reversion to primitive human types, and that, consequently, in
accordance with the same principle of equivalent values, the type of the
epileptic must also be identical with that of primitive man. This
conclusion being an impossible one, it is held that Lombroso’s whole
chain of reasoning is false. But Lombroso invokes the principle of
equivalent values in relation, not to qualitative, but to quantitative,
relations. His opponents have just as little right to use this principle
for a _reductio ad absurdum_ as Lombroso himself had to speak of
“identity” instead merely of “analogy.” It must be admitted that the
criminal and the epileptic temperaments are very closely allied, that
epileptics provide a disproportionately large contingent to the world of
crime, and that it is quite possible that genetic relationships exist
between the born criminal and the epileptic. It may well happen that
when a mother suffering from nervous or mental disorder becomes
pregnant, the brain and the whole organism of her child will be poorly
nourished, and will, therefore, not develop normally. The child may have
its development arrested at an earlier and more primitive stage,
corresponding to the type of a remote ancestor, and, at the same time,
these nutritive disturbances may lead to disturbances in the formation
of the nerve elements, whereby the child is rendered epileptic
throughout its life. The child is thus born an epileptic, and according
to the nature of the arrest of development from which it suffers, it may
happen that it is incapable of a normal development of the life of
feeling, or it may be incapable of acquiring a normal power of
resistance to anti-social impulses. It then becomes a criminal, and is,
at the same time, an epileptic, with atavistic characteristics. These
features may thus be united at the root, as we may see in every idiot
asylum, and, unfortunately, also in numerous instances in every prison.
By this identification of the born criminal with the moral imbecile
Lombroso has also given occasion to misunderstandings. It was not his
intention to define the criminal with reference to the still
insufficiently studied moral insanity; but, contrariwise, to say that we
are only justified in speaking of moral insanity in cases in which his
(Lombroso’s) “criminal type” is seen to exist. Thus moral “insanity” is
defined by means of criminality, and thus an entirely new and very vivid
conception of moral insanity is rendered possible; for Lombroso’s “moral
insanity” is not an acquired disease suddenly attacking the brain and
suddenly introducing psychical disturbances, but it is the psychological
expression of criminal degeneration. Thus, also, he always contrasts the
moral lunatic with the ordinary lunatic, and a large proportion of his
material is grouped in such a way that this contrast is clearly
exhibited with the aid of all the methods of anthropological and
psychological study. If he goes on to describe moral insanity as a mere
variant of epilepsy, the principal difficulty he has to face is the
contradiction this involves with his atavistic explanation of the
criminal nature. But if, in the appearances of atavistic traits, we see
nothing more than a coordinated element of criminality, this
contradiction disappears, while the marked similarity remains, which
harmonizes, above all, with Samt’s description of epileptoid states; and
the theory is further supported by the fact that the stigmata of
degeneration are commonly present in both types. The extraordinary
frequency of epileptoid types in prisons has also been pointed out by
Sommer, Knecht, Sander, Moeli, and Kirn.
This view of Lombroso’s is, above all, supported by the fact that
criminality and epilepsy are hereditary equivalents—that is to say, that
criminals frequently have epileptic children, and conversely. If,
however, we find no lack of relationships between epilepsy and crime,
these are not explained by the supposition of a simple identity between
the two. What Lombroso has succeeded in proving is that in the wide
group of degenerates who, under certain social conditions, may become
criminals, the epileptics are notably represented. Epileptics, indeed,
unquestionably belong to the less valuable constituents of society.
The importance of the “stigmata” described by Lombroso as indications of
psychical degeneration can no longer be disputed, however difficult it
remains to understand what relationship handle-shaped and projecting
ears, facial asymmetry, dental abnormalities, hypospadias, epispadias,
etc., can have to psychical degeneration. We have, in fact, no better
explanation than the phrase “correlation of growth.” Our present
knowledge of the functions of the brain certainly does not suffice to
elucidate the causal chain by means of which anomalies of the skull are
associated with moral imbecility. But, after all, there is no single
problem of psycho-pathology in which the chain of causation is
completely known to us. However, it should not be difficult to
understand that a brain enclosed in an abnormal skull can never develop
to the full its most complicated function—viz., the coordination of the
voluntary activities for the purposes of a course of conduct adapted to
the conditions of social life.
The term “degeneration” is unquestionably an indefinite one, and remains
to-day incapable of either anatomical or physiological explanation; but
it owes to Lombroso’s researches a definite _practical_ significance,
from the fact that he has proved that the majority of degenerates are
socially inadequate, and, further, that this social inadequacy of
degenerate individuals makes their existence a great danger to society.
The degenerate is often an anti-social being, and society must protect
itself against him.
The importance of these stigmata was not comprehensively understood by
Morel and the other predecessors of Lombroso, in respect either of their
mode of origin, or of their grouping to constitute specific types of
degenerate. Morel merely sketched the outlines, and enumerated a few
important facts about degeneration. One small area only of this enormous
province has as yet been carefully studied—that of criminality. By
Lombroso’s anthropometric and other researches very numerous
demonstrations and statistical classifications of the stigmata of
degeneration have been effected, whilst nothing of the kind has yet been
attempted in respect of other forms of degeneration. As a result of his
work, we are enabled to define the type of the criminal as that form of
degeneration which is characterized morphologically and biologically by
atavistic characters, and psychologically by the deficiency of
altruistic feelings. Even if this type does not afford us a brief or
invariably harmonious signification of crime, still, in a period in
which we no longer believe in the persistence of species, and in which,
even in “good species,” we recognize the tendency to variation, we must
not demand that a degenerative subtype should exhibit constant
characters.