Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/768

746 impulse, although he often displays, as madmen do, a low cunning in finding means to carry out his impulse. He is intensely vain, priding himself on the number of crimes he has committed. He is further devoid of all remorse, fond of boasting of his evil deeds and of describing them in detail. Thus Lombroso gives the reproduction of a photograph, in which three murderers who had assassinated one of their number caused themselves to be represented in the very act of committing their deadly deed, a photograph taken for the benefit of their less fortunate associates.

This inordinate vanity is often in itself the primary cause of terrible crimes, especially in young men who have just attained puberty, an age observed to be especially fruitful in crimes of violence. The critical character of this period, even in well-balanced minds, is abundantly known; little wonder, then, if it prove fatal to those whose constitutions urge them to extremes. It is noticed also that the criminal needs to lead a life full of noise. The necessity of orgies entailed by the irregularities of his feelings is often the moving cause of some act of violence, such as robbery and assassination, calculated to procure the means of indulgence. His affections, too, are abnormal: he will assassinate father and mother, and yet be capable of making sacrifices for some companion in time of illness. This trait, however, occurs more often among women than men. We used to believe there was a species of honor among thieves, but Lombroso asserts that it is rare to find any consistent attempt to shield each other; on the contrary, the almost physical need they feel of talking incessantly renders them specially inclined to mutual betrayal. The criminal is fond of tattooing himself, and so distinctive a mark of criminal tendencies is this held in Italy that tattooed recruits are looked on as likely to make bad soldiers; and a private once spoke to Lombroso of tattooing as "convict habits." He presents, too, an extraordinary insensibility to pain, tattooing himself in places which even the Indians spare, and receiving or inflicting on himself the most terrible wounds without a murmur.

He has a language of his own, employed even in cases where he would run no risk from using ordinary speech, and this still further isolates him from the rest of.mankind. He has a writing of his own, too, made up of hieroglyphics and rough pictures.

Such briefly is the Frankenstein, which the modern science of criminal anthropology evokes; an unbalanced being, a pathological subject, whose illness takes a form which, hurtful to society, is defined as crime. For the facts collected by Lombroso place beyond all doubt the intimate connection between crime and mental derangements which has so long been suspected to exist. Madmen and criminals belong to the same family; not in the sense of the vulgar