Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 10.pdf/374

 Criminal Anthropology in Italy. figured as of the Bill Sykes type — and who, reading Oliver Twist, has not shrunk with horror on perusing the intimate drama of the ruffian's mind after the brutal murder of the faithful Nancy? These things move us as the highest efforts of Dickens's imagina tion. Bill Sykes was written in prescientific days. It is instructive to turn from him, and the class of melodramatic ruffians of whom he is but an example, to the criminals dis passionately laid bare in mental, moral, and physical dissection by Lombroso and his fellow-workers. Certainly no such type as Bill Sykes, a projected image of the novelist's brain, coinciding with a highly strung ner vous system, is to be found in the gallery of habitual malefactors presented to us in the " Uomo Delinquente " and other books. Habitual malefactors, according to Italian students, are a class apart from other men, a distinct species of " genus Homo sapiens," must be judged by special standards, and must by no means be informed with the feel ings of normal men. Herein consists the fun damental basis of the new science of criminal anthropology — a science which bids fair, in spite of conservative and clerical opposition and even of ignorant ridicule, to modify pro foundly our present manner of considering and treating these enemies and pests of so ciety. "Criminal anthropology," says Signor Sergi, one of the ablest exponents of the new system, " studies the delinquent in his natural place — that is to say, in the field of biology and pathology. But it does not for that reason put him outside the society in which his criminal manifestations occur, for it considers human society as a natural bio logical fact, outside of which man does not and can not live. As normal anthropology, like other biological sciences, studies and ob serves the individual in his natural milieu, and finds that this milieu is double, physical and organic, and under this double aspect sees him develop and act, so criminal an thropology does the same with the very

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limited and specialized aim of discovering the nature and origin of the phenomenon of crime. Every phenomenon, however, re mains inexplicable if it be examined alone; the explanation is easier if it be studied in the complex of phenomena developed in the double physical and social milieu of which we have spoken." Works such as these, where we find em bryology, physiology, anatomy, chemistry, and statistics, invoked as aids to the origin of crime, place us at the antipodes of ancient philosophies; yet Lombroso and his school are in reality acting on the old-world notion embodied by Horace in his " mens sana in corpore sano." The delinquent, they argue, acts abnormally. Acts being the visible re sults of functions performed by the brain and reflective nervous system, it follows that these functions are abnormal. The functions be ing abnormal, the organs which perform them must be either abnormal or troubled in their action by the habitual or accidental inter ference of disturbing causes, for no normal organ acting under normal conditions can perform abnormal functions. The founders of this new school, therefore, dedicate them selves first of all to the study of the skull, brain, and nervous system of the criminals; then make careful observations not only on other parts of the skeleton but on the living body; the height, length, and proportion of the members, the total or partial develop ment of each part; the weight of the body, its muscular development, the deeper-seated organs, such as the heart, liver, kidneys, in testines the various functions which may directly or indirectly affect those of the brain, such as the circulation of the blood, digestion, and the disturbances which show themselves there, and in consequence of the general state of the organism as regards the balance of the vital functions; sleep, sexual manifestations, normal or abnormal muscu lar force, and other factors besides. Every thing, indeed, which concerns the morphol ogy of the criminal is passed through the