Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 21.pdf/688

 The Editor's Bag venient tree, there lives a unique character by the name of "Jene Dykes." Mr. Dykes has been a continual office holder in his home county, "since the memory of man run neth not to the contrary," and has held all offices from County Judge to Judex de Pace. Finally arriving at that Alexandrian state of unrest, he mounted the pinnacle of judi cial glory, when his fellow-citizens elected him to the office of Coroner. Our friend Dykes was recently called upon to investigate a murder, and after a careful sifting of the evidence, charged the jury empaneled in these words:— "Gentlemen of the jury, this crime cannot be classed homicide, because the deceased was killed on a public road and not at his home. Neither can it be called manslaughter, for the deceased was a boy and not a man. So I charge you, gentlemen, you will have to return a verdict of Boyrodeicide. This latter classification of a crime, however, is not in the Georgia Code." LOMBROSO THE dependence of law upon science is nowhere more strikingly manifest than in the case of the criminal law. It is indis putable that a sound system of criminal law can be developed only through careful study of the science to which the late Cesare Lombroso gave impetus. All public law and in a minor degree all private law are largely de pendent upon science for their improvement, but it would doubtless be easier to convince the majority of lawyers of the ready applica bility of criminological knowledge to the solu tion of legal problems than of the utility of the results of other sciences by which the wholesome growth of the law should be influ enced in no less a degree. The old idea was that the criminal was a free agency, and the old science of criminology, in the hands of such eighteenth-century writers as Beccaria, proceeded upon the theory that as the criminal was an entirely responsible being "the treatment of the criminal is to be determined by the crime committed and not by the nature of the criminal." This is not from a modern point of view a scientific prop osition. The modern science of criminology had its origin in the great biological awaken ing of the nineteenth century, and discarding the free-will dogma reversed the above hypo thesis, maintaining that the treatment was to be determined by the nature of the criminal.

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The beginning was made by Lombroso's epoch-making theory of the deliquente nato, the born criminal. Lombroso went so far as to hold that the criminal was a distinct type of the human species, which can be recognized by peculiar physical and psychical character istics. The criminal was conceived practically as a sub-species of the human race, bearing so-called marks of degeneration, among them prognathy and receding forehead, structural peculiarities of the brain, and other anatomi cal differences attesting to a close relationship of the type to the anthropoid apes, and indicating the prevalence of atavism. In sanity and crime were considered so closely allied as to be both results of the same process of degeneration. Lombroso also sought to show that genius could be traced to epilepsy, and that epilepsy, instead of being the prod uct of a pathological condition, was not much else than a highly strung normal function of the nerves. It may be said that contemporary science does not look upon these theories with approval. They are for the most part either plainly disproved or clearly not proved. But after all the deductions necessary to eliminate their enormities and to reduce them to an orderly sense of proportion have been made, there still remains a slight residue of truth, for while crime is not necessarily either atavism or disease, it is properly subject to anthropological investigation which will throw light on the proper attitude for society to assume for its own protection. The chief merit of Lombroso is that he collected a great number of observations which will supply a basis for the more cau tiously formed conclusions of future crimi nologists. His hypotheses are of value chiefly because of their stimulating quality and suggestiveness. He was certainly not fitted by temperament or equipped with the necessary laboratory facilities for the am bitious labor he so confidently undertook, for criminology is not merely a branch of anthropology but overlaps the science of heredity and a number of other sciences. His neglect of approved scientific method led to his being classed in some quarters as a "yellow scientist." The genial, benevo lent nature of the man, however, robs the term of a contemptuous signification. He unquestionably showed other men of science that they still had much to learn, and he truly founded a new modern science. That Lombroso's fondness for anthropo