In other words, the criminal sociologist is not in duty bound to conduct for himself the inquiries of criminal anthropology, just as the clinical operator is not bound to be a physiologist or an anatomist. No doubt the direct observation of criminals is a very serviceable study, even for the criminal sociologist; but the only duty of the latter is to base his legal and social inferences upon the positive data of criminal anthropology for the biological aspects of crime, and upon statistical data for the influences of physical and social environment, instead of contenting himself with mere abstract legal syllogisms.
On the other hand it is clear that sundry questions which have a direct bearing upon criminal anthropology—as, for instance, in regard to some particular biological characteristic, or to its evolutionary significance—have no immediate obligation or value for criminal sociology, which employs only the fundamental and most indubitable data of criminal anthropology. So that it is but a clumsy way of propounding the question to ask, as it is too frequently asked: ``What connection can there be between the cephalic index, or the transverse measurement of a murderer's jaw, and his responsibility for the crime which he has committed?'' The scientific function of the anthropological data is a very different thing, and the only legitimate question which sociology can put to anthropology is this:—``Is the criminal, and in what respects is he, a normal <p 7>or an abnormal man? And if he is, or when he is abnormal, whence is the abnormality derived? Is it congenital or contracted, capable or incapable of rectification?''
This is all; and yet it is sufficient to enable the student of crime to arrive at positive conclusions concerning the measures which society can take in order to defend itself against crime; whilst he can draw other conclusions from criminal statistics.
As for the principal data hitherto established by criminal anthropology, whilst we must refer the reader for detailed information to the works of specialists, we may repeat that this new science studies the criminal in his organic and in his psychical constitution, for these are the two inseparable aspects of human existence.
A beginning has naturally been made with the organic study of the criminal, both anatomical and physiological, since we must study the organ before the function, and the physical before the moral. This, however, has given rise to a host of misconceptions and one- sided criticisms, which have not yet ceased; for criminal anthropology has been charged, by such as consider only the most conspicuous data with narrowing crime down to the mere result of conformations of the skull or convolutions of the brain. The fact is that purely morphological observations are but preliminary steps to the histological and physiological study of the brain, and of the body as a whole.
As for craniology, especially in regard to the two distinct and characteristic types of criminals—<p 8>murderers and thieves, an incontestable inferiority has been noted in the shape of the head, by comparison with normal men, together with a greater frequency of hereditary and pathological departures from the normal type. Similarly an examination of the brains of criminals, whilst it reveals in them an inferiority of form and histological type, gives also, in a great majority of cases, indications of disease which were frequently undetected in their lifetime. Thus M. Dally, who for twenty years past has displayed exceptional acumen in problems of this kind, said that ``all the criminals who had been subjected to autopsy (after execution) gave evidence of cerebral injury.''[3]
[3] In a discussion at the Medico-Psychological Society of Paris; ``Proceedings'' for 1881, i. 93, 266, 280, 483.
Observations of the physiognomy of criminals, which no one will undervalue who has studied criminals in their lifetime, with adequate knowledge, as well as other physical inquiries, external and internal, have shown the existence of remarkable types, from the greater frequency of the tattooed man to exceptionally abnormal conditions of the frame and the organs, dating from birth, together with many forms of contracted disease.
Finally, inquiries of a physiological nature into the reflex action of the body, and especially into general and specific sensibility, and sensibility to pain, and into reflex action under external agencies, conducted with the aid of instruments which record the results, have shown abnormal conditions, all tending to physical insensibility, deep-seated and <p 9>more or less absolute, but incontestably different in kind from that which obtains amongst the average men of the same social classes.
These are organic conditions, it must be at once affirmed, which account as nothing else can for the undeniable fact of the hereditary transmission of tendencies to crime, as well as of predisposition to insanity, to suicide, and to other forms of degeneration.