Degeneracy: Its Causes, Signs and Results

by Eugene S. Talbot

CHAPTER XVII

Degeneracy of Mentality and Morality

In the mental and moral degeneracies there is a complete transition from the durencephalic monster through the microcephalus, the idiot, the imbecile, and the feeble-minded to the mentally normal individual. Between the feeble-minded and the normal individual occurs a group whose general characteristics is, as was pointed out by Magnan, a disharmony and lack of equilibrium, not only between the intellectual operations, properly so-called on the one hand, and the emotions and propensities on the other, but even between the intellectual faculties themselves. A degenerate may be a scientist, an able lawyer, a great artist, a poet, a mathematician, a politician, a skilled administrator, and present from a moral standpoint profound defects, strange peculiarities and surprising lapses of conduct. As the moral element—the emotions and propensities—is the base of determination, it follows that these brilliant faculties are at the service of a bad cause, of the instincts and appetites which, thanks to the defects of the will, lead to very extravagant or very dangerous acts. In other cases the opposite occurs. Degenerates of irreproachable character show strange defects in their intellect. They often have a feeble memory in certain directions. Sometimes they cannot understand figures, or music, or drawing. In a word, an otherwise normal individual’s intelligence is lacking as regards certain faculties. The centres of perception are unequally impressionable, unequally apt to gather together impressions, only certain impressions are registered and leave durable images; certain relations, certain associations between different centres, are perverted or even entirely destroyed.

The mental stigmata of degeneracy, therefore, may be divided into those involving the moral elements (in which case there is no very striking intellectual disorder) and those involving the intellectual elements, in which the conditions may be divided into states where intellectual disorder alternates with periods of complete lucidity or with neuroses (periodical insanity, neuroticism, hysteria, and epilepsy), and states in which the intellectual disorder is a permanent quantity (paranoia, one-sided genius, imbecility, and idiocy). Great as is the apparent gap between idiocy and one-sided genius, on the one hand, and between idiocy and crime, on the other, this gap is, as already stated, filled by numerous closely interlinked forms, dependent on the proportionate removal of checks (which the race has acquired during evolution) on the explosive expressions of egotism and mentality. The removal of these checks is dependent on the removal or weakening of the power of associating tracts, to which reference has been made in connection with the degenerate brain. The idiot, capable only of purely vegetative functions, who would perish were food not placed far back in his mouth, is one step lower than the normal infant, who is essentially, as has been remarked, an egotistic parasite. On slightly increased development this idiot, with the powers of a rather low animal, gains food and satisfies its instincts. These instincts at this stage may manifest themselves in the explosive manner characteristic of the undomesticated and non-social animals. With these instincts may appear others which man has long lost; thus an idiot girl (who was delivered of an infant when alone) gnawed through the umbilical cord in the manner of animals, thus effecting separation and preventing hæmorrhage. At still a higher stage the imbecile may manifest destructive instincts, may steal without the signs of remorse displayed by a housebred dog, or may kill without recognising the results of killing. The intellect may be comparatively developed in certain imbeciles in comparison with the ethical defects. For lack of proper associating fibres, the imbecile may be unable to acquire those higher associations constituting the secondary ego, in the most elevated sense. To this class ultimately belong the instinctive homicides, torturers, sexual criminals and thieves, so frequently found among the juvenile offspring of degenerate stock. In them the primary ego is strong, and the restraints of the secondary ego, which perceives the rights of others, weakened or completely absent. This class forms the germ of the congenital criminal whom no discipline can tame, and who is incapable of being taught the dangers of his procedures under the law of the land. Between this class and the paranoiac there is at once a curious likeness and distinction. The lack of proper associating powers prevents the moral imbecile from recognising any rights of others. The same lack in the paranoiac prevents him from recognising the force and rights of other people in opinion. The moral imbecile has lost the greatest acquirement of the race in evolution, that acquirement which fully recognises the secondary ego in accordance with the sublime precept, “Do unto others as ye would that they should do unto you.”

For practical purposes the division of criminals given by Tyndall is sufficient. Crime is essentially an anti-social factor, and violations of law can be regarded as crimes only in proportion as they are anti-social. The essential character of crime is its parasitic nature. Parasites, in a general way, may be divided into those which live on their host, without any tendency to injure his well-being (like the dermodex in the skin follicules); those which live more or less at his expense, but do not tend to destroy him; and, finally, those which are destructive of the well-being of man and lack proper recognition of individual rights which constitutes the essential foundation of society. The first type is impurely represented by the idiots, imbeciles, lunatics, paupers by deprivation, blind, crippled, senile, insane, and deaf mutes. Society, either indirectly or directly, has been the source of the parasitic state of many of these, and hence, as also in the case of law-made criminals, such parasitism really takes nothing from society. The second class is represented by prostitutes, sexual degenerates, paupers, and inebriates. Some of these, however, could be put into the third class, among those moral lunatics and criminals who fail to recognise that individual rights constitute social order. Prostitutes, paupers, and inebriates have this in common, that crime in them has taken the line of least resistance. The great ethical defect in the prostitute is not lack of checks on explosive sexual propensities so much as the use of these last as a method of living by her wits. In essence prostitution is the expression of the criminal tendency manifested by the confidence operator. The researches of sociologists like Chaplain Merrick,[252] of the Millbank Prison, London, show that at least one-half of the prostitutes leave their homes voluntarily to take up a “life of pleasure.” Pauline Tarnowsky[253] finds that in Russia prostitution is crime in women taking the line of least resistance. The prostitutes, like the other criminals, are divisible into criminals on occasion (vice, monetary reasons, &c.), accidental criminals, law-made criminals, weak-willed criminals, and insane criminals. The proportion of the law-made and accidental criminals among the prostitutes is much less than among other criminals, as Merrick has shown. Seduction stands very low in the list of causes. The proportion of the occasional criminal type is very large. Pauline Tarnowsky concludes from her researches, which my own tend to verify, that the prostitute, as a rule, is a degenerate being, the subject of an arrest of development, tainted with a morbid heredity, and presenting stigmata of physical and mental degeneracy fully in consonance with her imperfect evolution. C. Andronico, of Messina, Italy, arrived some time previously[254] at the same conclusions as those of Tarnowsky. Tarnowsky found that 44⅓ per cent. of the prostitutes had skull deformities, 42²⁄8 face deformities, 42 ear deformities, and 54 teeth deformities. Andronico found among 230 prostitutes the following anomalies: Flat nose, 20; handle-shaped ear, 35; vicious implantation of teeth, 10; convergent strabismus, 2; facial asymmetry, 4; prognathism, 7; receding forehead, 35. Grimaldi, in a study of 26 prostitutes, had similar results to those of Tarnowsky. Lombroso, in an examination of 50 prostitutes, found exaggerated jaws, 27 times; plagiocephaly, 23 times; nasal asymmetry, 8 times; exaggerated zygomæ, 40 times. Tarnowsky found that in 150 prostitutes, taken at random from those answering to the necessary conditions (uniformity of race, ability to give their family history and years of residence in licensed houses), there were present signs of physical degeneracy in 87. Among the abnormalities were oxycephaly, platycephaly, stenocephaly, plagiocephaly, and heads with marked depression either at the bregma or the lambda. The majority had a marked development of the external occipital protuberance; in an equal number of virtuous women it was present but four times. These and other anomalies were thus distributed among the 150 prostitutes: Malformation of the head (oxycephaly, plagiocephaly, &c.), noticed in 62; development of the occipital protruberance, 62; very receding foreheads, 18; hydrocephalic, 15; various anomalies of the face (prognathism, asymmetry), 64; ogival palatine vault, 38; congenital division of palate, 14; vicious implantation of teeth, 62; Hutchinson’s and Parrot’s teeth, 19; absence of lateral incisors, 10; Morel ears, 16; defective ears (detached from head, deformed, &c.), 47; anomalies of the extremities, 8.

In my researches in the same class, with the assistance of Harriet C. B. Alexander and J. G. Kiernan, the subjects chosen were those committed to the Chicago House of Correction. They are the least intelligent of Chicago’s professional prostitutes. The number examined was 30. As regards the race they included 13 Celtic-Irish, 5 Irish-American, 3 Scandinavian, 1 German, 1 German-American, 2 American, 1 English-American, 1 Latin-Swiss, 2 Negro.

It should here be remembered that the “fine” system of Chicago places only the “obtuse” class in the Bridewell. One was seventeen years old, two eighteen years, one nineteen years, five between twenty and twenty-five years, three between twenty-five and thirty, six between thirty and thirty-five, five between thirty-five and forty-five, one was forty-six years old, two were fifty-five, three sixty-one, and one sixty-five. There were eighteen blondes, ten brunettes, and two negroes. Four were demonstrably insane and one was an epileptic.

In sixteen cases the zygomatic processes were unequal and very prominent. There were fourteen other asymmetries of the face. Three heads were Mongoloid (one Irish-Celt, one Swiss, and one Scandinavian). There are Mongoloid race types in the regions where all three come from. Sixteen were epignathic and eleven prognathic. In one there was arrested development of the lower jaw, and in four arrested development of the face bones. The nose was abnormal in six. There were sixteen brachycephalic and thirteen mesaticephalic skulls. There were no dolichocephalic skulls. There were three with oxycephalic skulls, of whom one was a Celt, one a German, and one a Scandinavian. There were eighteen dome-type skulls, of whom seven were Irish-Celts, five Celtic-American, one English Anglo-Saxon, one American Anglo-Saxon, and one German-American. There were four tectocephalic skulls, of whom one was an Irish-Celt, one an Anglo-Saxon American, and one a Scandinavian. There were three platycephalic skulls, of whom two were Celts and one a Scandinavian. There was a plagiocephalic German and a stenocephalic Celt. One skull had a protuberance at the bregma. Twelve occiputs were flattened, and in four of these there was no tubercle; eighteen had an enormously developed occipital protuberance. The percentage of deformities of the jaws was large. Twenty-nine had defective ears. Normal ears were present only in a member of a family which had furnished one mother and two sisters to the institution.

The direct hereditary history of prostitutes is excellently illustrated in Marie Duplessis, idealised by Alexandre Dumas in La Dame aux Camélias. Her paternal grandmother, who was half prostitute, half beggar, gave birth to a son by a country priest. This son was a country Don Juan, a peddler by trade. The maternal great-grandmother was a nymphomaniac, whose son married a woman of loose morals, by whom a daughter was born. This daughter married a peddler, and their child was Marie. She had the confidence-operator tendencies of many of her class. She died childless, early in life, from consumption.[255] With their ancestry, habits, perverse instincts, prostitutes cannot be cured or reformed by the enforcement of municipal ordinances. Though those of criminal and congenital type be taken from their surroundings and placed where they can earn an honest livelihood, they soon go back, voluntarily, to their old mode of life.

An allied class, belonging to a still blacker phase of biology, are the sexual perverts. The congenital form associated with the stigmata of degeneracy, as already shown, is an expression of the defective line whence the victim has sprung. The congenital types are, like the similar types of the prostitute, victims of inherited defects. The sexual pervert may be divided into precisely the same classes as other criminals. The congenital type often links degenerate lunatics, epileptics, &c., with a born criminal class.