Cesare Lombroso, a modern man of science

by Hans Kurella

In these remarks we find, in the first place, a reference (although one less clear than many recorded demonstrations of Lombroso’s teachings) to the law in accordance with which extreme dimensions of physical characteristics occur in criminals with especial frequency; and, in the second place, in the theoretical portion of Ranke’s utterances we encounter the fundamental notion of criminal anthropology, which is that the lower organization of criminals, standing nearer to the lower animals than that of normal men, predisposes the former to the commission of criminal acts; and more especially that in the criminal’s skull there is no room for a brain able to hold the feelings (or, in physiological parlance, the inhibitory apparatus) requisite to induce normal social behaviour. I have devoted considerable space to this address of Ranke’s because it shows how convincing are these basic ideas of criminal anthropology, and how irresistibly they are associated with an anthropological mode of study of this social group. But how remarkable it is that, through a study of the brains of Chinese criminals, a recognition of the truth of Lombroso’s doctrines should first dawn upon a German professor of established reputation!

The study of the brains of criminals subsequently moved in two directions: whereas Benedikt, the talented and original Viennese investigator, and after him a number of Italian investigators, studied the fissures and sulci by which the surface of the human brain is divided into convolutions in such a remarkable manner; during the years 1894 to 1900, the more limited circle of Lombroso and his immediate pupils was engaged in the study of atavistic anomalies, and of those more delicate peculiarities of the intimate structure of the brain which can be demonstrated only with the aid of the microscope.

Moreover, the study of the convolutions in the brains of criminals has led to the discovery of a number of characters which may be regarded as atavistic. Most of these are primatoid varieties—that is to say, either they are manifestations of an abnormally slight development of those peculiarities of the convolutions by which the members of the human species are distinguished from the other primates, or else they are characters which are not normally found in human beings at all, although they exist normally in other primates. In a tabular comparison of the differences between the human and the simian brain, we observe that these differences are precisely those in respect of which the deviations of the criminal brain from the normal human type of brain are also manifested.

In other words, the human brain is an advanced type of the brain of the primates in general, but in the brain of the criminal the resemblances to the simian type are much more strongly marked.

It is, indeed, quite impossible to explain the abnormal moral and social behaviour of the criminal with reference merely to the abnormal configuration of the criminal’s cerebral convolutions. Perhaps the human contemporaries of the cave-bear in Europe possessed a brain, and, mutatis mutandis, exhibited in many respects a mode of life analogous to that of the modern Sardinian bandit, of the London street arab, the voyou of Montmartre, or the fugitive from the Siberian mines. But in the Stone Age there existed no economically developed society upon which our palæolithic progenitor could become parasitic. We know almost nothing about post-glacial man. It may be possible at some future date, from a chart of the surface of the brain, to deduce the social characteristics of the race; but, although at present this deduction remains beyond our powers—and perhaps will never become easy—the primatoid character of the cerebral convolutions of the criminal possesses, none the less, a profound anthropological significance. No ethnologist is able from an examination of the convolutions of a Greenlander’s brain to deduce the national characteristics of the race to which the possessor of the brain belonged; but, nevertheless, when we see a brain with certain characteristics we are able to declare it to be the brain of a Greenlander.[^[13]]

The interesting discoveries of Roncoroni, regarding the peculiarities of certain cells of the cerebral cortex in criminals, though widely discredited at first, have been subsequently confirmed by Pelizzi. In this case also it appears that we have to do with atavism (Pelizzi, “Idiozia ed Epilessia,” Arch. di psichiatria, 1900, p. 409).

Not only in the skulls and brains of criminals, but also in almost all their other organs, we find abnormalities with greater average frequency than among the general population, and this is especially true of rudimentary organs, those which constitute the majority of the so-called secondary and tertiary sexual characters. Many of these abnormalities may be regarded as primatoid or atavistic; others appear to be mainly dependent upon disturbance or arrest of development. All alike, in so far as they are not merely characters acquired during the lifetime of the individual, give the impression that the criminal is a being whose humanity is not completely developed. This does not exclude the fact that the criminal himself, in the light of his own peculiar valuation of social and legal value, is apt to be firmly convinced that his is a superman.

This arrest at an earlier stage of development gives rise, in respect of numerous traits, to an approximation in the “criminal type” to the characteristics of one or other of the extant savage races of mankind—races such as the Australian, etc., which, owing to prolonged isolation from other types and, possibly, also to less rigorous selection and therefore less marked differentiation, in consequence of a less severe struggle for existence, have been able for thousands of years to retain their primitive characteristics.

We are, however, compelled to assume that many savage races have been unable to raise themselves above their present low level of intellectual, economic, and social culture, not merely on account of the slighter operation of the factors of differentiation, but also on account of an inferior innate developmental capacity. In philosophical terminology we should perhaps therefore say that the world of crime recruits itself from among the number of the less developed individuals of the nation concerned; for it is an obvious deduction from the law of organic variability that among all the individuals born as members of any civilized race there should be some who are congenitally incapacitated to attain the normal mean level of development peculiar to that race.

It is not proposed to deal here at any length with the innumerable anthropological characteristics of criminals other than those found in the skull and the brain, but the physiognomically important characters deserve separate notice.