Cesare Lombroso, a modern man of science

by Hans Kurella

This thesis of Lombroso’s, that among women criminals the number of genuinely criminal types is small, whilst the number of occasional criminals is very large, is supported by the following considerations (quoted by him in the book we are now studying). Some years before the publication of “La donna delinquente,” an anthropological investigation undertaken in prisons for women by other authors showed that in women the various characters commonly found in male criminals were less frequently present. Varieties of the skull and of the external ear, abnormalities of dentition, of the growth of the hair, etc., were found only in from 10 to 20 per cent. of female prisoners, as compared with 40 to 60 per cent. of male prisoners, whereas the well-marked “criminal characteristics” are actually more frequently present in prostitutes than they are in male criminals.

Another important objection to Lombroso’s views on the nature of the criminal is answered in his work on political crime and revolutions.

The very title of this book, “Il delitto politico e le rivoluzioni” (Bocca, Turin), shows that Lombroso, whose investigations had hitherto been concerned with the criminal only, not with crime itself, was now working in a wider field. Although in this book the sections dealing with the individual factors of political crime, and the descriptions of the criminaloid, degenerate, and mentally-disordered protagonists of political disturbance, are the fullest and at the same time the most successful; none the less, Lombroso’s investigations into the historical nature of revolutions and revolts, and his explanation of their etiology, deserve our consideration, and in many cases our admiration.

Unquestionably, this is a field of ideas to which a positive mode of treatment is especially applicable; and in this portion of his work Lombroso has utilized with profit and ability, and not seldom with true genius, the method of Buckle and the conceptions of the doctrine of evolution.

Occasionally, indeed, we cannot fail to notice the lack of adequate criticism of his sources of information, and that too often he has failed to refer on his own account to the ultimate sources. We can excuse him for accepting the authority of Mommsen, Grote, and Curtius, when he is compiling a statistical survey of the political disturbances of the ancient world; but when he came to study the great French Revolution, it was certainly unwise to accept Taine as an authority. He has no lack of sources of information regarding more recent history; above all, as regards the Paris Commune, the still enduring epidemic of assassinations and attempted assassinations of Kings and Presidents, as regards Russian nihilism, anarchism, and the revolts and revolutions in the Central and South American Republics—all these provide him with a veritable superfluity of material for the study of the etiology and psychical anthropology of revolutions and revolts. In the chapters based upon such information as this the treatment often assumes a merely anecdotal form, which will induce in many readers a critical frame of mind, although the majority will find this portion also of the book alike stimulating and interesting; and, indeed, we must not forget that a thorough study and elucidation of the peculiar individual factors of political disturbances is hardly possible in default of the description of an abundance of individual traits. Thus, we read that Most exhibits the following “stigmata of degeneration”: “repulsive ugliness, an asymmetrical and enormous upper jaw, the eyes of a toad, flaccid skin.” Or we are told of the misdeeds of the Communard, Allix, and are then informed that “he had invented a telegraph, based upon the reciprocal sympathy of twenty-four pairs of snails, each pair representing a single letter of the alphabet.”

Lombroso begins his demonstration with a purely psychological study; he describes the origin and effect of an impulsive tendency, deeply rooted in human nature, to which he gives the name of “misoneism” (hatred of novelty).[^[20]] In the wounding of this misoneism he sees the essence of political crime, in the glorious defeat of this sentiment, which opposes itself to the most necessary progress, to the very being of social evolution. Thus the political criminal appears on the one hand as a transgressor against the most legitimate, and organically the most deeply rooted, social tendency of human nature, and, on the other hand (and simultaneously), as the prime advocate of every advance in civilization.[^[21]]

Misoneism has its roots deep in the organic life, and is merely the expression in the social sphere of vis inertiæ in the physical. For this reason it is most powerful, not where it has made its appearance in consciousness, or has been erected into a system of conservative principles, but where it is dominant without those guided by this sentiment being aware of the fact; indeed, it is most effective precisely where, in theory and in all good faith, people aim at progress. Thus Lombroso finds the most intensive misoneism among the French, “who prefer the novelty of innovation, who have always loved rather the stormy movement of revolution than its useful results ... for everything novel that the French take to their bosoms must be of such a kind that it does not disturb them in their habitudes. They gladly change their fashions, their ministers of state, and their external forms of government, but continue to cling all the while to Druidism and Cæsarism.”

Inasmuch, therefore, as any and every advance in the condition of humanity can be effected only very slowly, and in the face of opposition both from within and from without, and in view of the fact that human society instinctively clings to what is old-established, Lombroso draws the conclusion that efforts towards progress, characterized by rapid and violent means, are in their very nature abnormal. Even if for an oppressed minority such methods are inevitable, they are still anti-social in their nature—that is to say, they are criminal in character, and often uselessly criminal, because they incite misoneism to bring about a reaction, which will carry things back past the original starting-point. If any innovation is to be adopted, even if in its nature it is unquestionably progressive, it must come quite slowly, and after long preparation. We see this fact quite as clearly in science and in the practical arts as we do in public life. Every step out of the beaten path, every innovation which does not correspond to a generally felt need, and which has not had the way prepared for it by the establishment of a new tradition, is an assault upon the power of misoneism; and in the eyes of those—and they form the great majority—who cling to all that is old-established, such an assault demands the application of the penal law.

But there have been successful revolutions. How shall we, at the outset, distinguish from these, mere frivolous attacks upon the inevitable inertia of social life? Lombroso’s book endeavours to find an answer to this question by means of the anthropological (physical and psychical) study of revolutionaries, and by means of a special statistical examination of the historical material, in search of certain factors independent of the individual human being. The answer is expressed in the terms of “cosmic determinism.”

We cannot fully understand the matter and the manner of this investigation unless we are acquainted with certain earlier writings of Lombroso’s, and more especially with his researches concerning the nature of genius; it is necessary also to give an anticipatory account of his ideas concerning the nature of revolution.