In an elaborate analysis of the mind of the criminal,[[29]] I have endeavoured to show that this mind is dominated by the sovereignty of the moment, a feature in which it resembles the mind of the child and the savage. Here we have an indication that in the criminal, as in the child and the savage, inhibition—the most important function of the brain—is not developed[[30]]; for inhibition operates under the influence of our previous experiences and of the continuous consideration of the future consequences of our present actions. Undoubtedly, it is also characteristic of the criminal by passion that, at the time of the deed, the momentary motives drive out or paralyze all past experiences and all considerations for the future. But that which, in the case of the criminal by passion, occurs but once or a few times only during life, is in the born criminal a continuous state, one which characterizes his non-criminal as well as his criminal activities.
It is obvious that alcoholism—from which almost all habitual criminals suffer—must favour the failure of inhibition. The psychology of the criminal is, as a rule, so interpermeated with the characteristics of alcoholism that it is often necessary to grope back into the childhood of the individual in order to ascertain the original lineaments of his character.[[31]]
The parasitism of the existence of the criminal is mainly an outcome of economic conditions, and not an elementary feature of crime. In this respect, criminality closely resembles prostitution, which, at least in the modern large town, is through and through a product of parasitic luxury.
Passing on now to consider the pressing question of the causal connection between the psychical and the physical fundamental characteristics of the criminal, we find that it is not possible from the physical characters to deduce with certainty a corresponding development of feeling. But it may well be that both series of phenomena result from a common cause—viz., the arrest of development at a not completely human stage of evolution. This conception of Lombroso’s—which I myself regard as correct—is readily comprehensible by every evolutionist, for the evolutionist must assume the inheritance of social feelings, and therewith also the inheritance of the organic substratum of these feelings.
In accordance with the modern standpoint of physiological psychology, we have every reason to regard the vasomotor nervous system as a part, at least, of the organic substratum in which, alike in the individual and in the race, the development of feeling runs its course. A very strong reason for believing that the predisposition to crime is based upon a definite congenital tendency is to be found in the fact that the inheritance of criminal tendencies is manifested also in cases in which neither environment, nor education, nor example, suffice to account for the phenomenon. A very large mass of materials has been collected bearing upon this thesis, a part of which will be found in Lombroso’s own writings, a part in Ribot’s celebrated work on “Heredity,” and a part in my own “Natural History of the Criminal.” The most frequent manifestations of criminal heredity take the form of a tendency to fraud, to arson, and to sexual crime. Cruelty, also, is very frequently inherited; and this tendency sometimes finds expression in the desire, as a hospital nurse, to see as many operations as possible, or, at least, to witness as many confinements as possible. The inheritance of criminal tendencies is also shown by the frequency of criminal acts in children; and at the present day, in the enormous increase of youthful criminality, the primitive and original character of criminal tendencies is most clearly manifested.
Finally, the incorrigibility of many criminals, and their innumerable relapses into crime, afford a proof, not merely of the uselessness of our penal systems, but also of the organic nature of the predisposition to crime. All the experience hitherto recorded shows that those individuals who, anthropologically speaking, exhibit the most severe stigmatization, are also the most hopeless recidivists.
It is a point much open to dispute whether the congenital tendency to crime is essentially a morbid predisposition; but the discussion is profitless. Unquestionably the professional criminal throughout his life exhibits a marked tendency to mental disorder. Many of Lombroso’s adherents are inclined to regard insanity as a professional disease of prisoners. It must not, however, be forgotten that debauchery, poverty, alcoholism, and close confinement—conditions inseparable from the criminal life—would suffice of themselves, and in the absence of any predisposition to insanity, to induce mental disorder.
This has nothing whatever to do with the problem of the responsibility of the born criminal. In the most exceptional case we can admit that the criminal is strongly predisposed to become insane.
This is a suitable place in which to draw attention to the fact that Lombroso himself emphasizes the relationships between epilepsy and the criminal nature; and, indeed, that he draws an analogy between the permanent psychical state of the born criminal and the conditions of brain giving rise to epilepsy. To some extent, indeed, he regards the two conditions as identical. His account of these relationships exhibits the characteristic features of his mode of thought. He possessed the impassioned tendency of the great investigator of Nature, as it was also embodied in Darwin; and he possessed at the same time the patience of the collector. He knew, also, how to demonstrate his results forcibly and vividly; but he was less richly endowed with the faculty of sifting his data, and of grouping them in accordance with a natural, and not merely superficial, criterion. Thus it happened often enough that, perceiving intuitive analogies, his lively imagination led him falsely to regard them as identities. He tells us that in the criminal, as in the epileptic, he discovered the following characteristics: “Tendency to lead a vagabond life, inclination to obscenity, uncleanness, pride in evil actions, a passion for scribbling, a tendency to neologism, tattooing, dissimulation, lack of definite character, easily aroused to wrath, megalomania, vacillations of thought and feeling, cowardice. In epileptic and criminal alike, we find a lengthening of the personal equation (reaction-time), when compared with the normal human being; the same vanity, the same tendency to self-contradiction and to universal exaggeration.” He considered that this identity was confirmed by the similarities which can be detected between criminals and epileptics in respect of certain forms of blunting of cutaneous sensibility and other sensory perceptions. It must also be remembered that Lombroso’s conception of epilepsy was a very wide one: “To-day, in fact, in accordance with the completely harmonious results of clinical and experimental pathological research, epilepsy has been resolved into a circumscribed stimulation of the cerebral cortex, resulting in paroxysms, sometimes momentary, sometimes of long duration, but always periodic, and always superposed upon a degenerate foundation, whether this foundation be inherited, or acquired through the abuse of alcohol, in consequence of injury to the skull, etc.”
As regards this theory that epilepsy is a basic element in the criminal nature, Lombroso finds a link between epilepsy and criminality in certain types of character which, long before his time, certain alienists—especially those of England—had described as quite specific, and as differing entirely from ordinary insanity. As the psychiatric name for these types, the English phrase “moral insanity” has been widely accepted. Such cases are regarded by Lombroso as developmental stages on the way to the formation of the criminal nature. Writing on this subject, he says (German edition, p. 521): “Just as moral insanity passes insensibly into its higher degree—born criminality—so also the epileptic criminal, when his liability to acute or to larval paroxysms has become chronic, exhibits the more advanced manifestation of moral insanity. In the less developed periods we cannot distinguish between these types; and just as two things which are equal to the same thing are equal to one another,[[32]] so also, undoubtedly, born criminality and moral insanity are both of them nothing more than variants of epilepsy (Griesinger terms them “epileptoid states”).”