Cesare Lombroso, a modern man of science

by Hans Kurella

CHAPTER VII
ENVIRONMENT AND THE THEORIES AS TO THE NATURE OF GENIUS—LOMBROSO’S GENIUS AND PERSONALITY.

I remarked before that almost every one of Lombroso’s books might have as its title, “The Cause of, and Prevention of ——.” One exception must, however, be made to this generalization, or perhaps two. The first of these relates to his book upon “The Man of Genius,”[^[49]] and the second to his work “Pensiero e meteore,”[^[50]] in which were collected his researches into the cosmic and telluric influences that determine human actions.

To speak first of the last-named work, we learn from it, as also from earlier and later minor writings, that in Lombroso’s opinion it is not the internal, inborn factors only that exercise an important influence upon the actions and the social behaviour of human beings. Indeed, to Lombroso as a determinist we owe a service which distinguishes him from the great majority of modern determinists. He was bold enough to revive and to restore to psychology the cosmic determinism of the Pythagoreans. It was not within the organism alone that he sought the determining influences of physiological and psychological activity. He looked for these also outside the organism—in the environment; and his conception of this environment was the very widest possible (see p. [132]). At first, when still quite a young man, he laid stress, with Buckle, upon the influence of civilization—that is to say, of the cultural environment—upon individual phenomena. He saw, indeed, in these phenomena, when they are of an abnormal character—taking, for example, the form of insanity, crime, or prostitution—diseases of the social organism, which become individualized in predisposed or malformed persons (the theory of degeneration). Subsequently he came to note, and perhaps to overestimate, the influence of meteorological and cosmic processes—the influence, that is to say, of the physical environment. Later still, when he had grasped the entire plan of the edifice of his life-work, the most important part of that edifice was always the doctrine of causes and of the environment—understanding always by the term “environment” all that comes into relation from outside with the individual and with society, everything competent to determine his tendencies, his gifts, his capacities, and his actions.

Lombroso ultimately came to regard environment as profoundly important in determining the production of criminality, as may be seen most clearly in a passage from the fourth chapter of his work on “The Cause and Prevention of Crime,” of which I here give a portion. After a detailed explanation of the distinction between the older civilization, typified by force, and contemporary civilization, typified by cunning, and having shown that both these types are manifested in the criminal career, he goes on to say: “We experience here de facto the parallel activity of two forms of criminality: atavistic criminality, characterized by the relapse of abnormally predisposed individuals to the employment of forcible means in the struggle for existence—means which our own civilization has normally ceased to use—manslaughter, robbery with violence, or rape; and evolutionary criminality, which is just as maleficent in intention, but far more civilized in its means, for in place of force and violence it employs cunning and artifice.”

The first form of criminality is exhibited only by a comparatively small number of unfortunately predisposed individuals; the second form, by those who are not sufficiently strong to withstand the unfavourable influences of their environment.

Thus, following in the tracks of Quetelet, and contemporaneously with Adolf Wagner—the former being the founder of “social physics,” and the latter the man who demonstrated “the reign of law in the apparently voluntary actions of human beings”—Lombroso regarded the activity of the individual as devoid of all true spontaneity. He viewed it in its dependence upon numerous external and internal factors, in part belonging to the organization of the individual and in part to his environment. In accordance with this view, he assigned to the intellect, to “reason,” a minimal share in the control of actions, in the conduct of the ego. And even in emotion he saw, for the most part, a simple operation of unconscious processes, subsidiary reactions of the organism in response to natural forces.

Thus, in his view, the personality of the doer tended to disappear; individual differences faded away. In his determinism, the idea of the “type,” of the “group,” of the “class,” preponderates. The average man, whose type is deformed by the inexorable law of pathological inheritance (which plays so large a part in all Lombroso’s works), acts under the mechanical compulsion of his internal disposition and organization; and, further, as if this alone were insufficient, he is driven by the external conditions of life, whether those of the physical environment or those of the social organization. Thus he reduces individual differences, for the most part, to a few types, in which the degenerative predispositions almost always manifest themselves in the form of automatic “epileptic” discharges. This does not mean that he altogether denied individual classification, but in his teaching all individuals were contemplated in the light of one and the same fundamental determinism. From the lowest step of this classification occupied by the savage atavistic criminal, the series proceeds to the altitude on which is enthroned the figure of the genius.

This determinism, although not expressly stated, underlies also his account of genius.

Almost throughout his whole life he was interested in the problem of genius. We see this from his first important work, published in the year 1855, upon the “Insanity of Cardanus.” It runs through the six Italian and eight foreign editions of his work on “The Man of Genius.” We see it also in the last important work published before he died, on “Genius and Degeneration.”

It is well known that he regarded the analogy between the epileptic automatic discharge and the inspiration of genius as a proof of the identity of these two phenomena. Here the indefiniteness of the concepts “genius” and “epilepsy” is compensated by the importance and abundance of the facts adduced by him to show that in the essence of genius an “anomaly” is almost invariably to be recognized—and this not merely in the peculiarities commonly observed in men of genius in spheres altogether independent of the direct manifestations of their genius. But inspiration, the discharge itself, is also cosmically determined. Thus we understand why it is that, in the last edition of “The Man of Genius,” the section upon the characteristics of the genius occupies no more space than does the account of the environing causes of genius, and occupies barely half the amount of space given to the section upon genius as manifested in the insane.