The Criminal

by Havelock Ellis

I purpose to touch briefly on certain relationships of crime and the criminal, the consideration of which will lead us naturally to a clearer view of the criminal’s position. We will glance at (a) the biological beginnings of crime, (b) crime among children, (c) the criminal woman as distinct from the criminal man, (d) the relation of crime to vice, (e) crime as a profession, (f) the relations of crime to epilepsy and insanity.

(a) The biological beginnings of crime have been examined by Lombroso, Lacassagne, and Ferri; and by some have even been traced as far back as the vegetable world. Thus Lombroso seems to claim those insectivorous plants studied by Darwin and others as belonging to the category of criminals. I doubt whether by any tenable definition of the criminal such a classification can be upheld, and Lomboso himself speaks with less than his usual decision. An act which is common to a whole species cannot reasonably be described as criminal. It may be unjust, even cruel, but it does not thereby necessarily become criminal. If the Dionea Muscipula that eats an insect is a criminal, much more must the European man who eats beef or mutton be a criminal. To be criminal the deed must be exceptional in the species, and must provoke a social reaction among the other members of that species. We can scarcely hope to find genuine vegetable criminals, even amongst the parasites.

When we are dealing with the criminality of animals, concerning which a large body of evidence has now accumulated, it is necessary to discriminate. It is well recognised by veterinary surgeons that certain horses are inclined to be undisciplined and revengeful, and that these characteristics are associated with distinct cranial anomalies; the Arabs believe these qualities to be hereditary. There is here certainly a very close analogy to the instinctive criminal; but we are dealing with an animal greatly modified by man, and these vices are not recorded as exercised against their own species so much as against man. The case (apparently well authenticated) of the horse who pretended to be lame, to avoid going on military exercise, can scarcely be called criminal; from a horse’s point of view this might be regarded as a justifiable ruse. The same may be said of the action of the dog who, finding his favourite place occupied by another dog, went outside and set up such a furious barking that the usurper came out to see what was the matter, when the rightful owner immediately pounced on his old corner. Such a ruse, even though perpetrated against one of the same species, is not anti-social. It is only when we are dealing with animals of the very highest order of intelligence that we find any manifestations that can be at all fairly described as criminal. Thus among the highly intelligent castors, the lazy castor is pitilessly chased away by his fellows, to die of hunger, alone, far from the colony. Idleness, as we know, is a very fundamental characteristic of the criminal, and the strongly marked social reaction that we see here shows that the castors have recognised this. Something of the same kind is seen among elephants. Certain elephants, called rogues, lead a solitary and unnatural life, and are lacking in the humane and gentle disposition peculiar to elephants generally. The anti-social character of these elephants is recognised by their fellows, and when the solitary elephant endeavours to penetrate into the family life of the ordinary elephant he is everywhere repulsed, and naturally grows still fiercer and more anti-social. Such examples as these are the nearest approaches among animals to what we call criminality.

PLATE XIV.

We have to realise clearly what constitutes criminality when we turn to the lower human races. To say, as has been asserted, that among savages criminality is the rule rather than the exception, is to introduce confusion. Among many savages infanticide, parricide, theft and the rest, far from being anti-social, subserve frequently some social end, and they outrage, therefore, no social feeling. These acts are not anti-social; and many recent investigations, such as those of Élie Reclus, show that there is under the given conditions a certain reasonableness in them, although among us they have ceased to be reasonable, and have become criminal. On the other hand, many acts which the needs or traditions of a barbarous society have caused to be criminal become in a higher phase of society trivial or beneficial.

Tarde remarks, that of the ten crimes which the Hebraic law punished with stoning, nine have even ceased to be offences in our modern European societies, and the tenth (rape) has only remained a crime by entirely changing its character; it has become a crime against the person instead of a crime against property. He observes also that in a savage society one of the chief criminal types would be that of the delicate and artistic natures, sensuous and sensitive, ill adapted for pillaging neighbouring tribes. Such individuals would be chased away relentlessly, as the industrious castors chase away the lazy castor, and for the same reasons. In our societies we have found a use for these people; they minister to our pleasures, and we render them nothing but homage. But if we are wise we shall be very tender in arousing our indignation against the social habits of lower races, even when these involve such an act as parricide, for the distance between ourselves and even the lowest races is quite measurable. Our social code is not far removed from that of the Maori who considered that it was murder to kill the man to whom he had given hospitality, but not murder to run his spear through the stranger whom he met on his morning walk. We to-day regard it as a great crime to kill our own fathers or children; but even the most civilised European nation—whichever that may be—regards it as rather glorious to kill the fathers and children of others in war. We are not able yet to grasp the relationship between men. In the same way, while we resent the crude thefts practised by some lower races, we are still not civilised enough to resent the more subtle thefts practised among ourselves which do not happen to conflict with the letter of any legal statute.

Criminality, therefore, cannot be attributed indiscriminately even to the lowest of races. It consists in a failure to live up to the standard recognised as binding by the community. The criminal is an individual whose organisation makes it difficult or impossible for him to live in accordance with this standard, and easy to risk the penalties of acting antisocially. By some accident of development, by some defect of heredity or birth or training, he belongs as it were to a lower and older social state than that in which he is actually living. It thus happens that our own criminals frequently resemble in physical and psychical characters the normal individuals of a lower race. This is that “atavism” which has been so frequently observed in criminals and so much discussed. It is the necessarily anti-social instinct of this lowlier organised individual which constitutes the crime. This accounts for the fact that, while in those districts where brigandage is opposed to popular feeling brigands are often abnormally constituted individuals, in other districts where there is no social feeling against brigandage (as in some outlying parts of Italy) the brigand may present no unusual characteristic, mental or physical. The social environment exerts no selective influence; there is nothing to thrust the abnormal person into brigandage rather than into any other occupation.

To admit, therefore, in the criminal, a certain psychical and even physical element belonging to a more primitive age is simple and perfectly reasonable. It has been observed over and over again, independently and apart from any special theory of criminality. Thus Mr. L. Owen Pike, the historian of crime in England, who is not an alienist or an anthropologist, writes:—“Of a very great number of modern habitual criminals it may be said that they have the misfortune to live in an age in which their merits are not appreciated. Had they been in the world a sufficient number of generations ago, the strongest of them might have been chiefs of a tribe.... With the disposition and the habits of uncivilised men which he has inherited from a remote past, the criminal has to live in a country where the majority of the inhabitants have learned new lessons of life, and where he is regarded more and more as an outcast as he strives more and more to fulfil the yearnings of his nature.”[76] Tarde, the cautious juge d’instruction, has expressed the same idea in almost the same words: “Some of them at least would have been the ornament and the moral aristocracy of a tribe of Red Indians.”[77] Again, Professor Prins of Brussels, only slightly varying the same formula, remarks: “The criminal of to-day is the hero of our old legends. We put in prison to-day the man who would have been the dreaded and respected chief of a clan or a tribe.” The energy with which Lombroso has advocated the atavistic element in the criminal is well known; while Colajanni, in many respects an opponent of Lombroso, remarks: “How many of Homer’s heroes would to-day be in a convict prison, or at all events despised as violent and unjust.”