Criminality and economic conditions

by Willem Adriaan Bonger

IV.

L. Manouvrier.

Of all the adherents of the “hypothesis of the environment,” Professor Manouvrier is undoubtedly the one who has set forth this doctrine in the clearest manner. Being an anthropologist it is evident that he has not given his attention more especially to economic conditions. [[165]]But it seems to me that what he says in opposition to the theory of Professor Lombroso, and in support of that of the environment, is of the greatest importance. I will give a résumé, therefore, of his “Genèse normale du crime”,[25] and in doing so will quote his own words as far as possible, in order to give their full value. Although there is no connection between the doctrine of Professor Lombroso and his adherents, and this work, I shall be forced to follow his whole demonstration, because of the interlacing of the theories of the Italian school and the detailed exposition of the doctrine of the “environment.”

The doctrine of the innate character of crime and the phrenology of Gall and Spurzheim are closely connected. Gall thought that he had discovered in the brain the organs of homicide and theft, without, however, denying the importance of surroundings, so that he explained a case of theft by means of circumstances when the bump of theft was wanting in the thief.

This doctrine has been entirely supplanted by the theories of Lamarck and Darwin. “In the place of attributing to the environment the rôle of a simple player of a hand-organ, Lamarck sees in it a true musician playing upon his instrument any airs suited to its complexity and qualities. Further, the quality and characteristics of the instrument can be modified, transformed under the influence of this marvelous musician and that of the music executed. This was the ruin of craniomancy. The diagnostics of phrenology found themselves limited at once and for always to the faculties, the elementary dispositions that Gall and Spurzheim had tried in vain to discover, and which are consistent with the execution of acts indefinitely variable.

“The phrenologists are right in connecting the ‘properties of the soul and mind’ with organization, but they are wrong in connecting such acts as theft and homicide with organic causes, as if these acts had the value of real, irreducible functions.”[26]

Notwithstanding the bond between phrenology and the positivist school, this school does not rely upon the theory in question, but upon the transformist theory, i.e. upon the theory that gives its attention to environment. The cause of this is that the fundamental error that forms the point of departure is still universally prevalent. “This error consists in believing that acts sociologically defined, like crimes, [[166]]can be connected with the anatomical conformation, without being first referred by a psychological analysis to their psychological elements, the only ones, whether normal or pathological, that depend directly upon anatomy. The same error consists in confusing the combinations of aptitudes formed under the influence of environment, with the elementary aptitudes resulting from the native organization or its successive modifications. It also leads to a misunderstanding of the primary fact that two individuals similarly constituted can be led, in consequence of the influence of dissimilar environments to which they have been subjected since their birth, to conduct themselves in different, and even quite opposite, ways, without their acts ceasing to be, on that account, conformed to their anatomical constitution.”[27]

It is a fact well known to biologists that in all living beings qualities often occur that did not appear in their immediate forebears but in more remote generations. This reappearance of qualities is called atavism. Its importance has been too much exaggerated, however, and it has been made into a magic word with which, it has been thought, everything could be explained, including crime. The line of reasoning has been as follows: crime is one of the ordinary phenomena among savage peoples, and must therefore have been so among the ancestors of the civilized peoples. It is observed that among the criminals of our day there are more of the anatomical stigmata indicating atavism than among non-criminals; consequently crime is a phenomenon of atavism! There are numerous errors in this reasoning. “Since we are treating the question of crime, we must first of all know what is understood by crime, must give a definition of it indicating what crime corresponds to physiologically, and to what order of anatomical characteristics the physiological tendency to crime corresponds. Considered in themselves, these acts suppose only the existence of a conformation permitting, and of needs demanding, their accomplishment. If such a conformation and such needs no longer exist in the normal state among civilized peoples, where nevertheless the acts are frequent, it would be proper to examine the authors of them for abnormal characteristics; not merely any abnormal characteristics, but characteristics, anatomical or physiological, that it would be possible to connect with these aptitudes and needs that have become abnormal.”[28]

Among the anatomical stigmata observed in criminals in prison there are several which, considered by themselves, have nothing [[167]]abnormal about them; none of them would serve to characterize criminals. We often find, for example, that murderers have relatively large jaws, which are ordinarily thus an index of a conformation disposed to brutality; “but this brutality is absolutely of the same order as that of men compared with women; it is a masculine characteristic, and the masculine conformation is indubitably favorable to crimes of violence much more than the feminine; but happily it happens that most men, in civilized countries, live under conditions in which their natural brutality does not prevent their being very peaceable citizens, though it would be imprudent to molest them. Very vigorous men are ordinarily endowed with square and very solid jaws; they are men for attack or defense, who may be very useful to society or very harmful, as the case may be. Given to acting vigorously and brutally, this they may be, but inclined to crime they are not, any more than the men with small jaws, whose mildness is often the effect of muscular weakness, and who, though little given to striking and breaking down doors, nevertheless know how to be brutal and violent in their own way.”[29]

However, it might be thought that these anatomical characteristics, though not dangerous in themselves, are nevertheless an indication of a tendency on their part to act like savages. But this is not the case; these characteristics “are morphological accidents that are purely local and are compatible with the most fortunate conformation.” But this is not saying that every peculiarity must remain unutilized. Thus, for example, there are persons who are able to move their ears. “If murder and theft were acts as little complicated, and of as little importance as moving the ears, and if these acts, having become criminal, did not suppose very complex anatomical and psychological coördinations; if there were, in other words, as Gall supposed, cerebral organs specially and innately fitted for murder and theft, we could believe that the mere atavistic presence of these organs would constitute a tendency to commit these crimes; but neither anatomo-physiological analysis, nor psychology will justify today so simple a conception.”[30]