principle of penal legislation, so universally accepted, is wrong; which in the name of "science," offers us an entirely new conception of crime, and proposes an entirely new method of dealing with criminals. It may not be a very numerous school, but it is a very noisy one. And as shouting is certainly a power in this age, its pretensions may be worth examining.

We are told by this school that we are to study crime scientifically; and, in fact, a new science, or what purports to be such, has been invented for that purpose, and christened" criminology," or "criminal anthropology." Its votaries have expounded their views in the numerous and diverse publications, of which, perhaps, the most instructive are the Transactions of the Congresses of Criminal Anthropology held from time to time. First, then, what is criminal anthropology? Professor van Hamel, a shining light at these gatherings, defines it as the study of the penal sciences by the Positivist method.' M. Dimitri Drill tells us that "it makes a study of the criminal himself in his very various types, the criminal real and concrete, as life, the court, and the prison present him, analysing him according to data purely scientific, and by the aid of exact methods of all kinds which apply equally to the study of other natural phenomena." But what is crime in the

2

1 Actes du Troisième Congrès International d'Anthropologie Criminelle, p. 339.

2 Ibid., p. 39.

new science? "It is impossible at this time of day,” M. Danville insists, "to found the notion of crime upon the hypothesis of responsibility, if one admits that this hypothesis presupposes free will; for, besides that such a conception starts from a point of view which is rather that of metaphysics, and unfit, therefore, for any attempt at practical application really scientific, such as is necessary in this matter, it offers numerous and evident contradictions with the observation of facts, which seems to exhibit to us, in the place of this vague, ill-defined liberty, a rigorous determinism more conformable with the general laws of science." M. Danville does but express in the sentence, which thus drags its slow length along, the views of the whole sect of criminal anthropologists, who, however divided else, agree that crime is merely the result of social and biological factors.

1

The new science, then, is frankly determinist, and treats with small respect what its exponents term the soi-disant sens moral. Its founder, Signor Lombroso, is, indeed, something more than a determinist. His doctrine is that a criminal belongs to a special type of humanity, and is absolutely and inevitably predestined to crime from the moment of his birth; that the true account of the murderer, or the burglar, as of the poet, is nascitur non fit. This dogma, however, appears to be now out of fashion. Il

1 Actes du Troisième Congrès International d'Anthropologie Criminelle, p. 303.

2 Ibid., p. 34.

3

semble que le type criminel de Lombroso ait vécu, said one of the orators at the Brussels Congress.1 But it is an article of faith among criminal anthropologists that we must regard the delinquent as dehumanised (déshumanisé), as abnormal, by which they mean suffering from an anomaly unfitting him for self-adaptation to social life; that the common idea, “no crime without moral responsibility," is incompatible with scientific facts. Crime, indeed, in the only sense the word has ever borne among men, does not exist for the doctors of criminal anthropology: the malefactor is not really criminal at all. He is to be regarded as a psycopath, a moral invalid, the victim of a mind diseased, of an organisation malformed, impoverished, or incomplete; of a temperament hallucinative or epileptic'; and of what M. Drill calls "the peculiarities of external influences, whether of the climate and nature of his country, or of his social environment." And with the notion of crime, the notion of punishment also disappears. There are only two valid reasons, we are told, why a psycopath, a moral invalid, an abnormal man, should be repressed: namely, for the protec

1 Actes du Troisième Congrès International d'Anthroplogie Criminelle, p. 278.

2 Ibid., p. 304.

& See Abnormal Man, by Arthur Macdonald, p. 45.

4 According to some eminent criminal anthropologists, murderers, burglars, and fraudulent persons are the victims of epilepsy, or of a tendency to epilepsy.

'Actes du Troisième Congrès International de Anthropologie Crimi nelle, p. 40.

tion of society against those tendencies of his which are dangerous or disagreeable, and for the cure of his defective adaptability to the social environment.

Such, in brief outline, are the theoretical positions of the new science. Let us now glance at its practical application, first to the study, and secondly, to the treatment of those whom it is still the fashion to call criminals. By way of a specimen of a "scientific" diagnosis of a malefactor, take the following contribution by an eminent specialist, Signor Guido Rossi, to the Archivio di Psichiatria, Scienze Penale ed Anthropologia Criminale:

S. C., 38 years of age, born in Turin, a typefounder by trade; condemned twice: the first time, ten-year sentence for cruelty to father. While in prison he attempted suicide twice. Being unable to work, he wrote his history upon a vessel. Always suffered sensations of heat in the head; was subject to vertigo; had an alcoholic attack and epileptic prison insanity-follia carceraria epilettica-during which he broke the glass in the window, for having been punished excessively; did not think in such moments of the possibility of being punished again; had a true morbid epileptical hypochondria. His physical examination gave: Pallid skin, thin chestnut hair, abundant beard, thin moustache, blue iris ; nose long, and crooked teeth; median incisors hypertrophied the lateral decayed; slightly projecting ears, squint in left eye, paralysis of the eyebrows. Craniometry: anteriorposterior diameter, 182 millimetres; transverse, 151 ; anteriorposterior curve, 340; transverse, 317; total circumference, 540; cephalic index, 83 ; cranial capacity, 1530; a depression at the union of the frontal and parietal, not evident whether it is due to a wound or not; lacks the ethnic type; a scar ou right hand, arising out of a dispute after gambling. Sensibility with Faradaic current, the right hand feels at 32, the left at 35; touch gives 3 millimetres for left and 2 for

the right. Meteorological sensibility is moderate; two or three days before bad weather he is restless. He is credulous; was made to see a bottle of black wine under a white paper. The dynamometer gave 46 for left hand, 53 for the right. Motility: gait, awkward; speech, stammering; writing, good; knee-jerk exaggerated; had a simian agility since infancy. He walks often without consciousness of where he goes; this is one form of propulsive epilepsy; at certain moments there comes to him a desire to destroy everything, and often he does it. He does not believe in any religion. He sleeps uneasily; commenced to like wine at 10; was forgetful; smoked; liked gambling; is fond of striking; knows the criminal slang. His father was 44 at the birth of S. C.; his mother 50; his father drank much, but supported the wife, and was never in jail. The mother played much at lottery; his sister was mother of thirteen sons, all healthy, except one who died, disease unknown. He was studious in his four elementary classes; said he never had difficulty in learning. He reads the Cronaca dei Tribunali. He does not like the present system of government; would like the republican form.'

The most perfect example of the treatment of malefactors according to the new science, is supplied by the famous Elmira Reformatory in the State of New York. In that institution there are some fifteen hundred male inmates-the word "prisoner" is tabooed-not known to have been previously imprisoned for high crimes, and of various ages between sixteen and thirty. They are committed to the institution indeterminately-that is, for no fixed period, but until its authorities are satisfied that they are "morally, intellectually, and physically capable of earning a living," and then they are discharged.

'Quoted by Macdonald, Abnormal Man, p. 58.