On the Natural History of Crime
135 Art. XI?
Address of Professor MOBIZ BENEDICT, delivered at the Meeting of the Juridical Society of Vienna, December 28, 1875.
When medical men and lawyers, in the exercise of tlieir professions, come into relation with one another, the contact is generally unpleasant. The lawyer has a great bias to positivism, and wishes to pour all acquired knowledge into legal decisions and definitions. The medical man, on the other hand, looks on his knowlege as a mass of crystal, to which, in the course of progress, new parts are continually added, and from which old ones are washed away.
The lawyer stands on an artificially-secured foundation? the medical man, generally, on a tottering base. I must admit that many a medical man staggers more than corresponds to the tottering base: 011 the one hand, perhaps, on account of his imperfect positive knowledge in special cases, and on the other, because he often mistakes the point of view presented to him.
You must also, however, admit with me, that the lawyer generally endeavours to insist too .strongly that nature should bow beneath the caudine yoke of his definitions.
The most important point of contact of the two kinds of discipline is judicial psychology, and it is exactly here that a chasm of leading convictions yawns before us, which is very difficult to fill up. Explanation is easy with the intellectual leaders of jurisprudence; but the mass of lawyers stand on the foundation of a view of things which is growing old and of a system of nature which is full of tendencies. Tlieir ideas, never- theless, are primitive. They reckon with the ideas of instinct and reason in the old sense, which are indeed officially received, but have long been rejected as untenable by exact science. The naturalist looks through the glasses of an approaching aspect of the world, which shows man and his relations to external objects in the light of natural laws. If he speaks of psychical freedom, he understands by the term the multiplicity of psy- chical tendencies on the basis of numerous modifying factors in the track of natural laws.
A harmonious union is only to be expected when the ex- periences and the methods of both directions are traversed by all persons. Then there can be no doubt that, in spite of the proximity in point of space and time between much in us and much in them, there is a thousand years between us.
The naturalist resolves the psychological complicated equations into their elements, and endeavours to establish the laws of psychological treatment “without allowing himself to be influenced and led astray by the last metaphysical questions, just as the natural philosopher studies the laws of motion with- out troubling himself about the metaphysics of force. We employ here the physiologico-anatomical language, as it arises from the structure and function of the psychical organ. With this natural instrument, however, it is much easier to re- solve the equations of Nature, and to make them intelligible. For us naturalists there is no doubt that man is the highest summit of the animal kingdom, and not merely in a purely anatomical sense, but also in a physiological and in a further physiological?namely, a psychological sense. We have no doubt that man in his psychological relations does not merely reach this summit in a partial development, but that all the psychological elements of the animal kingdom are present in man, and occupy, qualitatively and quantitatively, the highest grade of development. Hence we come to the manifold mixtures of character, as they denote races, breeds, members of certain epochs and of social relationships; and again, within these great groups, also special groups. Who does not recog- nise in the peacock spreading his feathers, and in the winding serpent, in the lion and the fox, in the bee and the farm- horse, in the bull and the tiger, the types of human characteris- tics, as if they were exercises of nature for human types ? Science however knows, on the other hand, with what wonderful consequences, even into their minutest forms, the general idea of genus, species, and individual corresponds to the construction of the animal body. Even from single teeth, and often from the smallest bones, the zoologist distinguishes the genus and the species in prehistoric animals, and not only their external form, but also their food, their mode of life, and the, climate and the nature of the soil from the foundation of time. He is able also, however, from these single elements to pronounce upon the character of the animal?whether it was a hammer or an anvil in creation, a robber or a gatherer, blood- thirsty or gentle?whether it preserved its existence by superior force in attack or in defence, or by stratagem, rapidity, or invisibility.
With what extraordinary singleness of purpose nature pre- serves the whole in the part is shown by those two cells which represent the existence and the peculiarity of the individual. The whole historical work of development represented in the indi- vidual and all the work of the individual are given back in the seed-thread, spermatozoon (Samenfaden). It gives back all the peculiarities of the whole of the organs to the very minutest varieties, and where the seed was only in proportion to the fruit, the father and the ancestors are recognised again in the son. So does the egg represent in all their varieties the mother and her ancestors, and also in this circum- stance, that as the elements of the one or the other cell predominate in the fruit, so is all the former history of the whole race expressed. We have in these two cells to deal with original elements, which neither microscopy nor micro-chemistry can reach in any way, since science is not able to individualise seed and egg. Here two important remarks may be made.
We know that every brute and human individual, from the moment of the fecundation of the egg to its full development, undergoes a series of phases corresponding to the historical development of tribe and species. But it may partially stand still at a certain stage, and then we have to deal with a relapse into an earlier historical or peculiar stage of development.
Further, we see every organism in a lower stage of develop- ment to be in harmonious formation, notwithstanding the incompleteness of its organisation. We do not call the sucking child idiotic, although it possesses fewer ideas than the dullest idiot: we do not consider it to be paralysed, although it has fewer movements at its command than in the far-advanced general paralysis of a grown-up person. Lastly, we do not call it wicked, although it has no moral ideas and sentiments. It presents an incomplete model of a regularly-working organic machine.
If certain parts fall short of their further development, then a machine exists which works harmoniously, but perhaps in a contrary way to that for which it was designed, or it acts only in this way under unfavourable circumstances.
Such a development represents a deviation of being (Abartung), in contrast to derangement of mind, which represents a degenera- tion of being (Entartung). For the first condition the term given by the French clinicists is appropriate, viz.Diathese?i.e. another kind of physiological being.
But to those zoologico-anthropological elements, from the division of which into parts we are able to draw remarkable conclusions as to the construction and the existence of the animal, belongs the skull, from the formation of which we are able (with the assistance of other known elements) to draw the safest conclusions as to the psychological character of its possessor.
In every race we observe numerous psychological varieties, which again may be combined into types. If we look round within the most strongly marked circle of individualism, namely, within one and tlie same nation, we find again every- where the typical varieties. Within the German nation the Rhinelander and the German-Austrian represent the colouring of being and of appearing, the more clear sense of the actual, as well in grasping ideas as in giving them back again; and therein they approach the Roman type, while the temperate North-French Protestant runs parallel with doctrinaire Ger- manism. Just so is it with races. How many men, and among them the ornaments of cultivated times, represent the psycho- physical, passively-enduring woman??I name only Christ, Fiesole, Grillparzer?and how many a woman wears the psycho- physical trousers ?
There is an hypothesis, probable in the highest degree, that the observed typical varieties of the skull coincide with different psychological varieties. The danger is great?and it will only be reduced to a minimum in the course of centuries?of making too hasty deductions as to the connexion of the formation of the skull with the type of character. Yet this is no isolated fact. Everywhere science goes on tacking towards the goal of truth, sometimes straying on one side, sometimes on another, from the straight path.
The excursions sideways are becoming always smaller. To the objects aimed at by mankind, among which mental develop- ment plays the chief part, that one is chiefly opposed which, on account of possible errors, obstructs exertion. This adaptation of parallel facts of varieties of character and of skulls is a problem to be solved, but it is one forbidden by facts.
I show you here some specimens of skulls of races from the collection of this University. You see in the skull of the Chinese, the Italian, the German-Austrian, and the Moor, types which are as different as the psychological types of these races. I also bring under your notice, while I am showing some other skulls, some varieties of skull-formation which, as I shall show you, play a great part in the natural history of crime.
If, in the normal skull, in a straight line from before back- wards, the distance is measured from the fossa behind the auditory foramen to the most posterior eminence of the occiput, it will be found to amount to two-fifths and more of the straight line drawn from before backwards, in the middle line between the forehead and the summit of the occiput (the sagittal diameter). I show you now that in other skulls this is not the case, inasmuch as the first line reaches one-tliird or one-fourth, or less, of the second. I call this ” Brachycephalia occipitalis.” In the second place, I show you that the difference in height between the highest point of the forehead and the crown of the head is but small (1^ centimeter). In many skulls the NATURAL HISTORY OF CRIME. JLo’J difference is considerable (as much as 7 centimeters), and this proportion I call ” anterior vertex-steepness ” (Scheitelsteilheit). A further variety is the asymmetry of the two halves of the skull, and, lastly, please to observe the form of the posterior surface; it is in certain skulls very flat, while in others this occipital flatness is wanting.
The naturalist constructs for himself, moreover, Man out of the experiments of Nature. He sees the sketches for,the present Man in the animal world of the present and of the past, in original man, and in the developing man of the historical epoch. His physiological experiments on brutes and his patho- logical experiences enable him to eliminate much that the non-naturalist considers necessary to the highest activity of mental life. Experiment in the last ten years has shown, for instance, that much action and inaction in man and brutes are not necessarily connected with the elements of con- sciousness, on which they were considered to be dependent. If, in some animal, the bearers of consciousness, namely the cerebral hemispheres, are divided, an equally important mechanism remains, which in former times would have been regarded as a mystic piece of witchcraft. A frog so treated swims when placed in the water; it leaps on the solid ground, and makes intentional movements of clinging when it comes from the water to the edge of the bank. A bird treated in the same way flies when thrown into the air, clings firmly when placed on a ledge, and runs on smooth ground. So we see that the purpose of the mode of action may be present without consciousness.
There are epileptic and cataleptic states in which such combined actions may take place without any consciousness, or with a little remnant of it, and such states are also observed in severe injuries of the brain. There is no longer any doubt, in the present day, that the surface of the brain represents the organ of special mental activity; that from it the movements are directed in such a succession as corresponds to the current of the ideas and feelings; and that the form of the surface, independently of any metaphysical views as to cer- tain physiological properties of the constituents, represents the framework in which, up to a high degree a priori, the mental and the sensitive life of man and his actions are confined. It is, indeed, indubitable that in all directions the boundaries are established, and that in relation to them the statement is true, ” Man cannot alter himself, but can only develope himself.”
On the surface of the brain are seen the convolutions, which are divided by fissures. In the development of the human brain this system of fissures is complicated by the fact that the coming cerebral convolutions grow out from the deep parts. While in the brain of brutes the appearance and the completion of certain fissures is a mark of progress, because these are the ex- pressions of newly-appearing or further-completed parts of the brain, the prominence and the preponderance of the fissures in man forms a sign of arrested development. For this condition arises from the circumstance that certain convolutions remain stationary in the deep parts, and are therefore not arrived at their full development, or have not developed themselves. It would be going too far to give details to non-medical hearers. I will only mention at present that I have observed this condi- tion of arrested development in the criminal brains I have examined. Another important relation exists between the pos- terior cerebral lobes and the cerebellum. In the two ape brains (Chimpanzee and Baboon), which I here show you, and which do not belong to the highest of the ape series, you see the cere- bellum almost completely covered by the occipital lobes, while you see the cerebellum in the sheep completely naked. In developed man no example has been known, up to the present time, where this covering of the cerebellum by the occipital lobes was wanting, while in three brains of murderers this deficiency existed, and in the fourth an equivalent abnormal condition was observed. You see also that the occipital lobes in the normal brain, which I show you, do not stand much higher than the other parts of the inferior surface of the brain, while you see here, in the photographs of murderers’ brains, that in them the posterior part of the lower surface rises up steeply and so the occipital lobe loses remarkably in size.
On this’Surface of the brain the significance of the smaller portions is not yet sufficiently determined. Still, it is already an acquisition of science in the present day that the most anterior part of the brain is the seat of the life of ideas (Vor- stellungsleben), the middle part the seat of psychical action in a motor sense, and the most posterior part is the seat of the sensations and feelings. The doctrine of the localisation of the psychical elements on the cerebral surface, rejected a short time since on the ground of prejudices and false experiments by most persons, is now an incontestable fact of exact science. This fact cannot be handled by the ignorant, because, in order to appreciate it, the most apparently simple psychological pro- ceedings must be decomposed into their elements. I will make this clear to you by a simple example. A few decennia ago, speech was regarded as something placed ready in man by Nature, and even the comparative study of language was unable alto- gether to solve the psychological riddle of speech. Pathology has taught us that there are cases in which speech may be lost almost independently of all other disturbances. Hitherto, in consequence of false psychological analysis, an attempt has been made to assign a definite and simple cause for speech. Nature, who makes no concession to theoretical convenience, showed different causes. I determined this controversy some years ago by a strict analysis of the idea of speech, in showing that the idea, speech, was built up from different elements, which again must be localised in different parts of the brain.
Since there is a connection between the centres of sensation and volition, and certain nerves of the organs of articulation (the tongue and the muscles of the larynx), there came the original elements of speech?namely, cries and single syllables, as in the child. The perception of the second individuals who hear these sounds, and who hence recognised the simplest forms of volition, must have led to the attempt to retain such articulate sounds as means of intelligence, and, when once an instrument is known as being useful for a definite purpose, man endeavours to apply and to improve it for all suitable objects. The individual receives the gift of his speech through hearing and reading, and therefore by complicated sensations of sound and sight, which remain in his brain as forms of memory. These forms of memory, or ideas of speech (Sprachvorstellungen), may, however, remain in another part of the brain, as the highest incitement to the articulate movements of the tongue, the vocal chords, &c. The ideas themselves are constructed out of other elements of sensation, and then enter into combination with the ideas of speech. In one series of cases, therefore, the ideas may be deficient, in another the centres of the ideas of speech, or the centres of the movements of articulation. Clinical facts correspond to this analysis, and it is found that this mental activity of speech may have, and actually has, different centres on the cerebral surface, and especially in the brain itself. The same, however, is the case in most of the psychical functions. Every act is composed of ideas, of urging or restraining feel- ings of pleasure or of discomfort, and of motor impulses. It therefore contains different factors and different centres on the cortical part of the brain. It must, therefore, henceforth be regarded as altogether erroneous to attribute a complicated mental effort always to one or another factor, and to make a distinct part of the brain alone responsible. One factor may incite to a certain kind of action, but in another lies the check to its performance, or such a positive preponderance that the result of the activity projected outwardly has a result which is opposite to the first incitement.
In order, therefore, to analyse the mode of action in a man, and therefore also in criminals, it is not alone the product which should be known, but an analysis of each of the factors must precede and “be strictly weighed, to find whether some are not wanting, or are of doubtful value, and whether the counteracting influences of a counterbalance are thereby re- moved, or the latter exhibit an unusual development.
Jurisprudence has, as yet, in theory not taken a full account of these relations; and in practice, namely in legislation, matters are incomparably worse.
Let me now glance at the psychology of crime. Considera- tions on this subject must be pointed in two directions, namely: 1. In regard to the prominent positive or negative charac- teristic features in the several categories of crime; and 2. In regard to the psychological unity of crime. For on this point there can be no doubt, namely, that the same criminal propen- sity which in one individual leads to a criminal act, in another is neutralised by the counterpoise of the other factors ; and that under definite political, social, national, and closer relations the same propensity breaks out, which in the same individual constitution under other conditions would have remained latent. I will here adduce some characteristic features in general, which may especially give occasion for the commis- sion of crime.
One of these is a fancy for virtuosoship ( Virtuositatskitzel), which plays a great part with the forgers of bank-notes, and with pickpockets and burglars. I scarcely need assert that the same tendency in an intellectually and morally gifted person might give rise to many follies and absurdities, but would not necessarily pervert the whole conditions of existence.
A second characteristic feature, which becomes the psycho- logical foundation of many categories of crime, is a relapse of human nature into nomadism. Such men cannot continue in one place and in a confined space, and a moderate activity is to them for any long time impossible. Change of place, neigh- bourhood, and occupation is for them such an urgent impulse that they cannot resist it. Mountainous countries and great plains especially predispose to this restlessness. This characteristic feature plays an important part in the psychology of vagrancy, of vagabond thieves, of robbery, of poachers and smugglers. In well-constituted men this restlessness leads to wandering, to change of business and enterprise, and to fondness for travelling, and the speciality of bold travellers springs from high intellect and great energy. This very characteristic may be the reason why normally organised men step forth out of everyday life and perform actions which are universally advantageous.
Another basis of crime is formed by dislike of work, and may be the result of a bad education, but may be developed in a psychological form in individuals in whom corporeal exer- tion does not create a certain feeling- of pleasure, but causes unpleasant sensations, which they can overcome only under certain circumstances of compulsion. This peculiarity may also be developed in a high degree without becoming the basis of crime, if work is not the essential condition of active existence. In connection with the dislike of work, the love of enjoyment is a powerful incitement to crime, because, on the one hand, means of living out-of-doors are wanting, and, on the other, together with the love of enjoyment, the motor and men- tal energy is not present to procure the means of living and of enjoyment. Both impulses lead especially to crime when that ethic constitution or development is wanting which is necessary to the foundation of a powerful feeling of what is right. A further fundamental element, which stands in psycho- physical contrast to dislike of work, is an excessive physical consciousness of strength, which leads to arrogance, and there- by to the pleasure of misusing strength against the weak. This impulse leads to the love of bullying, cruelty, and man- slaughter, if a higher intellect is absent which should turn the feeling of strength in a right direction, and there is also absent a complete ethical consciousness which should prevent misuse of power.
I will here allude to an impulse which is of great sig- nificance in the’ psychology of crime. We observe in several states of disease a peculiar type, which consists in the fact that attacks of illness of more or less short duration alternate with more or less long, and generally for a time preponderant, healthy intermissions.
We can designate all these pathological states in a broader sense as epileptiform. In the domain of vices we are met by that peculiar alteration of different conditions of tension in the central nervous system, called ” quarterly intoxication ” (Quartalrausch)?i.e. a temporary dipsomania returning with a certain regularity. The same thing is observed in criminals: for instance, in habitual thieves, Avho, being temporarily seized with the deepest remorse, are fortified with the best resolutions. They behave for a time in a most exemplary manner until they relapse again, and indeed, as they unani- mously express themselves, from an irresistible impulse. I would designate this state, which is of great importance to the practical doctrine of criminal punishment, by the expression ” moral epilepsy.”’
Now let us turn to the psychology of special crimes, and we shall see that the peculiar appropriate impulse to their com- mission, and the form of the whole psychological product is exceedingly different in its composition of factors. One of the most important impulses in the psychology of crime is the very deficient development of the sentimental life in particular, and, together with this, of the sentiment of rectitude. Thence it happens that so many criminals are never penetrated by a feeling of their guilt or very evidently show repentance. They may perhaps feel and dread the material consequences of crime but they are deficient in the feeling of moral guilt. This ethical weakness, as we have said, may be congenital, or may arise from deficient education.
Now let us examine specially the case of murder. The celebrated work of Holtzendorff is known to you all and I need not analyse it in detail.
I will therefore only state how manifold is the group of motives from an ethical and psychological point of view, which leads to premeditated murder, and we may even maintain that many murderous deeds are committed in certain circumstances only by better-constituted natures, while the crime in selfish and lower natures under similar circumstances is not com- mitted.
To this category belong murders from wounded honour and within it are also included many murderous acts committed under certain circumstances of cultivated and social life, which are impossible under other conditions. For instance, there exist in countries with feudal institutions many murderers and robbers from motives of wounded honour, because the lower orders and the poor find no protection in the law. We must state that those are just the noblest natures who revolt because they and their neighbourhood are injured in their honour and their lawful existence by arbitrary cruelty. The bondslave and outcast who quietly looks on while his sisters and his wife are being defiled?who scarcely feels any anger or is very quiet when his old father is punished with cruel severity, stands ethically in a much lower position than he who takes a gun in his hand, and in the name of justice organises his private revolt against lawless society. With a righteous instinct the lower class beholds in such districts its national heroes in its robbers. The ethical inferiority is here in the predominant and law-giving classes. To this category also belong partly the murderous deeds from religious or political fanaticism which generally involve a complete abandonment of the most vital individual interests in favour of an idea.
In ordinary robber-murder attended with violence, criminal covetousness is the first impulse?i.e., the struggle to obtain unlawfully the possession ol the means of existence or of enjoyment. In such a criminal the consciousness must be more or less clear that he cannot obtain for himself those means by his own physical or mental labour, or lie has no pleasure in such labour. In the professional robber there are usually added the arrogant feeling of strength and its terrible conse- quences, or the pleasurable feeling of surpassing cunning, and further perhaps the nomadic tendency, and. moreover want of conscience or ethical idiocy.
Covetousness, ethical weakness of mind, pleasure in the imaginary or actual conviction of obtaining the desired means of existence by work when mental or bodily power is deficient, or the dislike of taking this power any longer into account? such are the factors out of which the psychological product of assassination for the love of gain is composed.
Violence of temperament, continuance of a strongly excited dislike, overweening feeling of power and of pleasure in exer- cising strength over relative weakness of intellect and of ethical development, form the psychological basis of rough man- slaughter, as well as of murder from revenge with slight motives.
The psychology of theft is not simple. Shakespeare has with his artistic excellence pictured to us the common thief in Bardolpli. Excessive pleasure in revelling and disgust for work form the peculiar basis of the common thievish nature. These are the impulses which cause the consciousness of the balance between meum and tuum to be disturbed and finally to disappear altogether. That such a thievish nature, when it acquires wealth, does not develope itself is clear, for whoever has the means of revelling and wants nothing to work for has no need to be a thief. Besides, there comes in the burglar as well as in the pickpocket the love of virtuosoship ( Virtuositats- Icitzel), and in the former there is the jileasure in conspiracy. In the category of thieves relapse is very common. In boldness the horse-stealer stands next to the robber.
In habitual thieves moral epilepsy is observed in its most striking form.
The kleptomania of hysterical persons is worthy of observation, in whom there ? is an impulse to possess everything without making use of it.
According to what has been stated, the whole psychological I is affected in the thief, but the ethical and the motor I and the intellectual in a more limited sense. For it needs hardly be as- serted that in a developed intellect a thief rarely exists. For with the same psychological material also, a thief rarely appears under high mental conditions, but a deceiver. Stealing is too bad a business for a continuance.
I will mention one more type, the bank-note forger. He is distinguished by extraordinary but passive cleverness. He shows himself very clever in all kinds of execution, but he wants con- ception and he wants the developed feeling of honour. Pleasure in his cleverness, and the facility of gaining his living by it, excite him continually to the free exercise of his art, and the special bank-note forger belongs to that type of criminals who very generally relapse. The same prominent characteristic feature of motive ingenuity will protect a man from the path of crime, if he has the talent of conception and the spirit of origination, or if a developed ethical talent is present in his disposition.
The knowledge of the complicated nature of the psychology of crimes is, however, extraordinarily important in the question of the degree of punishment to be awarded, and of the possibility of amendment. When anyone with a fierce temperament and, an arrogant consciousness of strength has been mentally ill- developed, has learned only the roughest hand-labour, and lias not been educated in morals, he may become a useful member of human society if his intellect and his cleverness are developed and the slumbering better feelings are awakened. Then is the individual further developed and the restraints which were formerly wanting may now come into activity. When the con- ditions are of this nature that from the impulses leading to crime there is no dissuasion, and to those restraining from it there is no persuasion, there is no chance of improvement and legislative punishment must always become stronger and stronger for habitual criminals. There is then no advantage in setting such a criminal free, for he will again commit crime. Further, it should be carefully considered whether exemplary conduct insures the probability of improvement. Under psychico- material restraint criminal nature acts differently from what it does under the enticements of freedom.
If we now make an inquiry on the ground of these empirical experiences and their analysis, in order to find whether, in a certain percentage of certain grades and categories of crimes, certain changes cannot be detected in the brain or the skull, we shall find that we do not need to seek, as the old doctrine of Grail attempted to do, for the foundation of crime in altogether local developmental alterations, but that excesses and defects of constitution and development must be present in the three great centres of ideas, of motion, and of sensation.
But it must besides be declared, that even if it were ascer- tained that characteristic changes are present in criminal natures, it should not thence be assumed that men so constituted must necessarily commit crime. The question here is only as to a predisposition, j ust as we say that people with a narrow chest have a predisposition to tuberculosis, or children of insane parents have a predisposition to insanity. It must always depend on a number of conditions whether a nature predisposed to crime will actually become a criminal, and the clearer we are as to the psychological and anthropological marks by which the disposition may be revealed, the more surely shall we prevent crime by education and watchfulness.
The question now arises as to the way we ought to take in order to meet the predisposition with remedies drawn from natural science ? Above all things, it is obvious that numerous brains of criminals must be examined, in order to see whether in certain categories special corresponding alterations are to be found. That the first four examinations in murderers have led to positive results was an encouraging circumstance, and that these examinations exhibited a resemblance to the brute in the fact that the cerebellum was not covered by the occipital lobes, and that there was a deficient development, is in the highest degree significant.
A second series of investigations by the aid of natural science must be made on the skull. That types of skull are generally connected with types of character may be concluded with safety from the results of craniology in the animal classes and from the study of the skulls of different races.
I have formerly brought before you some varieties of proportion in the human skull, and I now communicate to you the fact that these varieties exist also in men outside the prisons, but are incomparably more common in criminals, and partially in special categories of criminals. This is especially the case in the shortening of the occiput and in the anterior vertex-steepness (Scheitelsteilheit), and then, in decreasing pro- gression in the asymmetry and the flattening of the occiput. I will observe further that I did not note the vertex-steepness in the murderers at Illava, because at that time the fact had not yet particularly occurred to me. I observed it first in the habitual thieves in Leopoldstadt. Besides, in Illava it was not striking, and you observe it also in none of the photographs of the heads of murderers, for which I am indebted, as well as for the greatest part of my present materials, to Dr Bodik, the prison physician.
I will now present you with tlie numerical results Bobber- murderers Murderers from motives Thieves Normal skulls (?) Brachycephalia occipitalis? “Wanting . Medium . Great (b) Occipital flatness?? Wanting . Medium . “Well-marked (c) Asymmetry? Wanting . Medium . Great (d) Vertex steepness? Wanting . Medium . Large per cent. 23 34 43 16 24 59 10 64 26 not examined per cent. 45 21 34 28 20 52 25 43 32 not examined per cent. 60 20 20 49 22-5 28-5 10 47 43 40 60 per cent. 93-5 4-5 2-0 58 30 12 62 25 13 85-2 14-8
These figures do not speak?they cry aloud. They are, indeed, deficient in the fact that they are not derived from great numbers, but still they are sufficient to form the basis of a qualitative judgment.
A double explanation may be possible : first, that crimes signify only the germs arrived at maturity, while the germ up to a certain degree is widely spread. Crimes, therefore, would be merely the most urgent stages in ethical national guilt. But wherever abnormities occur in a high degree and in combination, there’ exists a relapse into an earlier stage of the development of mankind, and the examinations of the brains support this view.
It appears to me indubitable that both these views are con- nected together, and that in particular the number of those capable of improvement is to be judged according to the first, and the incurable according to the second category. The latter represent the proper criminal natures and they bear about on their skulls the marks of Cain.
Gentlemen, I should have waited till I could come before you with results free from fallacy, had I not required your assistance in carrying them out. It is a prerogative of the German nation to uphold scientific tendencies even without sympathising with them, and indeed sometimes to promote those which are distasteful; and the German-Austrian states- men and scholars cannot better prove their title to be called Germans tlian when they follow this example. For to be a German in the present day is to work with the arms of truth for mental and moral freedom, to contend, and in necessity to endure. To perceive and to acknowledge, conviction and mode of action ought to hang together not by tottering joinings but by insoluble cement.
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