Criminal Anthropology

Abstract

CRIMINAL anthropology has of late years attracted much attention abroad, where its problems have been largely and often very loosely discussed. Mr. Havelock Ellis performs the useful task of making English readers acquainted with the results. It cannot be said that much progress has been made on the psychological side of the subject since the publication of Despine's “Psychologie” in 1868, but the main conclusions of that author have been abundantly confirmed. On the physical side, numerous dissections and measurements seem to have led to no well established and important fact; they have, however, narrowed the limits within which speculation may legitimately ramble. It is well ascertained that many persons are born with such natures that they are almost certain to become criminals. The instincts of most children are those of primasval man; in many respects thoroughly savage, and such as would deliver an adult very quickly into the hands of the law. The natural criminal retains those same characteristics in his adult life. The author has a very true but not complimentary passage upon the ways of children. He says that the child lives in the present, the desire of the moment blotting out everything else from his mind. That he has no foresight to restrain him from acting according to impulse. That he is a thorough egoist, and will commit any enormity to obtain what he wants. That he is cruel and enjoys the manifestations of pain. That he is a thief for the gratification of his appetites, chiefly of gluttony; and that he is an unscrupulous and often cunning liar, not hesitating to put the blame on innocent persons when his own misdeeds are discovered. In the large majority of our countrymen the savagedom of childhood becomes gradually in part repressed, in part outgrown, and in part transformed. Discipline is one agent, another is the larger growth of sympathetic feelings, and another is the education of a habit of forethought, which prompts selfishness to be wise, and induces many persons to assume throughout life the appearance of virtues for which they have no care, solely through the fear of social or legal punishment. We may freely allow that everybody is liable under some circumstances to fall into crime, for, in the words of the liturgy, “ we are set in the midst of so many and great dangers that by reason of the frailty of our nature we cannot always stand upright,” but the difference between ordinary persons and natural criminals is that the latter are unable to stand upright even under favourable conditions. There are numerous human beings who have an instinctive aptitude to various forms of ill-doing, no sense of remorse for the sufferings they may have caused, and who possess too little forethought and self-restraint for the fear of retribution to become effective. Abundant evidence of all this is to be found in Mr. Ellis's book, and there seems to be a consensus among experts as to its trustworthiness.

The Criminal.

By Havelock Ellis. Illustrated. (London: W. Scott, 1890.)