To have an ear or a nose badly shaped—the nose especially! Nothing can be more disagreeable—above all if this defective conformation is carried to the extreme limit of the ludicrous! There is nothing very gratifying in carrying around a sack of lard on one’s face, or a wine-spot on one side of it; it is often unpleasant enough both to those who look at them and those who have them; however, we should have thought that persons so afflicted were affected painfully enough, without being regarded as criminals besides! But since Lombroso says so, stretching his theory to its furthest consequences, we are led to demand that midwives and accoucheurs be obliged to put to death all the newly born who shall come into the world with a pug-nose or a deformed ear. Every pigmentary spot, evidently, can be naught else but an indication of our black perversity. Thus I, too, (it seems to me I remember having some of these spots—somewhere—I am an Anarchist, which is by some people considered an indication of criminality to begin with)—I—the thing fits! I am destined to be but a common criminal! Death to him, death to him! The theory predicts that I shall die on the scaffold!
After applying the theory to all amenable thereto, there would probably be but very few survivors; but how perfect would humanity be, morally and physically! We should never recoil before the consequences of a theory founded upon observation as this is!
As to tattooing, we had not up to the present taken it as an indication of very elevated aesthetics. O no. It is a remnant of atavism which leads certain men “to heighten their natural beauty” by means of embellishments pricked into the skin, precisely as our ancestors of the stone age might have done. This same atavism still leads many women to have their ears pierced in order to hang pieces of metal or brilliant pebbles from them, exactly as the Botocudos of Brazil, or certain Australian and African tribes, cut their lips, the cartilage of the nose, or the lobes of the ears, in order to insert wooden or metal rings, which, so at least it seems to them, have the effect of bestowing unequaled beauty upon them. We decidedly look upon such proceedings as a trifle primitive; but we had not seen any character of ferocity in the custom. However, since Lombroso informs us that there is, we certainly hope that we shall get rid not only of those who tattoo themselves, but of those who have their ears pierced and dye their hair!
Lombroso has also tried very hard to discover a type of the political criminal, supporting the theory upon information quite as imaginary;3 but to follow him into this region would carry us too far away from our subject: we shall keep to the criticism of criminalism properly so-called.
For that matter, some few more enlightened savants themselves have not been slow to offer criticism upon the by far too fanciful theories of the criminalistic school, and have victoriously demonstrated the lack of consistency in the pretended criminal characters sought to be attributed to those designated by that label. Among others Dr. Manouvrier, in his course on “Criminal Anthropology,” before the Anthropological Society in 1890, ’91, refuted, in an admirable manner, the theories of Lombroso and the criminalistic school concerning the alleged born criminal. After having demonstrated the falsity of the observations upon which the Italian savant and his imitators depended in creating the criminal type, by taking as subjects of observation only individuals already deformed by prison life or by an abnormal existence, Manouvrier declared that persons might have such or such aptitudes as would adapt them to such or such acts, but that they are not, by the conformation of their brain or their skeleton, predestined to accomplish those acts and become what are called criminals. A certain sort of aptitudes might indifferently, according to the circumstances, prompt the person to do an act reputed honorable, as well as one reputed criminal. For instance a powerful muscular organization may, in a moment of fury, make a vigorous man a strangler; but quite as easily it may make one of the officers who arrest the criminal. Violent instincts, contempt of danger, carelessness of death, whether it be give or take, are indifferently the vices of the criminal or the virtues demanded of the soldier. A crafty disposition, inclined to deceit, cunning, and insinuating, may make the swindler who thinks of nothing but schemes for robbery and fraud; but they are also the qualities required to make an admirable detective or examining magistrate.
Drawn on by the truth of his argument the doctor did not, moreover, hesitate to acknowledge that, very often, it is difficult to distinguish the alleged criminal from the alleged honest man; and that many an individual out of prison ought to be in it, and vice versa. And after having, with the other savants, admitted that man is but the sport of circumstances, according to the sum total of which he acts at any given moment; after having denied free will; after having recognized that justice is but a figment, and is, in fact, nothing but revenge exercised by society, which substitutes itself for the individual wronged, the doctor unfortunately, stops short; after having given utterance to perceptions which bring him very nearly in touch with the Anarchists, he thence comes to the conclusion that present penalties are not severe enough and that they must be increased. He entrenches himself, it is true, behind social preservation. Those acts reputed criminal, he says, shake society; society has the right to defend itself, by substituting itself for individual revenge, and smiting those who trouble it with a penalty severe enough to take away from them any desire to continue. Whence comes this flagrant
