CHAPTER VI

CRIMINAL JURISPRUDENCE—PELLAGRA—AGRARIAN REFORM

Lombroso’s occupation with the problem of criminals and crime extended far beyond the bounds of criminal anthropology. He was led in this direction, in part by the need for the establishment of a purely anthropological characterization of the world of crime, and in part by his controversies with lawyers, philosophers, and psychiatrists, by which he was enabled to study other categories of criminal than the “born criminal”—categories whose existence he had never denied. Opportunities for investigation in this new field were offered him in the year 1876, when he removed to Turin—a city in which psychiatric studies were very actively pursued—by his observations as surgeon to the Turin prison for the detention of prisoners awaiting trial, and by a very exhaustive study of penal literature, by which he was led very speedily to formulate a system for the reform of criminal law and penal methods. He soon found himself in the position of chief of a school of criminology, whose influence made itself felt in Parliament, in the Courts, and in foreign countries. In Italy not long after, in the year 1880, Enrico Ferri, being appointed Professor of Criminal Jurisprudence in Bologna, gave his powerful support to Lombroso, and there resulted a rapid succession of works upon the insane criminal, the epileptic criminal, the criminal by passion, the habitual criminal, and the occasional criminal, which, in the year 1888, were published as the second volume of “L’uomo delinquente.” The progress of Lombroso’s ideas as chief of a “School of Positive Criminology,” from the year 1879, when he had become firmly established in Turin, to the year 1894, is indicated by his writings upon punishment, upon the increase of crime in Italy, upon the proposals for a new code of criminal law, and upon political crime and the revolution.[43]

In the middle of this fruitful period of twelve years (1884) was published Ferri’s “Sociologia Criminale,” and about the same time the reformatory and etiological ideas of Lombroso began to influence the Italian lawyers; and, notwithstanding the violent protests of the advocates of the “classical” jurisprudence (Lucchini, Brusa, Gabelli, and others), the Italian Attorney-General, Baron Garofalo, in the year 1885, displayed his adhesion to the ideas of the Positive School by the publication of his “Criminologia.”

In Germany there soon followed the celebrity of Mittelstaedt’s book, “Gegen die Freiheitsstrafe” (“Against Imprisonment”) (Leipzig, 1879). This was speedily followed by the yet more modern and humane work of Kraepelin, “Die Abschaffung des Strafmasses” (Stuttgart, 1880), an echo in many respects of the ideas of Garofalo and Lombroso.

In Kraepelin’s book it is impossible to overlook the influence of Lombroso’s ideas; and the same influence can be traced also in Von Liszt’s “Lehrbuch des Deutschen Strafrechts” (“Textbook of German Criminal Jurisprudence”), of which the first edition was published in 1881; but it could be foreseen that in the psychiatric and legal circles of Germany, this influence would be indirect and limited. I was myself convinced of this fact at the time when, in the year 1886, after long study of the writings of the Italian school, I had resolved to do my best to diffuse the views of that school in Germany, both verbally and in writing.

It is not possible to give a detailed account here of the diffusion of the ideas and methods of the “New School” outside Italy. The conservatism which inevitably results from a legal education gave rise to violent opposition on the part of lawyers in Italy, as well as elsewhere. It was, therefore, above all, necessary to approach the scientific leaders of the legal circles with the ideas of the “New School” of criminology. In this respect it was a fact no less impressive than useful that Lombroso, at the outset of his activity as chief of a school, published in the year 1881, in the first number of Von Liszt’s _Zeitschrift für die gesamte Strafwissenschaft_ (_Journal of Criminology_), an article upon the origin, the essence, and the aims of the new criminal anthropological school in Italy. In this article he insists upon the importance of the different causes of criminality, its anthropological, social, and cosmic factors, upon the aim of repression as a means of social self-defence, and upon the importance of the substitutes for punishment (“sostituoi penali”), and the reforms necessary in the application of punishment. Finally, he deals with the “positive” character and the inductive methods of the new school.

Professor van Hamel describes this article as “The entrance of the positive school and of its founder, Lombroso, into the legal world through its chief portal—_i.e._, the German portal,” which was opened to him by Von Liszt. Van Hamel’s intention was to indicate the great importance attached at the outset by lawyers of the first rank to the introduction of modern criminology into the circle of the legal sciences. Van Hamel continues in the following terms: “Some years after this there ensued the foundation of l’Union Internationale de Droit Pénal, whose statutes have been recognized as providing the basic principles alike for criminological science and for practical penal methods.”

Since I estimate at a very high value Lombroso’s importance in relation to the origin and growth of the present international movement for the reform of our penal methods, I may be allowed to quote further from the learned Van Hamel, and to join with him in saying, in this connection: “Differences in matters of detail affect in no way the uniformity of principles. Such differences must, indeed, be regarded, not merely as inevitable, but positively as advantageous. They are inevitable owing to the differences in human temperament and in national character. They are advantageous because, owing to their existence, new ideas will find their way into acceptance in certain forms, when, if they had sought acceptance in other forms, they would certainly have been rejected. Differences of detail must never lead us to overlook uniformity of principle, nor to overlook the common origin of ideas thus differing in matters of detail. The advocates of the modern penal methods must never forget that these owe their very existence to the positive school of Italian thought.”

How did it happen that Lombroso, the anthropologist and psychiatrist, was led to a criticism of the science of law? He had discovered intuitively, and believed he could establish inductively, the fact that there exist “born criminals” or “criminal natures.” His whole course of mental development—viz., the fact that he was strongly influenced by the evolutionary theories of Vico and Marzolo, by the English utilitarians, by the French positivists, and, to some extent also, by the German materialists of the middle of the nineteenth century—had induced the conviction that the first object of punishment should be the protection of society, and the second the improvement of the criminal. It was for these purposes, he considered, that law had come into existence.

This work, whose aim it is to describe Lombroso, the man and the investigator, is not the place in which to describe his influence upon the Italian school of positive penology, or to describe the subsequent development of that school and its further influence upon the legislation and penal methods of the civilized nations. Science grows slowly; the study of the causes of crime demands time and patience, brings disillusionment, and leads to ever-fresh restatements of the old problems. The zeal of the reformer finds it difficult to tolerate the gradual transformation of the old machinery. He wishes at one stroke to rejuvenate old institutions, to sweep away the old rules. But science, which has to provide a basis for his efforts, is in its nature patient. The reformer’s zeal, which has to construct the new edifice, is not patient. Lombroso was to learn this from personal experience. It was not possible for him to remain at the standpoint of 1876. And, as reformer, he himself experienced many changes, especially as a result of his investigations into the categories of the criminal by passion, the habitual criminal, the occasional criminal, the criminaloid, the criminal lunatic, and the epileptic criminal.

He and his school, in their efforts at reform, worked along two main lines: first, the reform of practical penal methods; and, secondly, the systematization of the general theory of punishment.

The efforts of this school in relation to the system of punishment and the reform of penal methods are too well known for it to be needful to give here even the brief summary for which alone we should have space. But it is important to point out that the Italians, under Lombroso’s guidance, resolutely attacked the penal dogmas of the day, which it was necessary to overthrow before a reform of penal methods in the sense of social defence could possibly be effected. I shall merely make especial reference to the powerful influence for good exerted by the positive school in the direction of the amelioration and humanization of the horrible function of punishment, which represses so many crimes, but at the cost of so much suffering and of such numerous errors.

Lombroso gradually came to believe that no useful purpose is effected by the provision of a great national apparatus intended to improve that which is unimprovable—_i.e._, the criminal nature; and that society could not be effectively safeguarded against its permanently dangerous members—_i.e._, the criminal natures—by means of protective measures of a transient duration.

Being thoroughly convinced of the existence of criminal natures, and being, as a utilitarian, hostile to all metaphysics, it was inevitable, when he came to consider the fundamental aim of the institutions of law and the State, that he should be led to reject all methods of treating criminal natures which did not involve their complete removal or lifelong exclusion from the life of free society. Thus, a large proportion of his subsequent life was spent in endless controversies directly against the traditional legal systems and institutions which did not harmonize with the position he had taken up. He did not seek these controversies, but he could not and would not attempt to avoid them. Throughout them, however, he remained the anthropologist, the collector and investigator in the wide field of the natural history of mankind, one more interested in studying the origin of the socially significant varieties of mankind, of which civilized man is one, than in the description of the differential characters of the races of mankind now living in various parts of the world—although investigations in this latter field were by no means repugnant to him.

Lombroso’s great synthetic studies of the natural history of the criminal came to an end in the year 1902, with the publication of the German edition of his book upon the Causes and Prevention of Crime. Some months later appeared a work by Aschaffenburg on Crime and its Prevention. Even after 1902 Lombroso continued to write upon this subject, more especially in his periodical devoted to criminal anthropology; and down to the last year of his life he followed closely the progress of international research in this field. But it seems to me that the book of 1902, published at the close of thirty years’ work, marks the end of his inner development, whilst the Congress for Criminal Anthropology held in the year 1906, in which he was able to hold a review of his disciples, co-workers, friends and rivals, gave a fitting outward conclusion to his career, when he had already passed his seventieth year.

During the last years, and, above all, during the last months of Lombroso’s life, a tendency to pessimism became clearly manifest; and this tendency was, owing to his peculiar organization, closely connected with a strong bent towards mystic contemplation. But this, in my opinion, has no bearing whatever upon his crimino-anthropological researches. His doctrine of the “born criminal” was in no way based upon a pessimistic foundation. In the field of social reform, including criminology, he was definitely optimistic. The weak, the sick, and the degenerate, were regarded by him at once with the objectivity and the philanthropy of the born physician. It was only in his moral valuation of the genius, and of the great condottieri and conquistadores of modern industrial life, that he lacked mildness; indeed, in this latter respect he rather inclined to severity.

During the period 1879 to 1894 were held the first three International Congresses of Criminal Anthropology; and the same period was signalized by numerous other performances of Lombroso, which served for the propagation, the development, and the application of his ideas. Thus it happened that he was forced to leave the quiet of the laboratory and the study; the greatest publicity was gained for the “new school”; and the investigator who, until the age of one-and-forty, had lived at Pavia, remote from the world, became involved in unending controversy. By the best elements of Italian political radicalism Lombroso was now regarded as leader; and a little later also, during the years 1880 and 1890, through the support of the slowly developing Marxist School of Socialism,[44] Lombroso found himself leader in a movement at first dominated entirely by “intellectuals.” It soon appeared that the retired and modest investigator was none the less a formidable opponent, whose voice could make itself heard in all the great questions of public life, and far beyond the bounds of Italy. I need mention here only the two great epidemics of anarchism and anti-Semitism, whose flood-tide fell in this period between 1880 and 1892.

Lombroso was a man of harmonious type, a radical through and through, one who could not understand that anyone who had once grasped a truth should be induced to conceal it from social class-considerations. What those may have to suffer who are ill-adapted for the utterance of half-truths, and who are averse from compromise, Lombroso had learned when he came to publish his researches into the cause of pellagra, the characteristic endemic disease of Northern Italy.

Pellagra is a chronic disease in Northern and Central Italy, which gives rise to extensive disturbances of digestion and to cutaneous and nervous disorders, and frequently leads to severe mental disturbance. In Lombroso’s view it results from the frequent use of damaged maize, containing toxins, which is consumed by the peasantry of Northern and Middle Italy in the form of polenta and maize bread, whilst the ground landlords and their bailiffs live upon the better qualities of maize produced by the same peasants. I may quote here a passage from the Preface to my German translation of Lombroso’s book on pellagra:

“This book is the result of researches which I have pursued for twenty-nine years, often amid very tragic surroundings—tragic for the reason that from these researches alone I am able to show how human nature strives against every step towards progress, and regards it almost as a crime. In Italy it is a secret to no one that my attempt to show, in opposition to the dominant doctrine, and upon the foundation of numerous experiments, that pellagra results from intoxication with damaged maize, aroused so much hostility—I may almost say so much scandal—in the majority of Italian hygienists and psychiatrists, that in consequence of this my reputation as a practising physician, as an investigator, and ultimately also as a teacher, was severely shaken. The cause of this bitter opposition is perhaps to be found in the greater cleverness of my opponents, who regarded my energetic advocacy of the new theory in the light of a personal attack, whereas it was really the consequence of my too earnest conviction, and of the thought that it was only in this way that I could hope to save thousands and tens of thousands from being unnecessarily sacrificed. But a greater cause of opposition was undoubtedly the hatred of novelty—that deep-rooted passion common to all humanity. At first, indeed, it seemed to me as if the truth must always conquer, and conquer quickly, since in this case it was an obvious truth, one easy to prove, and a very natural one. Nor do I doubt that ultimately the truth will inevitably prevail, for the cleverest machinations must in the end recoil from the granite walls they endeavour to overthrow. But he who believes that this will occur at once and universally is one who knows little of human nature. Indeed, we must expect the contrary, for all truths which can only be proved by means of a long series of experiments or by long-continued observations rarely fail to encounter an almost insuperable obstacle; and when, in addition, economic class-interests stand in the way—when _these_ co-operate with the influence of custom, of inheritance, and of natural human short-sightedness—then woe to the innovator. As Macaulay said, if the Newtonian law had been opposed to any class-interest, there would have been no lack of opposition to the doctrine of universal gravitation.”

It was in the prolonged struggle for his professional life with the powerful interests he had challenged by the publication of his discovery of the cause of pellagra that Lombroso became hardened and completely insensitive to the detraction which is always manifested so freely when scientific truths are displeasing to the economic or political powers-that-be.[45]

Thus it was that Lombroso was forced into the arena of public life, and although he did not become definitely attached to any particular party, he never ceased to attack half-measures and corruption wherever he encountered them. When the political corruption under the rule of Crispi led to the bread-riots at Milan in 1898, the people had an opportunity of experiencing the use of rifle-fire by the apostles of “order”; and the dictatorial powers usurped during these weeks were utilized for the banishment of troublesome political opponents, or to bring about their disappearance in prison—the methods of South American experts in the pursuit of political power being freely followed. The name of Lombroso was upon the list of the proscribed, but they did not dare to lay hand upon him; just as in Russia five years ago the authorities did not dare to touch Tolstoy, notwithstanding his direct challenge to the Czar.[46] Thus it was to the struggles amid which he was precipitated by his investigations into the nature of pellagra that Lombroso owed the development of his nature as a fighter, which enabled him to withstand the most violent scientific and political opponents of his theory of the “born criminal.” Experiences of life even more bitter than those of Ibsen’s “Enemy of the People” were met by Lombroso in a spirit of lofty stoicism.

Owing to his struggle to establish the truth of his views regarding the cause and prevention of pellagra, Lombroso suffered from a recurrence of the economic struggles which had embittered his childhood and youth. The powerful agrarian interests of Lombardy and Venice established a boycott against Lombroso as a physician amongst the well-to-do middle class and also in the medical circle of Northern Italy; and as a result of this his consulting practice, which had hitherto been enormous, and his resulting comfortable circumstances, and therewith also the means he needed for the prosecution of his researches, were all swept away. “Cause and Prevention”—these two words sum up the whole life-work of this man. Cause and prevention of pellagra, of crime, of anarchism, prostitution, anti-semitism, political corruption, self-interested parliamentarism; cause and prevention of lying, hypocrisy, oppression and exploitation—these were the tasks to which Lombroso devoted his whole life, and which he prosecuted without rest and without fear, until at length, after so many struggles, a comprehensive understanding and a calm, mature wisdom finally led him to recognize the manner in which the evils affecting society are inseparably associated with wealth and civilization.

The investigation into the nature of pellagra was of enormous importance to the Italians, who continued to suffer severely from this evil down to the present day. We might be justified here in giving a detailed account of these studies, because it was in them that Lombroso, above all, showed himself to be a careful experimenter—an experimental pathologist of the first rank. But from the point of view of this book, the significance of these investigations and struggles lies, not so much in the enrichment and development of his knowledge—not so much, that is to say, in the intellectual sphere—as in the light they throw upon the man’s intimate life, and upon his character.

In my concluding chapter I shall give some account of the means employed by those whose interests were affected by Lombroso’s discoveries (in co-operation with those to whom, as a self-taught man, and one outside the official and professorial ring, he was an object of dislike) to annihilate this obnoxious investigator. To the extent of depriving him of his means of livelihood in Pavia, they were to a large extent successful. But after a struggle lasting thirty years, Lombroso’s intoxication theory of pellagra has been finally victorious, and has been officially recognized by the Italian Government. Moreover, this theory has been confirmed by the most recent investigations of Tirelli, Pellizzi, Gosio, and Ferrati, although other toxins of damaged maize are now considered to be of greater importance than the one to which Lombroso gave the name of “pellagrozeïn.”

Lombroso’s proposals in the province of agrarian reform were in part of a purely technical nature, and in part based upon a profound (and in his day, at least, well-grounded) distrust of the rival factions in the Italian parliament. At one time he went so far as to believe that nothing could be done to save the peasants and small farmers from pellagra, as long as they remained in their North Italian homes; and he recommended a wholesale emigration to North America.[47]

It is not improbable that Lombroso, notwithstanding the universality of his talents and his enormous historical acquirements, would, in better pecuniary circumstances, have confined himself to the study of comparative philology and to the associated field of psychology. It was to these studies that he was principally attracted in youth, and his acquaintance with Marzolo further impelled him in this direction; but precisely because of his poverty he was compelled to abandon a career of learning, and to choose a means of earning his bread. For six years he worked as an army surgeon on the battle-field, in the cholera hospital, and in a small garrison town; until, finally, in the problems of the psychical life of the criminal, the lunatic, and the genius, this born collector of human documents found within the domain of the medical profession, whose humane duties he fulfilled unweariedly as prison surgeon, a field in which his intellect could exercise its powers, in which his character could manifest its strength, and in which his temperament could display its treasures of modesty, love of humanity, and inexhaustible patience.

At length, however, this “enemy of the people,” this audacious formulator of hypotheses, this innovator and rebel, found himself in advanced life recognized by his fellow-countrymen as a benefactor, by his colleagues as the pride of their national science, and by his King as the enlightener of his country.[48]