Essays In Pastoral Medicine Part 24

JAMES J. WALSH.

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XXIV

IMPULSE AND RESPONSIBILITY

Not unlike that condition which develops as the result of so-called psychic epilepsy, in which patients perform apparently voluntary acts, while the mind is really clouded by an epileptic attack, are those states in which, as the result of a more or less blind impulse, acts are performed for which the responsibility of the individual is at least dubious. Modern experts in nervous and mental diseases have sometimes spoken of these states as obsessions. This term is adopted from the older writers on mysticism who used it to designate states of mind in which an individual was under the influence of some spirit, though his intellectual and volitional state was not as completely under the subjection of this spirit as in the condition of possession.

It seems clear to the modern student of these obscure conditions that the old mystics and the modern alienists practically talk about the same state of affairs when using this term. As the result of obsession, mystical writers would have conceded that responsibility is not quite complete, though it is not entirely done away with. The modern alienist is just as sure of the diminution of responsibility, though he considers it due to the fact that for some physical reason the will is not able to act or prevent action as it is under normal conditions. The will is sometimes spoken of by certain of these modern psychologists as mainly an inhibitory faculty, that is, a faculty which prevents certain reflex acts from taking place, though permitting one set of reflexes to have its way. Under the influence of an obsession or, as the French call it, _une idee obsedante_, this inhibition is not {267} exercised and as a result an action is accomplished which the agent may very shortly afterwards regret exceedingly.

There is no doubt that impulsions or impulsive ideas may push an individual into the performance of an action which his reason condemns. Uncontrollable anger is a well recognised example of this.

Impulses of other kinds may exercise just as tyrannic a sway, though it is harder to recognise the elements that make up the mental condition in other cases. Of course it may well be said that man must control his impulses. It is, however, just such impulses as can not be controlled that lessen responsibility and sometimes seem entirely to destroy it. It would, without doubt, be very easy to advance the uncontrollable impulse as an excuse for many criminal actions. In fact, the discussion of responsibility and its limitation by impulse would seem to be open to so many abuses as to make it advisable, in the present indefinite state of our knowledge, to put the subject aside entirely. The argument, however, from the abuse of the thing, does not hold, and an effort must be made to get at the truth concerning certain mental conditions which modify responsibility.

It is generally conceded that no two men are free in quite the same way with regard to the actions which they may or may not perform.

Allurements that are almost compelling for some individuals, for others have no influence at all. Some men are so under the influence of anger that irritation may easily lead them to the commission of acts for which they will be subsequently supremely sorry. This may even be the case to such an extent as to endanger their lives, yet they are not able to control themselves. Many men suffering from degeneration of the arteries of the heart have been warned, like John Hunter more than a century ago, of the extreme danger of a fit of anger, yet, like John Hunter, have succ.u.mbed to bursts of anger, notwithstanding the warning, because someone irritated them beyond their rather limited powers of endurance.

It is extremely difficult ever to come to any proper appreciation of the responsibility of a given individual from a {268} single act.

Preceding acts, however, may very well give evidence of the state of mind and the tendencies to disequilibrium which may make an apparently normal individual irresponsible under trying circ.u.mstances. The only way to render this clear is to ill.u.s.trate such conditions by a concrete case.

Not many years ago one of the large cities of this country was shocked, for one twenty-four hours at least, by the news that a business man had shot his partners and himself, while at a consultation in which the affairs of the partnership were being settled up, after legal dissolution had taken place. The man in question had paid some debts of the firm with his own personal checks, and without taking proper legal recognisance for the moneys paid. When the partnership had been dissolved his partners insisted that instead of obtaining credit for these payments he should, on the contrary, pay his share of these debts once more as a partner. The state of the evidence was such that his lawyers told him it would be useless to take the case before the court at all; there was nothing to do but pay the unjust demands. He went to the meeting of his partners with a certified check for the amount of their claims in his pocket. As he took out his pocket-book to pa.s.s it over to them he seems to have realised very poignantly the fact that he was paying money that he knew he did not owe, and that his partners knew he did not owe, and that they were evidently taking advantage of a legal quibble in order to cheat him. Evidently it was an extremely trying situation. It was too much for his mental balance and he took a revolver from his pocket, shot both his partners dead, and then shot himself.

Taken by itself it is extremely difficult to say anything about the responsibility of a man who commits an act like this. In ordinary life he was known as a clever business man; to his friends he was known to be rather irascible and impatient, but a fairly good fellow. He was known to have what is called an awful temper; he had, however, never committed any violent act before. It is possible, of course, that a man should give way to a fit of anger for the beginning of which he is responsible, and then do violence {269} much greater than he would justify himself for in calmer moments.

There was another occurrence in the man's life that seemed to throw informing light on his mental condition. When he first came to live in the large city in which he died he began paying attention to a young woman, and the young woman was informed by a friend that he probably had a wife living. The young woman investigated this by putting the question directly to him. He denied it at once, wanted to know the name of her informant, and finally laughed the whole matter out of her mind. Within a week after his marriage to her, while on their wedding tour, he was arrested, charged with bigamy at the instance of his first wife, and it became evident at once that the charge was well substantiated.

Here is a man, then, who twice at least in life, when put in the presence of trying conditions, goes on to do the irretrievable, though the act is eminently irrational.

With regard to the murder and suicide it is said that he had talked to friends of shooting the scoundrels who were cheating him, but had been persuaded of the utter foolishness of any such idea. He had apparently given it up entirely. Notwithstanding this, he went to the last conference with his former partners with a loaded revolver, as well as the certified check for the amount of their claim. In the case of his bigamous marriage, notwithstanding the warning that his second fiancee's questions must have been, he followed out his preconceived idea of marrying her, though he must have realised in saner moments that discovery of his double dealing was inevitable. In a word, he was a man who, becoming dominated by an idea, an obsession it may be called, to do something, could not get away from the sphere of its influence even though it might be made very clear to him it was eminently irrational to follow out the idea.

There are many such individuals, and only the knowledge of their previous career enables us to desume the responsibility for their acts under trying conditions. That they are not responsible in the ordinary sense in which the logical, timorous mortal is who is at once repelled from such modes {270} of action seems very clear. Their lack of responsibility is manifest, at least to a degree that makes it easy for charity to find excuses for their crimes because of fatal flaws of character, the result of physical defects and faulty training, which make themselves felt especially at the moments that try men's souls.

JAMES J. WALSH.

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XXV

CRIMINOLOGY AND THE HABITUAL CRIMINAL

In recent years no little attention has been devoted to the subject of criminology, and a supposed science of the criminal has been evolved.

It has been the claim of a very well known Italian school of mental diseases, whose leader is Professor Lombroso of Turin, that there is a criminal type in humanity, that is, that there is a generic human organisation not difficult of differentiation, at least as a cla.s.s, the members of which almost necessarily develop criminal proclivities.

Even when criminality has not actually occurred, this is thought to be but an accident, and criminal acts may be looked for at any time from these individuals. Lombroso's claims in this matter have met with decided opposition in every country of Europe and also here in America. This opposition has come especially from serious students of abnormal types who have devoted much time to the study of criminals and other supposedly degenerate individuals. Magnan, the very well and widely known French authority on insane peculiarities, especially the so-called criminal monomaniacs, and whose opportunities for careful investigation of such cases in the Asile St. Anne in Paris have been very extensive, utterly rejects the idea of a special physical conformation as characteristic of the criminal.

He is not the only one of the distinguished authorities in mental diseases who is in opposition to Lombroso in this matter. Dr. Emile Laurent, the eminent criminologist of Paris, has shown that the same anomalies which are supposed to characterise criminals are to be found among those who have never committed any criminal act, and that these supposed signs of degeneracy are not sufficient to indicate even {272} that there are criminal tendencies. Manouvrier, the distinguished anthropological authority of the University of Paris, does not hesitate to advance the opinion that he can not find any distinctive difference between criminals and normal men in the extensive studies of the comparative anatomy of the two cla.s.ses. He admits, however, that environment sometimes leads to the formation of habits which modify the anatomy in certain ways, and that of course traces of hard work, as well as of poor living, can be found in the anatomical conformation of many habitual criminals.

Dr. von Holder, a distinguished German authority on the subject, says that it is impossible to draw any conclusion from cranial asymmetries as to psychical characteristics, and that physical signs of degeneration indicate nothing further than the possible presence of a tendency to psychic degeneration. Dr. Wines, quoted by Draehms in his book on _The Criminal, a Scientific Study_, says that in a strictly scientific sense, the existence of an anthropological criminal type has not been proved, and it is doubtful whether it ever can be proved.

Dr. Arthur McDonald, the well known American specialist in criminology and degeneracy, some of whose work in connection with the National Bureau of Education at Washington has attracted widespread attention, says, in his _Abnormal Man:_ "The study of the criminal can also be the study of a normal man, for most criminals are so by occasion or accident, and differ in no essential respect from other men. Most human beings who are abnormal or defective in any way are much more like than unlike normal individuals."

How much the subject of criminology has been overdone because of the morbid popularity of the idea that many persons are, as it were, forced by their natures into the commission of crime, can best be appreciated from some recent publications with regard to left-handed individuals. A number of supposed observers, much more anxious, evidently, to make out a case for a pet preconceived theory, than to make observations that would add to the present store of truth, have rushed into print. As a result, left-handed persons have been said to be criminals much more commonly than {273} those who habitually use their right hand, and have also been said to be defective in other ways. They were spoken of as weaklings, degenerates, and the like.

Statistics even were quoted to show a much larger proportion of criminals than might be expected, according to the normal percentage, between right-handed and left-handed people, among those who use their left hand by preference. As a matter of fact, left-handed people are far from being the weaklings or degenerates they are thus proclaimed; but on the contrary are often magnificent athletes and excellent specimens of normal development. Left-handedness is due to right-brainedness and this is an accident dependent on a diversion of blood supply in an increased amount to this side of the brain in early embryonic life. This question of the criminal and the left-handed individual and their mutual relations is only a good example, then, of how far over zealous advocates of a theory have been led astray in their attempts to bolster it up.

Draehms, whose opinion on the supposed born criminal is worth while quoting, as it is founded on his personal experiences and observations while a resident chaplain of the state prison at San Quentin, California, says:

"Crime is not, as Lombroso and his coadjutors would have us believe, wholly either a disease or a neurosis in the sense of a direct, absolute, physiological, pathognomonic ent.i.ty, though doubtless not infrequently closely a.s.sociated with physical, anatomical, and nerve degeneration, as above conceded. To presuppose absolute and necessary brain lesion or diseased nerve action, or anomalous, physiognomonical, or anatomical diathesis, as the inevitable precursor of any form of mental and moral deflection, is an a.s.sumption wholly unwarranted and is nowhere substantiated by facts, though its advocates have sought to lay their foundations deep and wide in the materialistic hypothesis.

Most criminals present unusually sound physiological conditions, and there is among them no unusual death rate, considering their habits and mode of life, as we shall hereafter see. Hence their moral instability can not be a.s.sociated with physiological instability in the absolute sense. The physical defect must be either reversionary or incidental, rather than absolute."

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The impetus in the study of criminals, which came as a result of the revolutionary teaching of the Italian school, has not been without a good effect. Criminals all over the world have been studied more closely and more sympathetically, in order to test the new ideas, until now it is possible to draw definite conclusions with regard to certain features of the problem. After a time, Lombroso came to admit that the so-called criminal type occurred in somewhat less than half the criminal cases. Criminal anthropologists, however, have shown that the physical conformation called by the name criminal, is really only the result of a defective or degenerative physical const.i.tution. It is easy to understand that persons born with a defective nervous system, or with serious degenerative lesions in other parts of the body, which prevent the proper nutrition and functional development of the nervous system, would perform many more materially criminal acts than the rest of the population. The idiot and certain forms of the degenerative insane show this. Any defective development of the nervous system, moreover, may lead to instability of moral character, because the free action of the soul may be hampered by the physical environment with which it is a.s.sociated.

Certain of the physical peculiarities most frequently seen in criminals have an influence of this kind and merit discussion. A knowledge of them will furnish clergymen with reasons for a larger charity to those unfortunates, and a greater tolerance for their relapses, without allowing sentiment to play too important a role in dealing with them. There are all grades of defective human beings, from the idiot up to those little less than normal. Anatomical peculiarities prevent the proper functions of the nervous system, as it is not hard to understand. The will is hampered in its action by the defect of the instrument through which it must work.

In persons properly to be considered as degenerates usually the head is small, though this may not be very noticeable because of over-development of the jaws. A heavy lower jaw particularly, because of the principle of bone-development that size depends on functional action and reaction, may lead to over-thickness of the skull at the point of articulation. The {275} jaw articulates with the base of the skull, and as a consequence the cranial capacity of these individuals is distinctly less than normal. Besides this, there is commonly some abnormality in the shape of the head, or the cranium is distinctly asymmetrical. It has been noted that criminals have a large orbital capacity, that is to say, the bony framework surrounding the eye is so large as to encroach much more than usual upon the s.p.a.ce left within the cranium for nervous tissue. The bones of the skull are likely to be thicker and heavier than usual, thus also limiting the cranial capacity. The superciliary ridges often project and give the beetling brow that is sometimes so remarkable. The jaws are heavy, and especially the lower jaw is apt to be large and prognathic, that is, projecting. This may extend even to the existence of a so-called lemurian appendix of the jaw. The zygomatic process is apt to be prominent, in keeping with the heaviness of the upper jaw. The nose is usually somewhat flattened, and may be crooked. This peculiar development of the nose puts most of the internal parts of that important organ within the skull itself. This further encroaches upon the cranial capacity. The ears are asymmetrical, often unevenly placed at the sides of the head, sometimes adherent at the lobule, sometimes very prominent. The displacement of the soft tissues is due to the existence of asymmetry of the skull. As may be seen, all of the characteristics of the criminal type, pointed out by Lombroso, may practically be summed up in the one expression, there is diminished amount of intracranial s.p.a.ce.

With regard to many cranial deformities, and especially various thickenings of the cranial bones, it must not be forgotten that they are not the expression of physical heredity, but are often pathologically acquired. Certain diseases of children are accountable for many of them. Various disorders of nutrition in the early years of life express themselves in bony deformities, and the skull is not spared. Rickets, for instance, is well recognised as a cause of such deformities. Owing to a wrong etymology of this word, by which it is supposed to be derived from the Greek word [Greek text], meaning the spine, rickets is sometimes scientifically {276} called rachitis. The connection, then, between the cranial deformity and some underlying nervous disturbance might be a.s.sumed. It does not exist, however.

Rickets is an English word, the derivation of which is unknown, but probably it is _wricken_, twisted, deformed, and its use has crept in because the disease was first described in England, and is indeed often spoken of on the continent of Europe as an English disease. Not that it is any more frequent in England, however, but was there first recognised as a distinct pathological ent.i.ty. As the result of this affection the children, usually of poor parents, suffer from gastro-intestinal disorders of various kinds, and develop symptoms of malnutrition, affecting especially bone tissue. The ends of the long bones at the wrists and at the ankles, where the effects of the disease can be noticed particularly, become more thickened and nodular than usual. The ends of the ribs, where the bones join the cartilages, also become nodular, so that a series of beads can be seen down each of the child's sides, a condition described as the rickety rosary. In a similar way the bones of the skull become thickened, especially at the edges of the fontanels, that is, the openings in the child's head before complete ossification of the skull has taken place. As a consequence of this thickening these openings do not close as they should, and the head becomes markedly deformed in some cases.

Indeed, as has been shown by experts in children's diseases, many of the peculiarities that have been pointed out by over enthusiastic craniologists as indicating criminal degeneration, are really the results of the rickety process on the skull. Needless to say, however, this does not change the character of the individual, nor is there any good reason why such deformities should have any special connection with criminality. It happens that many of the criminal cla.s.ses suffer from malnutrition in their early childhood, and as a consequence there is a faulty bony development of the skull. It is observations of this kind, particularly, that have served to discredit craniology as an independent science.

With regard to habitual criminals, the question of criminality must be discussed from the standpoint, not of those who theorise, but of those who know from actual {277} observation most about the criminal cla.s.ses. In an article in _The Nineteenth Century and After_ for December, 1901, Sir Robert Anderson discusses how to put an end to professional crime. Sir Robert has been Chairman of the Criminal Investigation Committee of the English Parliament for many years. His opinion, then, is worth weighing well and is very strikingly different from those of the criminologists who would find a very large proportion of criminals among mankind. He says:

"I am not turning phrases about this matter, or dealing in rhetorical fireworks. I am speaking seriously and deliberately, and I appeal to all who have any confidence in my judgment and knowledge of the subject, to accept my a.s.surance that if not 70,000 but 70 known criminals were put out of the way, the whole organisation of crime against property in England would be dislocated, and we should, not ten years hence but immediately, enjoy an amount of immunity from crimes of this kind that it might to-day seem Utopian to expect. The criminal statistics cult blinds its votaries. It is the crime committed by professional criminals that keeps the community in a state of siege. The professional criminals are few and I may add they are well known to the police. The theory that these men commit crimes under the overpowering pressure of habit, or of impulse, is altogether mistaken. They pursue a career of crime because, as Sir Alfred Wills expresses it, they calculate and accept its risks. And just in proportion as you increase the risks you will diminish the number of those who will face them. True it is that the army of crime includes a certain number of wretched creatures who have not sufficient moral stamina to resist the criminal impulse. I believe there are fewer of this cla.s.s in England than abroad, but I know that these are not the sort of criminals whose crimes perplex the police. The high-cla.s.s criminal is a different type of person altogether."

Sir Robert gives an extract from one of the morning papers of the day on which he wrote these lines, in order to show how different is the status of every ordinary habitual criminal from that which the enthusiastic criminologist supposes it to be:

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"Hewson Patchett, 48, was sentenced yesterday for obtaining seven pounds and a gold watch by false pretenses. He urged it was his first offence, but a London detective informed the court that there were about two hundred cases against him for housebreaking."

Sir Robert adds: "If Patchett is a cool-headed, deliberate criminal, the whole proceeding is a farce. And if he be one of those miserable, weak creatures who can not abstain from crime, the sentence is barbarous."

Such experiences as Sir Robert hints at as occurring frequently in England, are certainly by no means uncommon in this country. Within the past year in at least four cases in New York City, in which a burglar, besides committing robbery, wounded or killed some one, either in the commission of the crime itself or in endeavouring to avoid arrest afterwards, there were more than two convictions registered against the criminal in his previous life. There can be no doubt that criminality becomes for some men a sort of mania, and that society must protect itself against their actions quite as it does against those of the insane by confining them under surveillance. It seems very clear that while a man may, under stress of circ.u.mstances or because of some specially tempting opportunity, be induced to commit burglary or some other crime by violence in order to obtain money, this will not happen a second time, except in the case of certain individuals whose moral tone is so perverted that reformation is practically hopeless. If a second conviction for burglary, therefore, is secured, a longer sentence than is now the custom should be inflicted, and the individual should not be allowed to go from under the surveillance of the authorities until he has demonstrated, for at least five years, his willingness and capacity to earn an honest living.

This may seem a drastic method. It may also appear to some that there would be consequent upon this system of regulating criminals a very undesirable increase of our present rather extensive system for the care of criminals. Here is where Sir Robert Anderson's experience is of value. The confirmed criminals are not near so many in number as is usually supposed, or as is even claimed by certain heedless {279} statistical experts in criminology. There is no doubt, however, that these men succeed in drawing others around them and in organising most of the crimes of violence that are committed. There is a certain glamour about the successful burglar that allures the young man and starts him in the downward path of criminal tendencies from which he may not be able later easily to withdraw.

If those who are most deeply interested in the reform of the criminal cla.s.ses would unite in an effort to secure legislation to the effect that the habitual criminal should receive, not a definite sentence but an indeterminate sentence; that is to say, that on his second conviction for burglary, he should be sent to jail until such a time as, in the opinion of officers of the inst.i.tution where he has been confined, he shows signs of a disposition to become a worthy member of society, and that then he should be allowed to be at liberty only under such circ.u.mstances as would permit of reports with regard to his conduct for a time equal at least to the years spent in prison, then there would be much less need of the theoretical considerations with regard to the heredity of criminal traits, and the supposed all powerful influence of environment in fostering criminal tendencies.

There is in this matter a very worthy field for the development of philanthropic qualities, and the student of the abnormal man will find many opportunities for the exercise of a large-hearted charity, rather than the facile condemnation which places all violations of law under the head of criminality.

Those who have made special studies with regard to criminals have, as a rule, come to the conclusion that our modern method of treating those convicted of crime is eminently irrational. It is a rare thing to pick up a newspaper without finding that a crime by violence has been committed by some one who has previously been in state's prison for a similar crime. Most of the burglars have a police record.

Pickpockets and others continue to pursue their avocations, notwithstanding a series of convictions. It is clear that a sentence of a year or two, or even more each time that a crime is committed, does not act as a deterrent. Such people are differently const.i.tuted from those who are influenced by {280} public conviction of crime and restraint of liberty. There is something radically wrong with their moral sense. It would seem that the proper way to treat them is after the same fashion as the method used with those who are mentally impaired.

After a man has shown, by a second conviction of a crime by violence, that he is one of those whose moral sense can not be restored by punishment to a realisation of his action, then an indeterminate sentence, somewhat as in the case of the mentally unstable, who are allowed to leave the asylum but are kept under observation, is the only proper method.

Men like Sir Robert Anderson are sure that this procedure could be adopted with regard to quite a liberal number of leading criminals whose influence induces others to crime. There would be much less need for all machinery of the criminal law than at the present time, and the community would be better protected. This is certainly true as regards the large cities, where crimes against property are almost without exception committed by those who have been previously convicted for such crimes, or who at least have been in intimate a.s.sociation with such convicted criminals.

This view of the criminal, as one against whom society must protect itself just as it does against the insane, is comparatively modern. It must be borne in mind, however, that insane asylums are by no means an old inst.i.tution, and that the present restraint of very large numbers of the insane is something unknown before in history. It seems not unlikely that if this newer aspect of criminology could be made popular great benefit would follow, not only to the peace of the community and the freedom of its members from fear as to such crimes, but also a number of the weaker individuals, who are now influenced and led astray by clever criminals, would be saved from commission of crime and the necessity of punishment, with the degradation and lifelong stigma that this involves.