CRIMINALITY IN ANIMALS. 2+5 



among animals for the purpose of reaching a better understanding of 

 those which are committed by men ? If animals are liable to the 

 greater proportion of the organic maladies to which we are subject, 

 if they are liable to epidemic or contagious diseases, there appears to 

 be no reason why they should be exempt from mental diseases. Just 

 as we recognize that there occur among men malformed individuals, 

 organically defective and furnishing proofs of their organic faults in 

 their acts, feelings, or thoughts, so we should expect to find similar 

 individuals among animals, or at least among those species which stand 

 constitutionally nearer to man. 



Two causes may be alleged for the neglect of this study : First, 

 animal psychology has not yet made much progress. The investiga- 

 tions of veterinary physicians have not been directed to that side. 

 Pierquin said, in his " Traite de la Folie des Animaux " (Treatise on 

 Madness among Animals), in 1839, that till his time no professor of 

 veterinary medicine had ever spoken from his chair, either of the 

 brain, the nervous system, or the physiology of animals. The other 

 cause, and the most influential one, has been the difficulty most au- 

 thors have had in disembarrassing themselves of the scholastic ideas 

 which have promoted the belief in a great chasm between the moral 

 condition of animals and of men. As Gall has well said, the greatest 

 obstacle that it has ever been possible to oppose to the knowledge of 

 human nature consists in the fact that theorists have isolated it from 

 that of other beings, and endeavored to subject it to laws of its own, 

 different from those of their nature. He adds, subsequently : " Those 

 who account for the normal and intellectual acts of man, of the under- 

 standing and of the will, independently of the body, and those who, 

 being wholly strangers to the natural sciences, still believe in the 

 mechanism or the automatism of brutes, may find the comparison of 

 man with animals revolting and absolutely sterile. But such a com- 

 parison will be regarded as indispensable by those who have familiar- 

 ized themselves with the labors of Bonnet, Condillac, Reimarus, 

 Georges Leroy, Dupont, Nemours, Herder, Cadet Devan, Huber, etc., 

 and especially by those who have become ever so slightly acquainted 

 with the progress of comparative anatomy and physiology." 



The authors who are cited by Gall have furnished important data 

 for the comparison of animal species, and have laid the foundation of 

 a scientific comparative physiology. Buff on had already asserted that, 

 if no animals existed, the nature of man would be still more incompre- 

 hensible than it is. The observations of Georges Leroy and Gall have 

 shown that the elementary functions of the brain must be investigated 

 in the study of animals. These authors have been followed in this 

 way by Prichard, Pierquin, Darwin, Forel, Espinas, Houzeau, Biich- 

 ner, etc., from whom and from other naturalists and travelers, the 

 materials for this essay have been lai'gely borrowed. 



The present work was suggested to me by Professor Lambrozzo, of 



