ENEICO FERRI ON HOMICIDE. 681 



proportionate motives is nothing else but the result of abnormal 

 or diseased organisms. However, this factor of bloodthirstiness 

 might better be classified by itself. Perhaps (among the animals 

 who are criminals born), although it has a no less legitimate place 

 among those crimes induced by antisocial instincts where Ferri 

 has placed it, it has also no connection with madness. The classical 

 divorce of crimes from insanity, rejected by positive science, finds 

 also here in the study of innate or acquired bloodthirstiness a 

 heavy defeat. Just as there are good and domesticable animals, 

 so there are perverse ones even among the domesticated, abso- 

 lutely comparable to the criminal born, as Lombroso and others 

 have contended. 



This group of facts brings still more into relief the funda- 

 mental analogy between the criminal activity of animals and 

 of men. A yet, more eloquent proof is found, by studying the 

 group of murders induced by mental alienation and by cannibal- 

 ism. From Vhomme machine of Descartes we have come to in- 

 sanity among animals, concerning which there is no manner of 

 doubt, seeing the result of recent studies, and this means that 

 brutes have in common with man various mental maladies, differ- 

 ing only in degree. 



Ferri divides into five categories the cases of murder among 

 animals determined by madness, no matter whether transitory or 

 permanent, innate or acquired : murder by hereditary tendencies, 

 by mania, by impulse of fear, by senility, by alcoholism (for the 

 effects of alcohol in all its divers forms on animals are well 

 known), and subjects them to a brief but deeply interesting ex- 

 amination. All the murders enumerated have their scope and 

 limit in the murder of their fellows. In animals, as we also 

 see among savages and even among civilized peoples, crime is 

 continued with outrages on the corpse and with cannibalism. 

 The origin of this unnatural mode of alimentation must cer- 

 tainly be sought in the need induced by hunger. It is only after 

 that that cannibalism becomes an organic tendency in animals 

 and man. However, man has motives for anthropophagy differ- 

 ent from those of animals. Ferri classifies cannibalism among 

 animals in two categories, simple cannibalism (wolves, rats, etc. ; 

 Lombroso also cites the case of a dog), and cannibalism among 

 relations — that is to say, infanticide and parricide (crocodile, fox, 

 etc.). To render this exposition of crime in animals yet more 

 complete, the author hints at another possible class, suicide, which 

 is certainly not unknown among animals. 



Having thus passed in review all the categories of crime in 

 animals, Ferri devotes a chapter to drawing from the facts he has 

 accumulated their obvious and special conclusions, pointing out 

 the striking psychic analogy of motive and of execution existing 



