CRIMINAL ANTHROPOLOGY. 629 



for this is to seek for the impossible. All men, however honest or vir- 

 tuous, will be found to have some defect or some vice, otherwise they 

 would be perfection, which is not to be expected of human nature. 



A defect or a vice, whether anatomic or physiologic, does not become 

 an anomaly simply because one finds it in a criminal. Anatomically 

 the same remark is to be made; we do not consider as abnormal or in- 

 ferior every man who is not perfect. 



Dr. Manouvrier proceeded to examine the results of anatomic re- 

 searches made, up to the present time, upon criuiinals. 



No one has yet accomplished or discovered an anatomic character by 

 which the criminal can be classified into categories, like robbers, swin- 

 dlers, burglars, etc. The most one can do in investigating the tendency 

 to crime by the examination of the criminal himself is to seek for the 

 specific characteristics, but even these, if found, do not prove that they 

 are specifically criminal or special to criminals. 



All that can be done in this direction, and it is quite another question 

 from the former, is to discover if the criminals examined present cer- 

 tain abnormal anatomic characters more frequent and in a higher de- 

 gree than honest men. To answer either affirmatively or negatively 

 as to the whole aggregate, or even to the average, would be a hardy 

 and even dangerous undertaking. There are honest men who are af 

 fected in all the unfortunate and much to be regretted ways suggested 

 by Signer Lombroso— epileptics, imbeciles, degenerates, and even the 

 vicious and inferiors of all sorts ; while those who have been classed as 

 honest men are capable of becoming criminals ot the darkest dye, and 

 have no more morality or virtue than the most incorrigible robber and 

 thief. 



Dr. Manouvrier referred again to the saying, "All other things being 

 equal," the abnormal, the inferior, etc., were more likely to become 

 criminals, etc., " but" he demanded, '' is it certain that all things are 

 equal for the criminal ?" It is in vain that we have remarked the small 

 number of individuals becoming criminals out of each hundred persons 

 subjected to these defective sociologic circumstances. The conditions 

 and circumstances which are so difficult to weigh, and above all the 

 infinitely variable combinations, whether taken by themselves or by 

 their complex tendencies, have a different effect upon each individual. 

 Among a hundred individuals thus environed, is it not possible to be- 

 lieve that the ten or twenty who become criminals are those which have 

 been subjected to the combinations, sociologic and physio-sociologic, 

 the most evil, the most powerful, and the most effective in leading them' 

 in the wrong path ? It is therefore wiser to permit the facts to decide 

 each case for itself 



The documents published are numerous, but they are not yet suffi- 

 cient to convince an incredulous anthropologist who finds himself op- 

 posed to either view, and who proposes to examine them critically. 

 Occasionally monstrous criminals have been exhibited, but that does 



