648 CRIMINAL ANTHROPOLOGY. 



extremity of the scale to the other, from the (lejjjriidecl idiot to the 

 degenerated superior, intelligent though out of equilibrium. 



We have but little here to say of the idiot who lives after a fashion 

 purely vegetative, occasionally even only by instinct. The peripheric 

 or surrounding excitation provoke the cerebral or medullary rellexes; 

 but they are naught but simple reflexes and the center moderators do 

 not intervene. From the time the frontal regions become free the sub- 

 ject commences to penetrate the dominion of realization and of control. 

 lie ceases then to be aif idiot and is elevated to the dignity of an im- 

 becile. The localization of the lesions in such and such a perceptive 

 center, or of more or less extent in the anterior region, explains to us 

 that such and such faculties have survived the general destruction and 

 thus there exists the partial genius, the learned idiot. The study of 

 the disequilibriums, which as a class furnish the delinquents, belongs 

 to mental pathology; and there is in them no great anatomic lesions, 

 but rather the functional troubles on which depend the modification of 

 the activity of the cerebro-spinal axis. The predominating trouble in 

 this class is the want of harmony, the failure of equilibrium, not solely 

 between the mental and intellectual faculties upon one part, and the 

 sentiments and desires upon the other part, but there is a want of har- 

 mony of the intellectual faculties between themselves. The want of 

 equilibrium extends to the moral character. A degenerate hereditaire 

 may possibly become a savant, a distinguished magistrate, an eminent 

 mathematician, a sagacious i)olitician, an efficient administrator, and yet 

 be may present from the moral point of view those profound detects, 

 those strange and unaccountable actions; and as on our moral side our 

 sentiments and desires are the basis of our determination, it follows that 

 the brilliant faculties of this individual may be put at the service of an 

 evil cause, that is, at the service of instinct, appetite, unhealthy senti- 

 ments, etc., which, owing to the feebleness of the will, push him to acts 

 the most extravagant and sometimes the most dangerous. 



The abnormal action of the cerebral and spinal centers gives rise to 

 curious functional troubles which are of the psychic kind. The syn- 

 dromic episodes, the extreme manifestations of dis-equilibrium, bring 

 to light by their exaggeration, the false psychic mechanism which is 

 found, though in less degree, among these degenerates. For example: 

 The illustrations of the effect of the dis-equilibrium are many, and in 

 their manifestations are different, yet they are all referable and trace- 

 able to the one cause — disturbance of mental and moral equilibrium. An 

 individual affected with some malady or just recovered from a spell of 

 sickness, who becomes haunted, tormented till he shall have recalled 

 the desired word, or fixed in its proper place the face of a passing 

 stranger he has somewhere seen before, is conscious that it is only a 

 l»hantom, yet is unable to throw off the spell, to banish the image which 

 ])()ssesses his cortical center; or another case a i)erson is driven as by 

 power, uncontrollable as it is unexplainable, to make an attack upon an 



