242 Proceedings of the Royal Society of Victoria. 



sense of most people would incline tbeni to object to that 

 view, as being an extreme and dangeious doctrine. It was 

 based very much on the assertion or opinion, that the 

 criminal was a criminal in virtue of a certain defective con- 

 struction of his brain ; that the proof of that consisted in the 

 fact that, given a certain number of persons who were known 

 to be criminals, it would be found that they had smaller 

 heads than the average person ; that they had a less facial 

 angle ; that the top part of their face and head sloped back- 

 wards ; that their head, on the average, was a little wider 

 transversely — being wide relatively to its length ; that such 

 ])ersons, on the average, had badly shaped ears ; that the 

 ridge over the eyes projected ; that in very many of them 

 there was a secondary ridge above the eye-brows, which was 

 very prominent ; that in a considerable number of them the 

 lower jaw was largely developed, and projected in front of 

 the under jaw. Whilst that generalisation might be freely 

 admitted, it was dangerous to apply the test to individuals. 

 There had been notorious criminals in existence wdiose heads 

 were full sized, whose facial angle was good, whose ears were 

 good and whose jaws were in proper position, and it would 

 be altogether unsafe to base a man's responsibility for certain 

 acts he had committed o!i the size or shape of his head. An 

 attempt was undoubtedly being made to popularise that 

 doctrine at the present time, and to say that given a man 

 who exhibited a certain shape of head, who had imperfectly 

 formed ears, who had prominent ridges over his eyes, and so 

 on, and given the further fact that he had committed a crime, 

 that that man should be held to be irresponsible, and should 

 not suffer the consequences of his crime. The conclusion 

 seems to be, that the criminal type of person represented a 

 degenerated type — a development of the lower type, with 

 brains constituted similarly to those of the lower race, and 

 therefoi-e .should not be held responsible for doing any wrong 

 act. He thought it would be extremely dangerous to allow 

 a doctrine of that kind to be carried to its logical conclusion. 

 Popular opinion was easily led astia}^ in a similar matter, 

 namely, the influence on the brain of disease or of injuries to 

 the head, and the probability that thereby a man would be 

 rendered irresponsible. It was perfectly true that disease of 

 the brain Avas almost certain to interfere with a man's 

 intellectual capacity, and would m.ake him incapable ol 

 controlling himself That general principle might be admit- 

 ted ; but it was dangerous and absurd to infer that, when a 



