INSTINCTIVE CRIMINALITY. 283 



cases could never be looked upon as accurate, how- 

 ever true they might be when he generalised. 



The man with well-shaped skull, lofty forehead, 

 and benevolent expression, may be and occasionally 

 is a moral imbecile, an instinctive criminal, and the 

 man with small brain-pan, low, retreating forehead, 

 bull-neck, heavy jaw, and brutal expression may be 

 and perhaps occasionally is a philanthropist ; there- 

 fore the phrenologist must fail, with the physiognomist, 

 notwithstanding the fact that if we take a hundred 

 men of the first type there may not be an instinctive 

 criminal amongst them, and if we take a hundred of 

 the second type we may find but few who are not 

 immoral, brutal, or criminal by nature. 



Since the days of Aristotle, many observers have 

 commented on the differences commonly appearing 

 between the criminal and the average law-abiding 

 citizen. For ages it was noticed that criminals, as 

 a class, had characters more or less peculiar to them- 

 selves. Later it was remarked that these characters 

 were in reality signs of degeneration, and that they 

 were, like all other family characters, hereditarily trans- 

 mitted. The soundness of these early observations 

 has been proved by recent scientific investigation, and 

 it is now recognised on all hands that the instinctive 

 criminal is an abnormal and degenerate type of 

 humanity. 



Unfortunately, although the study of the criminal 

 was begun so long ago, it is only in recent years 

 that any attempt has been made to study scientifically 



