682 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



between the human and the animal world, once more insisting on 

 the undoubtedly natural character of the crime. He then passes 

 on to examine homicide in primitive savage humanity, which is 

 an intermediate form of homicidal evolution between the animal 

 and civilized society. Concerning the importance of these studies 

 of savage peoples, as well as concerning the modern reconsider- 

 ation of the conditions of primitive humanity deduced from the 

 study of contemporary savages, doubts have been uttered and 

 objections raised even in the ranks of evolutionists. Ferri, how- 

 ever, who is convinced that the paleontological data can, for lack 

 of other evidence, be elicited from these analogies with contem- 

 porary savage life, accepts the evolution hypothesis that in con- 

 temporary savages is seeu reflected a large portion of the primitive 

 conditions of humanity. 



The purely descriptive style adopted by Ferri in his study of 

 animals in the second chapter of his book is interspersed with 

 psychological reflections, for though at the outset his purpose was 

 to prove the existence of criminal murder among animals, he had 

 also to study not only the manifest existence of this murder, but 

 to show that such acts have their moral as well as their juridic 

 side. To do this he examines and classifies divers forms of homi- 

 cide in primitive humanity, beginning with the least fierce and 

 ending with the most repulsive, while leaving aside those common 

 also to civilized man. Here we find new criminal aspects : for 

 example, abortion ; infanticide, elevated to a custom and a method 

 in Malthusianism ; the killing of the old, of women, of the sick, 

 of those unable to work, of useless mouths (practiced also in his- 

 torical primitive times), homicide for superstition, race hatred, 

 vanity, homicide without apparent purpose, for bloodthirstiness, 

 frequent in savages by reason of the very brutality of their nature 

 and the small account in which they hold their lives ; finally, can- 

 nibalism, the most repugnant and ferocious form of homicide, 

 common to all the peoples of antiquity according to Vogt; born 

 of hunger, of warlike fury, of need, and transmitted by heredity, 

 by religious tradition, and lastly, the ultimate grade of human 

 ferocity, by gluttony. We see this crime reappear in part and 

 without the stimulus of hunger, for vendetta and simple anger. 



This classification of the various forms of homicide presented 

 by Ferri in a growing scale of ferocity, in order to give contrast 

 to the two extremes of primitive and civilized man, does not tally, 

 as he himself points out, with the duplex process of natural 

 evolution which can be studied in primitive man. In fact, here 

 we have on one side a continual diminution and disappearance of 

 the most repulsive forms of crime, and on the other side the ever- 

 increasing development of moral sentiments and of the juridic 

 instincts, such as we find afterward in history. Some forms of 



