Section 92. (b) Heredity.[1]
However important the question of heredity may be to lawyers
psychologically, its application to legal needs is impossible. It
would require, on the one hand, the study of all the literature concerning
it, together with the particular teachings of Darwin and
his disciples, and of Lombroso and his. The criminal-psychological
study of it has not yet been established. The unfounded, adventurous,
and arbitrary assertions of the Lombrosists have been contradicted,
especially through the efforts of German investigators.
But others, like Debierre in Lille, Sernoff in Moscow, Taine, Drill,
Marchand have also had occasion to controvert the Italian positivists.
At the same time, the problem of heredity is not dead, and
will not die. This is being shown particularly in the retort of
Marchand concerning the examinations he made with M. E. Koslow,
in the asylum for juvenile offenders founded by the St. Petersburg
Anthropological Society. Between Buckle, who absolutely denies
heredity, and the latest of the modern doctrines, there are a number
of intermediate views, one of which may possibly be true. There
is an enormous literature which every criminalist should
study.[2]
Nevertheless, this literature can tell us nothing about the legitimacy
of the premise of heredity. Every educated man still believes
Darwin's doctrines, and the new theories that seek to emancipate
themselves from it do so only by pushing them out of the big front
door, and insinuating them through the little back door. But
according to Bois-Reymond Darwinism is only the principle of the
hereditary maintenance of the child's variation from its parents.
Everybody knows of real inherited characters, and many examples
of it are cited. According to Ribot, suicide is hereditary; according
to Despine, kleptomania; according to Lucas, vigorous sexuality;
according to Darwin, hand-writing, etc. Our personal acquaintances
show the inheritance of features, figure, habits, intellectual properties,
particularly cleverness, such as, sense of space and time, capacity
for orientation, interests, diseases, etc. Even ideas have their ancestors
like men, and we learn from the study of animals how instincts,
capacities, even acquired ones, are progressively inherited. And
yet we refuse to believe in the congenital criminal! But the contradiction
is only apparent.
A study of the works of Darwin, Weismann, DeVries, etc., shows
us indubitably that no authority asserts the inheritance of great
alterations appearing for the first time in an individual. And as
to the inheritance of acquired characteristics, some authorities
assert this to be impossible.
Until Darwin the old law of species demanded that definite traits
of a species should not change through however long a period. The
Darwinian principle indicates the inheritance of minute variations,
intensified by sexual selection, and, in the course of time, developed
into great variations. Now nobody will deny that the real criminal
is different from the majority of other people. That this difference
is great and essential, is inferred from the circumstance that a habit
a single characteristic, an unhappy inclination, etc., does not constitute
a criminal. If a man is a thief it will not be asserted that he
is otherwise like decent people, varying only in the accidental inclination
to theft. We know that, besides the inclination to theft,
we may assign him a dislike for honest work, lack of moral power,
indifference to the laws of honor when caught, the lack of real
religion,—in short, the inclination to theft must be combined with a
large number of very characteristic qualities in order to make a
thief of a man. There must, in a word, be a complete and profound
change in his whole nature. Such great changes in the individual
are never directly inherited; only particular properties can be
inherited, but these do not constitute a criminal. Hence, the son
of a criminal need not in his turn be a criminal.
This does not imply that in the course of generations characters
might not compound themselves until a criminal type is developed,
but this is as rare as the development of new species among the
animals. Races are frequently selected; species develop rarely.
[[ id="n92.1"]]
Benedict: Heredity. Med Times, 1902, XXX, 289.
Richardson: Theories of Heredity. Nature, 1902, LXVI, 630.
Petruskewisch: Gedanken zur Vererbung. Freiburg 1904.
[[ id="n92.2"]]
Calton: Hereditary Genius 2d Ed. London 1892.
Martinak: Einige Ansichten über Vererbung moralischer Eigenschaften.
Transactions, Viennese Philological society. Leipzig 1893.
Haacke: Gestaltung u Vererbunsr Leipzig 1893.
Tarde: Les Lois de l'Imitation. Paris 1904. Etc., etc.