The criminal / by Havelock Ellis.

  • Havelock Ellis
Date:
1895
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The criminal / by Havelock Ellis. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    human nature which appear at the surface of a race and proceed perhaps from its lowest depths (for the variations of a theme are, I believe, its true raison d'etre, and not vice versd), every social or anti-social profession operates a selection to its own profit; it attracts the organisms most adapted to the kind of life which it leads, and to the end which It pursues, so that if one submitted to anthropometric measurement lawyers, doctors, priests, merchants, especially those who have the most decided vocation for their profession, we should not fail to find for each category the proportional preponderance of a certain number of peculiarities, morphologic or phy- siologic, elsewhere in less proportion. It must inevit- ably be so whether a career is open to every one or shut up as a caste, for in the latter case hereditary accumulation of acquired aptitudes from the use of the same functions transmitted from generation to generation produces an analogous effbct, even with superior intensity.-^ The recent investigations of Bertillon at the Paris Prefecture of Police have shown that by large photographs of the hand it is possible to detect the worker at a large number of crafts By such acquirement as this, as well as by a process of natural selection, the men of every class develop a special set of psychic and physical peculiarities: thus Tolstoi, in his Death of Ivan Ilyitch, has admir- ably described the special attitude and manner com- mon to professional men generally, and in this general professional class there are subdivisions, so that every professional man instinctively recognises his fellows It IS so among criminals. Mr. Davitt sketches for instance, the special class of hooks, or professional 1 Criminologie, Revue d'A7tihropologie, Sept. i8SS. ' 15