in whom crime is
inborn and ineradicable, who cannot develop a moral sense, he explains
at first by atavism. A large section of his volume (pp. 124-136,
137-253) is devoted to anthropometrical observations upon the physical
structure, the cranial and cerebral development, and the physiognomy of
such criminals. Into this part of his work we need not enter. Nor is it
necessary to follow his interesting researches in the biology and
psychology of "born criminals"--chapters on tattooing, ways of thinking
and feeling, passions, tendencies to suicide, religious sentiment,
intelligence and culture, capacity of self-control, liability to
relapse, and so forth. Many curious facts relating to sexual inversion
are treated in the course of these enquiries; and one passage describing
the general characteristics of paederasts (p. 376) ought to be alluded
to. Considering this subject solely as a phase of crime, Lombroso
reveals a superficial conception of its perplexity.

It is more important to reflect upon his theory of crime in general.
Having started with the hypothesis of atavism, and adopted the term
"born criminal," he later on identifies "innate crime" with "moral
insanity," and illustrates both by the phenomena of epilepsy.[39] This
introduces a certain confusion and incoherence into his speculative
system; for he frankly admits that he has only gradually and tardily
been led to recognise the identity of what is called crime and what is
called moral insanity. Criminal atavism might be defined as the sporadic
reversion to savagery in certain individuals. It has nothing logically
to connect it with distortion or disease--unless we assume that all our
savage ancestors were malformed or diseased, and that the Greeks, in
whom one form of Lombroso's criminal atavism became established, were as
a nation morally insane. The appearance of structural defects in
habitual criminals points less to atavistic reversion than to radical
divergence from the normal type of humanity. In like manner the
invocation of heredity as a principle (p. 135) involves a similar
confusion. Hereditary taint is a thing different not in degree but in
kind from savage atavism prolonged from childhood into manhood.

Be this as it may, whether we regard offenders against law and ethic as
"born criminals," or as "morally insane," or whether we transcend the
distinction implied in these two terms, Lombroso maintains that there is
no good in trying to deal with the