The born criminal is, invariably, utterly destitute of the feeling that he is doing wrong. Murderers frequently describe their misdeeds as trifles, as pardonable errors of youth, and they are astonished and indignant that they are so severely punished. To the true criminal, the pangs of conscience are entirely unknown, and a brutish indifference to death is a most frequent manifestation. This is shown very clearly in the turns of phrase met with in the jargon of criminals in relation to the punishment of execution. One of the most sensational trials in recent days—the trial of Heinze and of the prostitute with whom he lived—served to acquaint the general public with the phrase “cut the cabbage” for decapitation. The expression “to sneeze in the sack” corresponds to this (the guillotined head, when severed by the falling knife, is received in a sack); and there are many others. Lombroso gives numerous examples of a perfect equanimity persisting up to the very moment of death. One of his reports (_Archivio di psichiatria_, 1891, Section 4) tells us of a murderer who, whilst awaiting his execution, drew caricatures of the spectators. Allied to this indifference, appears to be the puzzling impulse of professional murderers before the commission of a crime to speak openly of their plans, and even to describe the actual details of the proposed murder. Troppmann, although he lied in court during the trial, while confined in his cell made drawings of the way in which he had committed the murder. Footnote 27: _Cf._ F. Max Müller, “The Science of Thought,” 1887, pp. 270, 271: “If the science of language has proved anything, it has proved that every term which is applied to a particular idea or object, unless it be a proper name, is already a general term. _Man_ meant originally anything that could think; _serpent_, anything that could creep; _fruit_, anything that could be eaten.”—TRANSLATOR. Footnote 28: Very various significations are attached to the term “criminal psychology.” Some denote by it a general theory of responsibility; some, an account of the mental disorders which have forensic importance; some, the theory of the will, of purpose, of deliberation, of design, of resolve, of the associations with and the aids to crime; some, the developmental history of individual criminals, or a description of the means by which they have been led to commit some particular crime, or which they have adopted in the course of its performance; some, finally, denote by the term a classification of the world of criminals in accordance with character, after the manner of Benedikt and Krauss. The teaching of Lombroso is concerned solely with the elements of the criminal nature which possess an anthropological interest, just as the ethnologist endeavours to elucidate the natural character of a race. Footnote 29: