The importance of the “stigmata” described by Lombroso as indications of psychical degeneration can no longer be disputed, however difficult it remains to understand what relationship handle-shaped and projecting ears, facial asymmetry, dental abnormalities, hypospadias, epispadias, etc., can have to psychical degeneration. We have, in fact, no better explanation than the phrase “correlation of growth.” Our present knowledge of the functions of the brain certainly does not suffice to elucidate the causal chain by means of which anomalies of the skull are associated with moral imbecility. But, after all, there is no single problem of psycho-pathology in which the chain of causation is completely known to us. However, it should not be difficult to understand that a brain enclosed in an abnormal skull can never develop to the full its most complicated function—viz., the coordination of the voluntary activities for the purposes of a course of conduct adapted to the conditions of social life. The term “degeneration” is unquestionably an indefinite one, and remains to-day incapable of either anatomical or physiological explanation; but it owes to Lombroso’s researches a definite _practical_ significance, from the fact that he has proved that the majority of degenerates are socially inadequate, and, further, that this social inadequacy of degenerate individuals makes their existence a great danger to society. The degenerate is often an anti-social being, and society must protect itself against him. The importance of these stigmata was not comprehensively understood by Morel and the other predecessors of Lombroso, in respect either of their mode of origin, or of their grouping to constitute specific types of degenerate. Morel merely sketched the outlines, and enumerated a few important facts about degeneration. One small area only of this enormous province has as yet been carefully studied—that of criminality. By Lombroso’s anthropometric and other researches very numerous demonstrations and statistical classifications of the stigmata of degeneration have been effected, whilst nothing of the kind has yet been attempted in respect of other forms of degeneration. As a result of his work, we are enabled to define the type of the criminal as that form of degeneration which is characterized morphologically and biologically by atavistic characters, and psychologically by the deficiency of altruistic feelings. Even if this type does not afford us a brief or invariably harmonious signification of crime, still, in a period in which we no longer believe in the persistence of species, and in which, even in “good species,” we recognize the tendency to variation, we must not demand that a degenerative subtype should exhibit constant characters. CHAPTER IV GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS REGARDING LOMBROSO’S LIFE-WORK AS A SOCIAL REFORMER, HIS METHODS, AND HIS PHILOSOPHY