There are many such individuals, and only the knowledge of their previous career enables us to desume the responsibility for their acts under trying conditions. That they are not responsible in the ordinary sense in which the logical, timorous mortal is who is at once repelled from such modes {270} of action seems very clear. Their lack of responsibility is manifest, at least to a degree that makes it easy for charity to find excuses for their crimes because of fatal flaws of character, the result of physical defects and faulty training, which make themselves felt especially at the moments that try men's souls. JAMES J. WALSH. {271} XXV CRIMINOLOGY AND THE HABITUAL CRIMINAL In recent years no little attention has been devoted to the subject of criminology, and a supposed science of the criminal has been evolved. It has been the claim of a very well known Italian school of mental diseases, whose leader is Professor Lombroso of Turin, that there is a criminal type in humanity, that is, that there is a generic human organisation not difficult of differentiation, at least as a class, the members of which almost necessarily develop criminal proclivities. Even when criminality has not actually occurred, this is thought to be but an accident, and criminal acts may be looked for at any time from these individuals. Lombroso's claims in this matter have met with decided opposition in every country of Europe and also here in America. This opposition has come especially from serious students of abnormal types who have devoted much time to the study of criminals and other supposedly degenerate individuals. Magnan, the very well and widely known French authority on insane peculiarities, especially the so-called criminal monomaniacs, and whose opportunities for careful investigation of such cases in the Asile St. Anne in Paris have been very extensive, utterly rejects the idea of a special physical conformation as characteristic of the criminal. He is not the only one of the distinguished authorities in mental diseases who is in opposition to Lombroso in this matter. Dr. Emile Laurent, the eminent criminologist of Paris, has shown that the same anomalies which are supposed to characterise criminals are to be found among those who have never committed any criminal act, and that these supposed signs of degeneracy are not sufficient to indicate even {272} that there are criminal tendencies. Manouvrier, the distinguished anthropological authority of the University of Paris, does not hesitate to advance the opinion that he can not find any distinctive difference between criminals and normal men in the extensive studies of the comparative anatomy of the two classes. He admits, however, that environment sometimes leads to the formation of habits which modify the anatomy in certain ways, and that of course traces of hard work, as well as of poor living, can be found in the anatomical conformation of many habitual criminals.