Mr. Rhodes gives in this book the results of an original, a comprehensive, and profound study of certain related phenomena of criminality and genius, for which he professes to have discovered a common ground. To begin with crime. There are two schools of thought in criminology. The English school, which the author considers rather unscientific, "regards the criminal as a normal man gone wrong." He is an ordinary human being to be interpreted as the victim of "environment, misfortune, vicious associations," or all such causes operating simultaneously. On the other hand, the Continental school, speaking broadly, regards the criminal as an abnormal person "who cannot go right." It holds, in short, that there is a criminal type. Lombroso, the great Italian criminologist and alienist, considered the type to be anthropological, drawing this conclusion from measurements of the skulls and bodies of thousands of criminals. It is now generally accepted that along this line the evidence does not satisfactorily support his conclusions. Nevertheless, criminological science, which is still in its infancy, is veering round again towards the acceptance of Lombroso's fundamental theory, that a definite criminal type does exist. More significant than his skull measurements, &c, are the composite photographs of Galton showing that the heads and faces of criminals, of which the negatives were superimposed on one another, reveal a striking correspondence at a surprising number of points. On the Continent, curiously enough, French, Italian, and Spanish criminals appear as more definite anthropological types than do those found in English gaols. Perhaps, however, the apparent difference may be explained by the fact that Continental observers have collected and examined more prison material than the English have done.
Psychological Characters.
Lombroso admittedly overstated his case. Nevertheless, Tarde, one of his strongest opponents, has shown reason for the belief that, psychologically, criminals can be put in a class by themselves. Mr. Rhodes tests his theories by the consideration of a number of concrete instances. What are we to make of the complete moral insensibility of Marie Schneider, who at the age of 12 murdered a child of three in order to take her ear-rings, sell them, and buy sweets? She was not in the least degree sorry for her crime. In dealing with her case, Mr. Rhodes gives the first intimation of his main thesis — that rebellion Against the social environment, to which the criminal cannot adjust himself or herself, is the ever-present sign of the criminal psychology. To the unscientific mind it might seem simpler to sum up the offender as a sufferer from morbid excess of egoism, which unhesitatingly sacrifices the rights of others to one's own convenience or pleasure. In his analyses of crime. Mr. Rhodes freely uses the jargon of the psycho-analysts. Freud. Adler, and others. Peter Kuerten, the Dusseldorf Ripper, who openly confessed that he hated humanity, and found relief for his mind in murder, is cited as a clear example of the individual wrestling with a social organisation to which he cannot adapt himself, and which consequently he detests. The murderer and forger. Thomas Wainewright, made war against a society which refused him lawful means for his extravagant and luxurious habits. An instinctive criminal, he "resolved his conflict" in drink, fighting, and sport. The criminal, it is concluded, is an abnormal being who does not and cannot capitulate to the social laws, being unwilling or unable to pay the price society demands; in short, a rebel bent on gratifying his own desires at any cost to others. In this sense revolution—the violent upsetting of a social order by maladjusted units who seize power—may be regarded as "collective criminality." Anarchical and revolutionary activities spring from the same abnormal stem—a will to power against a social organisation which stands in the way of unassimilated individuals and their desires. Short of actual revolution, there may be violent outbreaks in which more or less imperfectly adjusted unite seek a channel for the "sublimation" of repressed instincts of criminality in disorder and riot.
Genius And Insanity.
Dryden tells us—
"Great wits are sure to madness near allied.
And thin partitions do their bounds divide."
Lombroso, we are told by Mr. Rhodes, was fundamentally correct about the criminal, and with a flash of insight "he makes it clear that genius, if allied to insanity and crime, is in its essence distinct from both." It is difficult to reconcile this with the statement on the next page that "the genius and the criminal type," considered psychologically, "are fundamentally one and the came thing." The genius, it is argued, is the enemy of society, unless the society be of his own making. Like the criminal, he is a social misfit, for society is constructed to meet the needs of ordinary people, not geniuses, and he strives to change his environment, to remould the sorry scheme of things nearer to the heart's desire, or else he resolves his "conflict" in some ideal world of the imagination, in literature or in art. The really great man according to Nietzsche, is determined to live his own life fully and freely, and becomes a law unto himself. "The normal man adjusts himself," says Mr. Rhodes, to his environment; "the criminal tries and fails; the genius also tries and fails, but goes on in search of a new harmony." The ordinary man comes to terms with society, but the genius will not. Often society is successful in thwarting or embarrassing the genius, but sometimes, as in the case of Napoleon and Lenin, the will to power of the genius is triumphant, and he destroys society.
A Gallery Of Portraits.
Mr. Rhodes illustrates his thesis with a gallery of portraits—some of criminals, some of geniuses, some of the two combined. To the last category belongs Francois Villon, who, exaggerating the anti-social bias he derived from the University of Paris, was a criminal first, a poet secondarily. Vidoeq, who from being a criminal became a detective, approached genius in his organising gift and power over men. It is as a criminal alone that Anna Schonleben is considered by the author; dammed up eroticism, diverted her activity into wholesale poisoning. Marie Jeanneret, another poisoner, was defended by her counsel, with some appearance of justice, as a toxico-maniac outrageously in love with her instruments of destruction. She was a nurse, gentle, refined, and efficient. In prison her conduct was exemplary, and she was deservedly praised as an invaluable influence for good among her fellow convicts. Schonleben hated society and preyed on it. Jeanneret did not hate society, but considered the lives of individuals as quite negligible compared with the importance to herself of her toxicological experiments. As examples of "the genius trend," the author deals with the cases of Verlaine and Rimbaud, Oscar Wilde, Edgar Allan Poe, Richelieu, and Strindberg. Wilde was not quite a genius, but he exercised the assumed right of genius to defy society and its conventions. His art not proving sufficient to sublimate his anti-social instincts, he indulged in a crime that society pronounces abominable. Poe had a double personality; one distinctly criminal, the other normal, with an approach to genius. The genius of Richelieu found a channel in the reconstruction of a disunited France. He was a Catholic and a Cardinal, but the political ideals of the Church in his day were not his. "The traditional social order built on faith" he looked upon as ruined past repair, and he built on new foundations. His was a sublime egoism, for to him France meant Richelieu—Richelieu right or wrong. His sinister genius did not stop short of murder.
At "problems," the author studies the cases of Lucrezia Borgia, "a criminal of circumstance," who had incestuous relations with two brothers, and the Russian monster, Gregory Rasputin, who was a hideous combination of religious mysticism and beastly eroticism. He converted the Russian Court into a hotbed of sexual vice. It was little better than an aristocratic brothel, says the author. Rasputin conceived a kingdom of God where spirit would be reconciled to flesh by surrendering to it; "a kingdom of Christ and Priapus, with Gregory Rasputin as its prophet and vicar." Opposed in his aims, he turned on Russia to destroy her.
Eugenics.
Genius touches at some points the psychology of criminality. "There is the same imperfect adjustment to environment, and there is augmented conflict, since genius strives either in action to overthrow the existing order and introduce another in harmony with it, or, in thought and imagination, to construct a new world." If Mr. Rhodes's contentions are sound, problems are raised for which eugenics provides no solution. Genius and crime are inevitable, and this inevitability "must be swallowed with a good grace." Much, no doubt, can be said for dealing by sterilisation with the mentally and physically unfit. But "there is no authority, eugenic or otherwise, in the heavens above, nor in the earth beneath, nor in the waters under the earth, which can eliminate the conflict between man the individual and society. The direction, and to some extent, the characteristics of the conflict may be, and often have been, changed, but the conflict remains. The higher social organism will be equally liable to the production of neurosis, and in consequence will be no stranger to the phenomena of genius and crime."
The Advertiser 24/9/1932,
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