Robin Hood

deep rooted as the real conviction of truth. For that reason, the
person who has convinced himself of his truth artificially, watches
all doubts and objections with much greater care than a man who
has no doubt whatever in what he says. The former, moreover, does
not have a good conscience, and the proverb says truly, ``a bad
conscience has a fine ear.'' The man knows that he is not dealing
correctly with the thing and hence he observes all objections, and
the fact that he does so observe, can not be easily overlooked by the
examining officer.

Once this fine hearing distinguishes the individual who really
believes in the motive he plausibly offers the court, there is another
indication (obviously quite apart from the general signs of deceit)
that marks him further, and this comes to light when one has him
speak about similar crimes of others in which the ostensible motive
actually was present. It is said rightly, that not he is old who no
longer commits youthful follies but he that no longer forgives them,
and so not merely he is bad who himself commits evil but also he who
excuses them in others. Of course, that an accused person should
defend the naked deed as it is described in the criminal law is not
likely for conceivable reasons--since certainly no robbery-suspect
will sing a paean about robbers, but certainly almost anybody who
has a better or a better-appearing motive for his crime, will protect
those who have been guided by a similar motive in other cases.
Every experiment shows this to be the case and then apparent
motives are easily enough recognized as such.


(d) Somatic Character-Units.

Section 14. (1) _General Considerations_.


When we say that the inner condition of men implies some outer
expression, it must follow that there are series of phenomena which
especially mold the body in terms of the influence of a state of mind
on external appearance, or conversely, which are significant of the
influence of some physical uniqueness on the psychical state, or of
some other psycho physical condition. As an example of the first
kind one may cite the well known phenomenon that devotees always
make an impression rather specifically feminine. As an example of
the second kind is the fact demonstrated by Gyurkovechky[1] that
impotents exhibit disagreeable characteristics. Such conditions
find their universalizing expression in the cruel but true maxim

[1] V. Gyurkovechky: Pathologie und Therapie der mnnlichen Impotenz.
Vienna, Leipzig 1889.

``Beware of the marked one.'' The Bible was the first of all to
make mention of these evil stigmata. No one of course asserts that
the bearer of any bodily malformation is for that reason invested
with one or more evil qualities--``Non cum hoc, sed propter hoc.''
It is a general quality of the untrained, and hence the majority of
men, that they shall greet the unfortunate who suffers from some
bodily malformation not with care and protection, but with scorn
and maltreatment. Such propensities belong, alas, not only to
adults, but also to children, who annoy their deformed playfellows
(whether expressly or whether because they are inconsiderate),
and continually call the unhappy child's attention to his deformity.
Hence, there follows in most cases from earliest youth, at first a
certain bitterness, then envy, unkindness, stifled rage against the
fortunate, joy in destruction, and all the other hateful similar qualities
however they may be named. In the course of time all of these
retained bitter impressions summate, and the qualities arising
from them become more acute, become habitual, and at last you
have a ready-made person ``marked for evil.'' Add to this the
indubitable fact that the marked persons are considerably wiser
and better-instructed than the others. Whether this is so by accident
or is causally established is difficult to say; but inasmuch as
most of them are compelled just by their deformities to deprive
themselves of all common pleasures and to concern themselves with
their own affairs, once they have been fed to satiety with abuse,
scorn and heckling, the latter is the more likely. Under such
circumstances they have to think more, they learn more than the
others to train their wits, largely as means of defense against physical
attack. They often succeed by wit, but then, they can never
be brought into a state of good temper and lovableness when they
are required to defend themselves by means of sharp, biting and
destructive wit. Moreover, if the deformed is naturally not well-
disposed, other dormant evil tendencies develop in him, which
might never have realized themselves if he had had no need
of them for purposes of self-defense--lying, slander, intrigue,
persecution by means of unpermitted instruments, etc. All this
finally forms a determinate complex of phenomena which is undivorceably
bound in the eyes of the expert with every species of
deformity: the mistrusting of the deaf man, the menacing expression
of the blind, the indescribable and therefore extremely
characteristic smiling of the hump-back are not the only typical
phenomena of this kind.

All this is popularly known and is abnormally believed in, so
that we often discover that the deformed are more frequently
suspected of crime than normal people. Suspicion turns to them
especially when an unknown criminal has committed a crime the
accomplishment of which required a particularly evil nature and
where the deed of itself called forth general indignation. In that
case, once a deformed person is suspected, grounds of suspicion are not
difficult to find; a few collect more as a rolling ball does snow. After
that the sweet proverb: ``Vox populi, vox dei,'' drives the unfortunate
fellow into a chaos of evidential grounds of suspicion
which may all be reduced to the fact that he has red hair or a hump.
Such events are frightfully frequent.[1]


Section 15. (2) _Causes of Irritation_.


Just as important as these phenomena are the somatic results
of psychic irritation. These latter clear up processes not to be
explained by words alone and often over-valued and falsely interpreted.
Irritations are important for two reasons: (1) as causes of
crime, and (2) as signs of identification in examination.

In regard to the first it is not necessary to show what crimes are
committed because of anger, jealousy, or rage, and how frequently
terror and fear lead to extremes otherwise inexplicable--these facts
are partly so well known, partly so very numerous and various,
that an exposition would be either superfluous or impossible. Only
those phenomena will be indicated which lie to some degree on the
borderland of the observed and hence may be overlooked. To this
class belong, for example, anger against the object, which serves
as explanation of a group of so-called malicious damages, such as
arson, etc. Everybody, even though not particularly lively, remembers
instances in which he fell into great and inexplicable rage against
an object when the latter set in his way some special difficulties
or caused him pain; and he remembers how he created considerable
ease for himself by flinging it aside, tearing it or smashing it to
pieces. When I was a student I owned a very old, thick Latin
lexicon, ``Kirschii cornu copia,'' bound in wood covered with pigskin.
This respectable book flew to the ground whenever its master
was vexed, and never failed profoundly to reduce the inner stress.
This ``Kirschius'' was inherited from my great-grandfather and it
did not suffer much damage. When, however, some poor apprentice
tears the fence, on a nail of which his only coat got a bad tear, or

[1] Cf. Ncke in H. Gross's Archiv, I, 200; IX, 153.

when a young peasant kills the dog that barks at him menacingly
and tries to get at his calf, then we come along with our ``damages
according to so and so much,'' and the fellow hasn't done any more
than I have with my ``Kirschius.''[1] In the magnificent novel,
``Auch Einer,'' by F. T. Vischer, there is an excellent portrait of
the perversity of things; the author asserts that things rather frequently
hold ecumenical councils with the devil for the molestation
of mankind.

How far the perversity of the inanimate can lead I saw in a criminal
case in which a big isolated hay-stack was set on fire. A traveler was
going across the country and sought shelter against oncoming bad
weather. The very last minute before a heavy shower he reached
a hay-stack with a solid straw cover, crept into it, made himself
comfortable in the hay and enjoyed his good fortune. Then he fell
asleep, but soon woke again inasmuch as he, his clothes, and all
the hay around him was thoroughly soaked, for the roof just above
him was leaking. In frightful rage over this ``evil perversity,'' he
set the stack on fire and it burned to the ground.

It may be said that the fact of the man's anger is as much a motive
as any other and should have no influence on the legal side of the
incident. Though this is quite true, we are bound to consider the
crime and the criminal as a unit and to judge them so. If under
such circumstances we can say that this unit is an outcome natural
to the character of mankind, and even if we say, perhaps, that we
might have behaved similarly under like circumstances, if we really
cannot find something absolutely evil in the deed, the criminal quality
of it is throughout reduced. Also, in such smaller cases the fundamental
concept of modern criminology comes clearly into the foreground:
``not the crime but the criminal is the object of punishment,
not the concept but the man is punished.'' (Liszt).

The fact of the presence of a significant irritation is important
for passing judgment, and renders it necessary to observe with the
most thorough certainty how this irritation comes about. This
is the more important inasmuch as it becomes possible to decide
whether the irritation is real or artificial and imitated. Otherwise,
however, the meaning of the irritation can be properly valued only
when its development can be held together step by step with its
causes. Suppose I let the suspect know the reason of suspicion
brought by his enemies, then if his anger sensibly increases with
the presentation of each new ground, it appears much more natural

[1] Cf. Bernhardi in H. Gross's Archiv, V, p. 40.

and real than if the anger increased in inexplicable fashion with
regard to less important reasons for suspicion and developed more
slowly with regard to the more important ones.

The collective nature of somatic phenomena in the case of great
excitement has been much studied, especially among animals,
these being simpler and less artificial and therefore easier to understand,
and in the long run comparatively like men in the expression
of their emotions. Very many animals, according to Darwin, erect
their hair or feathers or quills in cases of anxiety, fear, or horror, and
nowadays, indeed, involuntarily, in order to exhibit themselves
as larger and more terrible. The same rising of the hair even to-day
plays a greater rle among men than is generally supposed. Everybody
has either seen in others or discovered in himself that fear
and terror visibly raise the hair. I saw it with especial clearness
during an examination when the person under arrest suddenly
perceived with clearness, though he was otherwise altogether innocent,
in what great danger he stood of being taken for the real criminal.
That our hair rises in cases of fear and horror without being
visible is shown, I believe, in the well known movement of the hand
from forehead to crown. It may be supposed that the hair rises at
the roots invisibly but sensibly and thus causes a mild tickling and
pricking of the scalp which is reduced by smoothing the head with
the hand. This movement, then, is a form of involuntary scratching
to remove irritation. That such a characteristic movement is made
during examination may therefore be very significant under certain
circumstances. Inasmuch as the process is indubitably an influence
of the nerves upon the finer and thinner muscle-fibers, it
must have a certain resemblance to the process by which, as a
consequence of fear, horror, anxiety, or care, the hair more or less
suddenly turns white. Such occurrences are in comparatively large
numbers historical; G. Pouchet[1] counts up cases in which hair
turned white suddenly, (among them one where it happened
while the poor sinner was being led to execution). Such cases do
not interest us because, even if the accused himself turned grey
over night, no evidence is afforded of guilt or innocence. Such an
occurrence can be evidential only when the hair changes color
demonstrably in the case of a witness. It may then be certainly
believed that he had experienced something terrible and aging.
But whether he had really experienced this, or merely believed
that he had experienced it, can as yet not be discovered, since the

[1] Revue de deux Mondes, Jan. 1, 1872.

belief and the actual event have the same mental and physical
result.

Properly to understand the other phenomena that are the result
of significant irritation, their matrix, their aboriginal source must
be studied. Spencer says that fear expresses itself in cries, in hiding,
sobbing and trembling, all of which accompany the discovery of
the really terrible; while the destructive passions manifest themselves
in tension of the muscles, gritting of the teeth, extending the
claws: all weaker forms of the activity of killing. All this, aboriginally
inherited from the animals, occurs in rather less intense degrees
in man, inclusive of baring the claws, for exactly this movement
may often be noticed when somebody is speaking with anger and
vexation about another person and at the same time extends and
contracts his fingers. Anybody who does this even mildly and
unnoticeably means harm to the person he is talking about. Darwin
indeed, in his acutely observing fashion, has also called attention
to this. He suggests that a man may hate another intensely, but
that so long as his anatomy is not affected he may not be said to be
enraged. This means clearly that the somatic manifestations of
inner excitement are so closely bound up with the latter that we
require the former whenever we want to say anything about the
latter. And it is true that we never say that a man was enraged
or only angry, if he remained physically calm, no matter how noisy
and explicit he might have been with words. This is evidence
enough of the importance of noticing bodily expression. ``How
characteristic,'' says Volkmar[1] ``is the trembling and heavy breathing
of fear, the glowering glance of anger, the choking down of suppressed
vexation, the stifling of helpless rage, the leering glance
and jumping heart of envy.'' Darwin completes the description of
fear: The heart beats fast, the features pale, he feels cold but
sweats, the hair rises, the secretion of saliva stops, hence follows
frequent swallowing, the voice becomes hoarse, yawning begins,
the nostrils tremble, the pupils widen, the constrictor muscles
relax. Wild and very primitive people show this much more clearly
and tremble quite uncontrolled. The last may often be seen and
may indeed be established as a standard of culture and even of
character and may help to determine how far a man may prevent
the inner irritation from becoming externally noticeable. Especially
he who has much to do with Gypsies is aware how little these people
can control themselves. From this fact also spring the numerous

[1] v. Volkmar: Lehrbuch der Psychologie. Cthen 1875.

anecdotes concerning the wild rulers of uncultivated people, who
simply read the guilt of the suspect from his external behavior, or
even more frequently were able to select the criminal with undeceivable
acuteness from a number brought before them. Bain[1]
narrates that in India criminals are required to take rice in the
mouth and after awhile to spit it out. If it is dry the accused is held
to be guilty--fear has stopped the secretion of saliva--obstupui,
stetetuntque comae, et vox faucibus haesit.

Concerning the characteristic influence of timidity see Paul
Hartenberg.[2]

Especially self-revealing are the outbreaks of anger against oneself,
the more so because I believe them always to be evidence of
consciousness of guilt. At least, I have never yet seen an innocent
man fall into a paroxysm of rage against himself, nor have I
ever heard that others have observed it, and I would not be able
psychologically to explain such a thing should it happen. Inasmuch
as scenes of this kind can occur perceivably only in the most
externalized forms of anger, so such an explosion is elementary and
cannot possibly be confused with another. If a man wrings his
hands until they bleed, or digs his finger-nails into his forehead,
nobody will say that this is anger against himself; it is only an
attempt to do something to release stored-up energy, to bring it
to bear against somebody. People are visibly angry against themselves
only when they do such things to themselves as they might
do to other people; for example, beating, smashing, pulling the
hair, etc. This is particularly frequent among Orientals who are
more emotional than Europeans. So I saw a Gypsy run his head
against a wall, and a Jew throw himself on his knees, extend his
arms and box his ears with both hands so forcibly that the next
day his cheeks were swollen. But other races, if only they are
passionate enough, behave in a similar manner. I saw a woman,
for example, tear whole handfuls of hair from her head, a murdering
thief, guilty of more or fewer crimes, smash his head on the corner of
a window, and a seventeen year old murderer throw himself into a
ditch in the street, beat his head fiercely on the earth, and yell,
``Hang me! Pull my head off!''

The events in all these cases were significantly similar: the crime
was so skilfully committed as conceivably to prevent the discovery
of the criminal; the criminal denied the deed with the most glaring

[1] A. Bain: The Emotions and the Will. 1875.

[2] Les Timides et la Timidit. Paris 1901.

impudence and fought with all his power against conviction--in
the moment, however, he realized that all was lost, he exerted his
boundless rage against himself who had been unable to oppose any
obstacle to conviction and who had not been cautious and sly enough
in the commission of the crime. Hence the development of the
fearful self-punishment, which could have no meaning if the victim
had felt innocent.

Such expressions of anger against oneself often finish with fainting.
The reason of the latter is much less exhaustion through paroxysms
of rage than the recognition and consciousness of one's own helplessness.
Reichenbach[1] once examined the reason for the fainting
of people in difficult situations. It is nowadays explained as the
effect of the excretion of carbonic acid gas and of the generated
anthropotoxin; another explanation makes it a nervous phenomenon
in which the mere recognition that release is impossible causes
fainting, the loss of consciousness. For our needs either account of
this phenomenon will do equally. It is indifferent whether a man
notices that he cannot voluntarily change his condition in a physical
sense, or whether he notices that the evidence is so convincing that
he can not dodge it. The point is that if for one reason or another
he finds himself physically or legally in a bad hole, he faints, just
as people in novels or on the stage faint when there is no other
solution of the dramatic situation.

When anger does not lead to rage against oneself, the next lower
stage is laughter.[2] With regard to this point, Darwin calls attention
to the fact that laughter often conceals other mental conditions
than those it essentially stands for--anger, rage, pain, perplexity,
modesty and shame; when it conceals anger it is anger against
oneself, a form of scorn. This same wooden, dry laughter is significant,
and when it arises from the perception that the accused no
longer sees his way out, it is not easily to be confused with another
form of laughter. One gets the impression that the laugher is trying
to tell himself, ``That is what you get for being bad and foolish!''


Section 16. (3) _Cruelty_.


Under this caption must be placed certain conditions that may
under given circumstances be important. Although apparently
without any relations to each other they have the common property
of being external manifestations of mental processes.

[1] K. von Reichenbach: Der sensitive Mensch. Cotta 1854.

[2] e. f. H. Bergson: Le Rire. Paris 1900.

In many cases they are explanations which may arise from the
observation of the mutative relations between cruelty, bloodthirstiness,
and sensuality. With regard to this older authors like
Mitchell,[1] Blumroder,[2] Friedreich,[3] have brought examples which
are still of no little worth. They speak of cases in which many
people, not alone men, use the irritation developed by greater or
lesser cruelty for sexual purposes: the torturing of animals, biting,
pinching, choking the partner, etc. Nowadays this is called sadism.[4]
Certain girls narrate their fear of some of their visitors who make
them suffer unendurably, especially at the point of extreme passion,
by biting, pressing, and choking. This fact may have some value
in criminology. On the one hand, certain crimes can be explained
only by means of sexual cruelty, and on the other, knowledge of his
habits with this regard may, again, help toward the conviction of a
criminal. I recall only the case of Ballogh-Steiner in Vienna, a
case in which a prostitute was stifled. The police were at that time
hunting a man who was known in the quarter as ``chicken-man,''
because he would always bring with him two fowls which he would
choke during the orgasm. It was rightly inferred that a man who
did that sort of thing was capable under similar circumstances of
killing a human being. Therefore it will be well, in the examination
of a person accused of a cruel crime, not to neglect the question of
his sexual habits; or better still, to be sure to inquire particularly
whether the whole situation of the crime was not sexual in nature.[5]

In this connection, deeds that lead to cruelty and murder often
involve forms of epilepsy. It ought therefore always to be a practice
to consult a physician concerning the accused, for cruelty, lust,
and psychic disorders are often enough closely related. About this
matter Lombroso is famous for the wealth of material he presents.


Section 17. (4) _Nostalgia_.


The question of home-sickness is of essential significance and
must not be undervalued. It has been much studied and the notion
has been reached that children mainly (in particular during the
period of puberty), and idiotic and weak persons, suffer much from
home-sickness, and try to combat the oppressive feeling of dejection

[1] Mitchell: ber die Mitleidenschaft der Geschlechtsteile mit dem Kopfe.
Vienna 1804.

[2] Blumrder: ber das Irresein. Leipzig 1836.

[3] J. B. Friedreich: Gerichtliche Psychologie. Regensburg 1832.

[4] Cf. Ncke. Gross's Archiv, XV. 114.

[5] Schrenck-Notzing: Ztschrft. f. Hypnotismus, VII, 121; VIII, 40, 275; IX,
98.

with powerful sense stimuli. Hence they are easily led to crime,
especially to arson. It is asserted that uneducated people in lonesome,
very isolated regions, such as mountain tops, great moors,
coast country, are particularly subject to nostalgia. This seems to
be true and is explained by the fact that educated people easily find
diversion from their sad thoughts and in some degree take a piece
of home with them in their more or less international culture. In
the same way it is conceivable that inhabitants of a region not particularly
individualized do not so easily notice differences. Especially
he who passes from one city to another readily finds himself, but
mountain and plain contain so much that is contrary that the feeling
of strangeness is overmastering. So then, if the home-sick person is
able, he tries to destroy his nostalgia through the noisiest and most
exciting pleasures; if he is not, he sets fire to a house or in case
of need, kills somebody--in short what he needs is explosive relief.
Such events are so numerous that they ought to have considerable
attention. Nostalgia should be kept in mind where no proper
motive for violence is to be found and where the suspect is a person
with the above-mentioned qualities. Then again, if one discovers
that the suspect is really suffering from home-sickness, from great
home-sickness for his local relations, one has a point from which the
criminal may be reached. As a rule such very pitiful individuals
are so less likely to deny their crime in the degree in which they feel
unhappy that their sorrow is not perceivably increased through
arrest. Besides that, the legal procedure to which they are subjected
is a not undesired, new and powerful stimulus to them.