velopment.

In view of these facts, it is not strange that civilised communities
should produce a certain percentage of adults who commit actions reputed
injurious to society and punishable by law. It is only an atavistic
phenomenon, the return to a former state. In the criminal, moreover, the
phenomenon is accompanied by others also natural to a primitive stage of
evolution. These have already been referred to in the first chapter,
which contains a description of many strange practices common to
delinquents, and evidently of primitive origin--tattooing, cruel games,
love of orgies, a peculiar slang resembling in certain features the
languages of primitive peoples, and the use of hieroglyphics and
pictography.

=FIG. 22
TERRA-COTTA BOWLS
Designed by a Criminal
(see page 135)=

The artistic manifestations of the criminal show the same
characteristics. In spite of the thousands of years which separate him
from prehistoric savages, his art is a faithful reproduction of the
first, crude artistic attempts of primitive races. The museum of
criminal anthropology created by my father contains numerous specimens
of criminal art, stones shaped to resemble human figures, like those
found in Australia, rude pottery covered with designs that recall
Egyptian decorations (Fig. 22) or scenes fashioned in terra-cotta (Fig.
23) that resemble the grotesque creations of children or savages.

The criminal is an atavistic being, a relic of a vanished race. This is
by no means an uncommon occurrence in nature. Atavism, the reversion to
a former state, is the first feeble indication of the reaction opposed
by nature to the perturbing causes which seek to alter her delicate
mechanism. Under certain unfavourable conditions, cold or poor soil, the
common oak will develop characteristics of the oak of the Quaternary
period. The dog left to run wild in the forest will in a few generations
revert to the type of his original wolf-like progenitor, and the
cultivated garden roses when neglected show a tendency to reassume the
form of the original dog-rose. Under special conditions produced by
alcohol, chloroform, heat, or injuries, ants, dogs, and pigeons become
irritable and savage like their wild ancestors.

This tendency to alter under special conditions is common to human
beings, in whom hunger, syphilis, trauma, and, still more frequently,
morbid conditions inherited from insane, criminal, or diseased
progenitors, or the abuse