The Calcutta Law Journal. Short Notes of Cases Articles and other Matters July 16 1920

To my mind ti22 real nature of crime can be discovered only by a study of the springs of human action in relation to the society in which the individual “lives moves and has his being.” It is necessary to realise that the springs of action constitute the dynamic factor in the individual and the social life of a human being and it is these springs of action that bring the individual in relation w [...] The criminal to put the whole thing in a nut-shell goes-back to the savage man. The author arrives at this position (i) by a comparative study of the phsiologic anatomic and rii'ychologic characteristics of the criminal and the savage and (ii) by a historical argument based upon the fact that the normal and the ordinary mode of activity among the savages was criminal as we understand it ( [...] The fisyciologic traits are moral and affective insensibility absence of remorse want of foresight idleness etc With regard to the antomic (craneologicl traits the compdrison was based upon an obsevation of the skulls of the modern criminals with the skulls of dead savages. [...] Admitting that the anatomic peculiarities of the skulls of some of the modern criminals resemble those of some of the savages does it follow that the modern criminal is nothing but a late reproduction of the savage type? [...] Further it may be also argued: that the so-called criminal charateristics (distinguishing the delinquent from the honest man) are due only to the kind of life and the kind of medium." And in this sense as Tarde remarks the criminal like the artist or the soldier or the sailor may be.