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Criminal Sociology by Enrico Ferri
page 15 of 307 (04%)

THE DATA OF CRIMINAL ANTHROPOLOGY.

The experimental school of criminal sociology took its original
title from its studies of anthropology; it is still commonly
regarded as little more than a ``criminal anthropology school.''
And though this title no longer corresponds with the development
of the school, which also takes into account and investigates the
data of psychology, statistics, and sociology, it is none the less
true that the most characteristic impetus of the new scientific
movement was due to anthropological studies. This was
conspicuously the case when Lombroso, giving a scientific form to
sundry scattered and fragmentary observations upon criminals,
added fresh life to them by a collection of inquiries which were
not only original but also governed by a distinct idea, and
established the new science of criminal anthropology.

It is possible, of course, to discover a very early origin for
criminal anthropology, as for general anthropology; for, as Pascal
said, man has always been the most wonderful object of study to
himself. For observations on physiognomy in particular we may go
as far backwards as to Plato, and his comparisons of the human
face and character with those of the brutes, or even to
Aristotle, who still earlier observed the physical and
psychological correspondence between the passions of men and their
facial expression. And after the mediaeval gropings in
chiromancy, metoscopy, podomancy and so forth, one comes to the
seventeenth century studies in physiognomy by the Jesuit
Niquetius, by Cortes, Cardanus, De la Chambre, Della Porta, &c.,
who were precursors of Gall, Spurzheim, and Lavater on one side,
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