Chapter III: Part 3

There are no woodpeckers in the forests of the Antilles, and only two species of large gallinaceous birds, but a prodigious variety of pigeons, swallows, finches, and crows. The _alcedos_ (kingfishers) are scarce, but the blackbirds so numerous that some of the countless species seem to claim a South American and even transatlantic ancestry. The restless _estornino_ of the Cuban highland forests, for instance, might be mistaken for a varnished starling, resembling the _Sturnus vulgaris_ of western Europe in everything but the more brilliant luster of its plumage. The curious _codornilla_, or dove quail, too, has its nearest relatives on the other side of the Atlantic, in Syria, Arabia, and the foothills of the Atlas. It builds its nest on the ground and, judging from its appearance, would seem to form a connecting link between the doves and small _gallinæ_; but its wings are those of a pigeon, and with the assistance of a northeast gale may possibly have carried it across the ocean.

In studying the geographical distribution of animals, we may estimate the prevalence of special genera by the number of their varieties, or by the aggregate sum of individuals, and in the latter sense the migratory pigeons of our forest States once nearly outnumbered all the other birds of North America, though the family is limited to five or six species. But in the West Indies the _Columbidæ_ predominate in both respects. Cuba is a country of wild pigeons as pre-eminently as South Africa is a land of pachyderms and Madagascar of night monkeys. The _Columba leucocephala_ (a congener of our ringdove) inhabits the mountain forests in countless swarms, and at the end of the rainy season visits grainfields in such numbers that hundreds are sometimes captured in nets, by means of corn scattered along the furrows.

A closely allied variety is found in San Domingo, where in many upland regions a darkey, equipped with a shotgun and a supply of gunpowder, can dispense with agriculture and raise a family of anthropoids on pigeon pies and _tortillas_, compounded from the grain found in the crops of his victims.

But the _tittyblang_ (_tête-blanc_) has scores of smaller and larger cousins, culminating in the Cuban primate of the family, the splendid _paloma real_, with its coronet of pearl-gray plumes and dark-blue wings.

Ducks, too, must number some twenty West Indian species, and one kind of wild geese often obliged the rice planters to employ mounted sharpshooters, who galloped up and down the long dikes, yelling blasphemies, and every now and then enforcing their quotations with a handful of buckshot. But, for all that, the planter could think himself lucky to gather a sixty-per-cent harvest of the total produce, for experience soon enabled the long-necked depredators to estimate the target range of the _cazador_ within a dozen yards and take wing in the nick of time, only to resume their feast at the other end of the plantation.

A long-continued process of natural selection has also modified the habits of numerous species of West Indian parrots. Four hundred years ago, when Fernan Oviedo superintended the placer mines of Hayti, _loris_ were so abundant and tame that his assistants often amused themselves prowling about a thicket of berry bushes and capturing the chattering visitors by means of a common ring net. Nestlings could be taken from every hollow tree, and often from the thatchwork of deserted Indian cabins; but the overconfident specimens came to grief, and the survivors have learned to give the Caucasian varieties of the _Simia destructor_ a wide berth. They raise their young in the cavities of the tallest forest trees, and approach human habitations only at dawn of day and sometimes during the noonday heat, when creoles can be relied upon to indulge in a _siesta_ nap. In reliance on their protective colors, gray parrakeets frequent the dead timber of the coffee plantations, while the leaf-green Amazon parrot sticks to leaf trees.

"When they alight on a dry branch," says Captain Gosse, in his Jamaica chronicle, "their emerald hue is conspicuous and affords a fair mark for the gunner, but in a tree of full foliage their color proves an excellent concealment. They seem aware of this, and their sagacity prompts them to rely on it for protection. Often we hear their voices proceeding from a certain tree, or have marked the descent of a flock, but on proceeding to the spot, though the eye has not wandered from it, we can not discover an individual; we go close to the tree, but all is silent; we institute a careful survey of every part with the eye, to detect the slightest motion, or the form of a bird among the leaves, but in vain, and we begin to think that they have stolen off unperceived, but on throwing a stone into the tree a dozen voices burst forth into cry, and as many green birds dart forth upon the wing."

The gorgeous macaws, on the other hand, seem to owe their color contrasts to sexual selection. "Ya son vencidos los pavos de India"--"That does beat a Hindostan peacock"--exclaimed King Ferdinand, when Columbus introduced those most splendid products of the American tropics.

Nor can the exigencies of protection have evolved the glaring colors of the West Indian hornbill. The _toco_ (toucan), as the Cubans call the yellow-billed species, can be descried from a distance of two hundred yards, and is, indeed, not anxious to be admired at close range. Old specimens get as wary as mountain ravens, but, like crows, become ridiculously tame in captivity, and will follow their proprietors with loud croaks, every now and then opening their lunch-trap to indicate their desire for refreshment. They are, on the whole, the hardiest of all tropical birds, and can weather the winters of our coast towns as far north as Wilmington, in open-air cages, owing perhaps to their habit of extending their excursions to the high mountain ranges of their native land.

Economical Nature rarely wastes the gift of song on a bird of bright plumage, but it is less easy to understand why so many feathered beauties should have been afflicted with harsh and positively repulsive voices. The horrid screams of the peacocks, guinea hens, and macaws can hardly be supposed to charm their mates, and are too easily recognized to deter their natural enemies. But the roars (there is no more adequate word) of some species of hornbills would almost seem intended to serve the latter purpose.

"The voice of the _Buceros bicornis_," says Wallace, "can be plainly heard at a distance of a mile, so that the amazement of travelers visiting its haunts seems explicable enough. Its screams may be described as something between the bray of a jackass and the shriek of a locomotive, and are not surpassed in power by any sound that an animal is capable of making. They re-echo through the hills to such a degree that it is difficult to assign the noise to a bird, and are sometimes kept up so continuously as to become absolutely unbearable."

The condor and the harpy eagle have not found their way across the Caribbean Sea, but the West Indies boast three varieties of fish eagles, several species of mountain falcons, and a curious singing owl, the _oriya_, that chants its serenades in the plaintive strain of the whip-poor-will, and is dreaded by the Porto Rico darkeys as a bird of ill-omen:

"Grita l'oriya: Venga amigo,
Venga conmigo a mi patria,
Venga te-digo!"

Small hooting owls abound, and there are four species of sparrow hawks, one of them not much larger than a finch.

It is probably the smallest bird of prey, and there is no doubt that one species of West Indian humming bird is the smallest bird on earth, the _Vervain colibri_, of Jamaica, that hides its nest under an orange leaf, and, though an insect-eater, could be easily overpowered by an able-bodied bumblebee. In beauty some of the south Cuban species rival those of the Amazon Valley, and frequent every flowering shrub from the jungles of the coast lands to the highland meadows of the Sierra Maestra. In Hayti there are parklike plateaus where they often appear in swarms at a time of the year when the forests of the foothills are drenched by the afternoon cloudbursts of the rainy season, and on some of the smaller Antilles they are seen only during the flowering period of special plants.

In the solitudes of the Morne Range (San Domingo) mountain ravens rear their brood in the crevices of steep rocks, and fiercely attack birds of prey, not excepting the black-crested eagle, that now and then visits the sierras in quest of conies. But the winged constables of the highlands rarely leave their mountain reservation. Of Abd-el-Wahab, the Arabian heretic, it used to be said that "Mohammedan zealots shrank in affright from his superior fanaticism," and on the midway terraces of the Dominican sierras the persecution mania of the giant crow yields to that of the great shrike, the _Lanius rufus_, that operates pairwise and assails all winged comers with absolutely reckless courage.

The raven of the Mornes seems to be identical with the cosmopolitan forager that is found in the uplands of the eastern continent from the bleak summit regions of the Hindu-Kush to the sierras of Portugal, and from the Atlas to the Norwegian Alps; but there are several exclusively West Indian species of the genus _Corvus_, including a steel-blue rook that flits about the Cuban coffee plantations and has a curious habit of perching on a stump and talking to itself in a sort of croaking chuckle for half hours together.

The _gallinæ_, as might be expected from their limited wing-power, are well represented in the number of individuals, rather than of species. Turkeys, though abundant in the coast forests of Central America, are not found wild in any part of the West Indies, where the perennial presence of berries would be as inviting as the absence of foxes.

In the mountains some species of curassow have, however, developed into a stately game bird, the _Oreophasis niger_, or highland "pheasant," that lays a dozen large eggs, and in its courtship season becomes so infatuated that it can be approached and killed with a common walking-stick. The consequent persecution has made it rather scarce in famine-stricken Cuba, but in Hayti it can still be seen in troops of a dozen or more, scratching up the dry leaves of the sierra forests, or pecking at insect-haunted shrubs, exactly like a flock of Tennessee turkeys.

There are also several varieties of true pheasants, and two species of quail (besides the above-mentioned _codornilla_), and in eastern Cuba numerous barnyard chickens have taken to the woods and become so shy that it seems a puzzle how their ancestors in the coast range of Burmah could ever be captured and domesticated. They still practice polygamy, combined with a system of co-operative housekeeping, to judge from the number of eggs that are often found in one nest. At the approach of an unfeathered biped the hen bird takes wing with a screech, and is apt to vanish for the rest of that day. The roosters are rarely seen, their glaring colors having faded into more protective shades of olive and brown, but at dawn of day their shrill reveille can be heard from afar in the heart of the pathless jungle woods.

[_To be continued._]

INSANE CHARACTERS IN FICTION AND THE DRAMA.

BY PROF. CESARE LOMBROSO.

One of the things that most strikes one who compares the ancient theater, and even the theater of a few years ago, with the modern theater, is the enormous difference in the character of the personages, and particularly the curious frequency of insane as principal personages in the modern theater. We have come to such a point that one may be almost sure that in reading over a new play, by Ibsen, for example, he will find three or four insane personages in it, if, the characters are not all so. These madmen have characteristics so particularized as to seem as if they might have been depicted by an alienist. If the protagonists are not mad, they are agitated by such violent and strange passions as the ordinary world never meets in life; which it therefore refuses to accept when they are described in a scientific book, but nevertheless receives them when it sees them in the scenes or meets them in the romances of the great modern novelists.

Ibsen, for example, has made a most exact picture of the progressive general paralysis which arises, precisely as he depicts it, in men of genius, of great mental activity, who have wasted their hereditary power in pleasures or excessive work; and there is in them both impulsiveness and want of will power, complete perversion of all the instincts, and mental confusion, alternating here and there with genial flashes; but he is wrong in accumulating in a single subject the maladies of a large number of diseased, and therefore exaggerating their eccentricities--as he exaggerates atavism and heredity of disease when he makes the morbid son repeat the same incoherent phrases as the father from whom he inherits his disorder used.

Just and true, however, is that other form of heredity under which from a father corrupted by licentious indulgence and by alcohol, and criminally vicious, is born, besides a paresic son, a lascivious and criminal daughter, who throws herself into prostitution at the first opportunity without any special cause.

So, too, that love of art existing now as only a dream, and that egotistic good nature which enjoys the advantages of a mother's care without gratitude, those short accesses of genial eloquence followed by fury which burst out from the midst of apathy, and which are drowned in the intoxication of alcohol with a complete, immediate forgetfulness of everything, are specific traits of paralytic dementia.

Ibsen, in Hedda Gabler, describes to us a neurotic woman who, being pregnant, and therefore suffering more acute attacks, avenges herself, though married, upon her former lover, who had left her, by burning the manuscripts which he expected to make him famous. Virile, like all criminals, she nursed her resentment from youth.

In the Pillars of Society the great political characters are rogues and neurotics.

In Berkmann the true criminal banker comes into play. He does not kill or ravish, but appropriates the money belonging to his bank under the illusion that he will be able to make great gains with it through the accomplishment of wonderful things that will secure to him his single joy--power; and that he can then restore the sum with redoubled interest.

This case is of a kind of very frequent occurrence, and shows a complete absence in the banker of affection and of moral sense. He sacrifices the woman who loves him to further the desires of an accomplice. He has a faithful friend who, robbed by him, continues to visit him every day and give him the solace of admiration even when all despise him; and he repels him when he fails to absolve him and to believe in the possibility of his return to power. Later the defaulter pretends that he has studied his own case, and has probed it in every way, with the result of a complete acquittal of himself. And why all this? Because he has used the money of others for great purposes: to connect seas, to excavate the millions that are shut up in the bosom of the earth and are crying out to be brought into the light. Thus it is that with the combined genius and delirium of megalomaniacs he hears the call of the minerals and the groaning of the ships longing to be set free. Conscience, duty, and probity do not exist for him. He believes that his quality as a man of genius permits him everything; therefore he sacrifices to his chimeras the beings who love him most. "I am," he says, "like a Napoleon disabled by a shot in his first battle"; and he does not perceive that he has grown old, that he has a mortal heart disease; and he dreams of returning to power and of hearing men ask the benefit of his advice, and no longer talks with anybody, because there is nobody but his old lover who does not believe him guilty.

Finally, repulsed by all, he plunges into the whirl of life and the torment of the mountain, and dies at last of syncope; while his equally egotistical son deserts the mother who adores him to go to the south with the wealthy Amasia, daughter of his father's enemy.

In Dostoievski, madmen, especially epileptics, constitute the absolute majority of the characters; or else they are born criminals, such as my school has attempted to identify by the figures on the hand.

"This strange family," he writes in The House of the Dead, "had an air which attracted notice at the first glance." All the prisoners were melancholy, envious, terribly vain, presumptuous, susceptible, and formal in the highest degree. Vanity ruled always, without the least sign of shame or repentance or the least sorrow over the commission of an offense. Nearly all the convicts dreamed aloud or raved during sleep. Most usually they spoke words of abuse and slang, talked of knife and axe. "We are a ruined people," they said; "we have no bowels; therefore we cry out in the night."

This impossibility of feeling remorse or penitence, along with vanity and exaggerated love of pomp, are characteristics well known to all observers. But other traits were manifested perhaps more conspicuous, and such as are common to children. On feast days the more elegant ones dressed gorgeously, and could be seen parading themselves through the barracks. Pleasure in being well dressed amounted to childishness in them.

Reasoning has no power upon men like Petroff, because they have not any decisive will. If they have, there are no longer obstacles to it. Such persons are born with an idea that moves them unconsciously all their lives hither and thither. They are quiet till they have found some object that strongly arouses their desire; then they no longer spare even their heads. "More than once have I wondered to see how Petroff robbed me in spite of the affection he had for me. This happened to him at intervals, when he had a strong desire to drink. A person like him is capable of assassinating a man for twenty-five soldi, only to drink a litre; on other occasions he would scorn thousands of rubles. He often confessed his thefts to me, lamenting that I no longer had the objects, but showed no penitence for having stolen them; bore reproofs because he thought they were inevitable, or because he deserved to receive them; because I ought to punish him to compensate myself for the things I had lost, but thought within himself that they were trifles that one ought to be above speaking of."

Further on the novelist speaks of the smuggler by profession, a pleasant fellow, condemned for life for his offenses, who could not lose the instinct for smuggling brandy into the prison. He received only a ridiculous profit, was greatly afraid of the rod, although he had rarely passed under it, wept, swore that he would not offend any more, and then fell down.

Zola also reproduces my epileptic moral madman in _La Bête Humaine_, in the alcoholic in _L'Assommoir_, the paranoiac in Work, and himself confesses to having taken the brief of his immortal chain of romances, Rougon, from a study made by Aubry in a provincial family celebrated for its richness in degenerates, criminals, and insane, all derived from a dull, neurotic Keratry.

Daudet depicts in Jack a series of _mattoidi_, that particular species of insane which I first discovered, that occupies a position between paranoiacs, geniuses, and imbeciles.

ANCIENT ROMANCE AND THEATER.--We turn now to the ancient theater and romance. All the Roman novels of Petronius and Apuleius are rich in obscene, mythological, and magical adventures, most improbable and satirical, without ever defining a character or including a real madman.

In the ancient Greek theater, while the idea of heredity is discernible under the form of fate, while violent passion is every now and then depicted under marvelous forms, while anomalies strike us, and furies of Ajax and Dejanira, of Orestes and Oedipus, and the melancholy of Philoctetes, they all still have a common type, which is not perceived in ordinary life. They are madmen who do not exist in any asylum, who seem symbolical, and have little correspondence with the men of the mythological and heroic epoch to which they all belonged; they never, except in Euripides, present a specific personage, nor ever, unless with rare exceptions--as in the Persians of Æschylus and a few other lost works, like the Siege of Miletus--deal with contemporary historical facts.

These poets were concerned with the symbol, the moral, the tradition, and, if I may be permitted the term, the blasphemy, the declamation, rather than with depicting the person. This is further seen in the comedy of the Greek decadence, and still further in that of the Romans, in which, except in the political squibs, the same personages nearly always appear, as well as showing out of the masks intended for the common people--and these figures have come down to us. There are nearly always the old miser or rake, the go-between slave, the braggart soldier. The plots were likewise the same: changed children, reconciled lovers, except in the Greek political satires, in which the demerits of the adversary were exaggerated into the most atrocious caricature, and which became like real humorous journals of the political trifles of the day.

Yet these highly cultivated peoples, agitated by grand public passions, had absorbing, moving controversies--the struggles of the Gracchi, the banishment of Themistocles and Aristides, and the varying fortunes of Marius, of which no trace is found. Nor, for the rest, did the Latins, who were our masters, and were, as we are after them, copyists, followers in the footsteps of their Greek predecessors, readapt contemporary events to their dramatic lines. We in our turn, down to Goldoni and Molière, and even to this very century, have copied those ancient comic and tragic writers, warming them up afresh from Orestes and Clytemnestra, and from events which had not the least echo among us. Trissin, Maffei, and Alfieri delineated more or less, on one side tyrants, on the other tyrannicides, which have little to distinguish them from one another. So in Schiller and Goethe, all the passions are of the scene rather than of personages. Thus Faust, for example, and Margaret, are not persons who have a special character. They are, in fact, personages who cover a symbol, who would tell the story of literature, the story of the beautiful, the skepticism of knowledge, but they tell it with a number of interesting, moving facts, without delineating an individuality. Faust is neither very good nor very bad, since he with his easy way of speaking commits rogueries of every kind till finally he is redeemed. He is a scientific student with a passion for investigation, but in his enthusiasm, instigated by the devil or by doubt, he too often deserts the search for the truth for that of pleasure, too often forsakes the studies that had ennobled his life from youth, and as a man to enjoy the nights of the Brocken, and worse, the favors of Margaret, of Helen, till the moment when he redeems himself by saving a people; but he does this at the last instant, when he is about to die, and has nothing more to enjoy. Margaret, too, is a child like other children, who, like so many others, suffers herself to be beguiled by manly beauty, and has no good qualities except that of being able to die with fortitude, hoping with the penalty to expiate the sin, which is, in fact, more the devil's than hers.

The elder Dumas invented an immense diverting confusion of facts, but his personages are always the same, and are the occasion, the instrument, the setting of the adventures.

THE REASONS FOR THIS ABSENCE.--The inquiry into the reasons of this absence of insane persons in the older romances and dramas is a curious one. The first cause lies evidently in the law of proceeding in every organism as in every work from the simple to the complex. As in penal law, not the criminal but the crime was studied at first, while now both are studied together; as in primordial medicine only the disease was studied, while now the patient is studied first of all; so in the drama and in comedy, in the measure that the thought has become discriminating, it has substituted or rather associated with observation of the fact _per se_, that of the author of the fact. The study, of course, exacts more acumen, but it also better satisfies our reinvigorated culture and opens broader horizons to us.

We have thus done more than abandon the pedantesque scale of the old time and the mere study of the fact; we have introduced characters into the personages, which, while they correspond to living and real characters that we have under our eyes, attempt to resolve a problem and teach us a moral, and go so far as to represent to us a symbolical idea which is a pure abstraction of the author's, reaching thence the maximum of complication.

Naturally, such salient characters as madmen, eccentrics, and criminals would not be likely to escape the notice of the dramatist, who finds in them motives for great effects without departing from truth and probability.

But there is another more material reason for the recent introduction of insane characters into the theater, and for their greater frequency and participation in real life. It has been remarked that insane persons have multiplied a hundredfold with civilization, to such an extent that where a few years ago one madhouse was enough, now five hundred and six are needed. Taking, for example, the statistics of the most progressive country in the world, those of the United States, furnished by its invaluable census report,[A] we see that the number of insane persons, which was 15,610 in 1850, 24,042 in 1860, and 37,432 in 1870, rose in 1880 to 91,994; while the population, from 23,191,876 in 1850, increased to 38,558,371 in 1870, to 50,155,783 in 1880--that is, while the population doubled in a little more than thirty years, the insane increased sixfold; so, in the last decade the increase in population was thirty per cent, and that of insane one hundred and fifty-five per cent.

In France[B] there were 131.1 insane per 100,000 inhabitants in 1883, 133 in 1884, 136 in 1888. These figures indicate that the number of insane is larger in the most civilized countries, and is increasing every year. It may indeed be said that many of these insane are not produced but are only revealed by civilization, and that the opening of the large asylums has caused a considerable number to be brought into the light who were not known of before. It is true that the greater care we give now to the insane, as well as to consumptives, makes them longer-lived. And it is true that as the mind grows enlightened criminals come to be regarded as insane and thus increase the apparent number of such. But all this is not sufficient to explain a doubling in a decade, a tenfold increase in twenty years.

We know, too, that civilization has brought on the development of new forms of disease, which hardly existed before. For example, general progressive paralysis was formerly so rare that no special name was given to it till our time, while now it forms the larger quota of the maladies of the wealthy, of thinkers, and of military men. Epilepsy has greatly increased in its psychical form, so that what are called psychical and obscure epilepsy are a revelation of our times, and that its close association with crime (which I believe to be one of the sure facts of modern psychiatry) is still accepted by only a very few alienists, not to say that it is rejected with indignation, and, I will remark, with profound ignorance, by most modern jurists.

Alcoholism, too, has taken on enormous proportions. Not that the ancients did not drink, but rather that pure alcohol had not yet been introduced; while in the middle ages it passed for one of the most efficacious remedies--_aqua vita_, living water. Dr. Beard has made a most judicious observation in America which I have been able to verify in Sicily--that there must be a very advanced degree of civilization, or rather of degeneracy produced by civilization, for inebriety to be transformed into that aggregation of disasters, especially of the nervous system, which is called alcoholism. Now we have not alcoholism only, but morphinism, cocainism, all stimuli of the nervous system, which are used by barbarians as potent excitants, but not to the point of producing stable alterations except in rare cases, like the _amuck_ of the Malays.

And now, we all of us, at least in the capitals and the great centers, find ourselves consumed by a feverish activity which makes the mind labor much more than Nature intended it should, under which is produced all this mass of neurasthenics, hystericals, besides the multitudes of moral insane, profoundly egotistical persons, without affection and wholly directed by a powerful passion for gold, for which they sacrifice everything, even salvation!

And, finally, we have that group of semi-insane, which I call _mattoidi_, and who are known as _détraqués_ in France and _cranks_ in North America--that is, those who have the livery of genius with a substratum of weakness and the practical cunning of the average man, who betray their errors only when they write, who hardly exist save among males (with a few exceptions, like Michel) and in the great centers. I have never seen them in the country. Civilization is now depopulating the country and building up the cities, as it is also augmenting physical excitants with alcoholism, morphinism, etc. Civilization emblazons the baton of the marshal, and not only of the marshal but of the president of the republic, in the eyes of everybody who can read and write. Why, then, should we not suppose that civilization can further derange the equilibrium of mental labor and, indirectly, therefore cause an increase of insanity?

Not only has the number of insane increased, but their importance in society has multiplied fourfold; for which reason we can not fail to give them attention. The morally insane in politics and the megalomaniac insane in the bank who inspired Ibsen are to be found walking around in every country. The blood-criminal, transmuted into the forger and the bankrupt, penetrates into our houses, and we suffer from him every day; while the insane man at first was not regarded, or was adored under the form of a saint or hated as a wizard, possessed of the devil always, or seemed a phenomenon strange to society, a species of extraplanetary meteor. If we add that the degeneration provoked by the abuses of civilization has begotten a multitude of forms akin to madness which afford a field for combinations now tragic, now strangely comic--like the phobia by which one is afraid to cross a room, or avoids a certain group of words, or refuses to know how many doors and windows there are on the street, or can not be at ease without saying sexual pacifying formulas; a class who with their perverted tastes form a real new world apart; and they all may inspire new dramatic settings forth.

As a third cause we add that in our age psychology has penetrated into all departments. There are psychologies of the senses, of the sentiments, of the will, the psychology of the crowd, of the insane, of criminals, and finally the psychology of the cell, or at least of the infusoria (Binet). Therefore, as statistics is applied to history, to politics, to religion, in the same way psychology has at last entered into romance and the drama, and has taken the lion's share. And, far from being repelled by the public, the authors who use it or abuse it, like Euripides and to a certain point Shakespeare, win the admiration of the public; and we are proud to see Zola taking from _L'Uomo delinquente_ the Jacques of his _Bête humaine_ to make an immortal figure of him, and Dostoiewski depicting innate criminals in his House of the Dead, and the criminaloid in his Crime and Punishment; and we do not despise Bourget when, making more a caricature of psychology than a psychology, he assumes to apply it to the toilets of women and the Parisian _cocottes_ under the form of a psychology of love.

It may at first sight seem a contradiction that we have shown that there were also found in antiquity at great intervals dramatic poets and romancers like Shakespeare, Dante, and Euripides who, led by the observing and creative instinct, did not confine themselves to events, but studied characters too, and, keenly perceiving the dramatic potencies in the character of insanity, treasured it up in their works. Thus Euripides depicts Helena, vain even into her old age, saving a part of the hair she was offering at the tomb of her sister so as not to lose what remained of her former beauty; and Orestes has not the simple bestial fury depicted by Æschylus, but has choreic movements, genial intervals, and a tendency to suicide, which show that the author had attained a true conception of the maniac.

In the Mahabharata the maiden Damaianti is described as made insane by love (Book II, st. iii) and Nalo, who, possessed by the demon Kali, stakes his kingdom on the dice, and, denying his wife, abandons her in the wood:

"And with soul slave to the thought, discolored face, and all absorbed in sighs, now lifting up the head, now musing, bereft of sense, you would say; a sudden pallor came on. With mind occupied with one desire, nor sleep, nor the table, nor the sight of familiar friends afforded pleasure, nor day nor night gave repose. Ah! poor miserable one! thus exclaiming and bursting into tears, by that lament, by those soul-sick acts, she was recognized by her friends."

Niceforus has shown how Dante in his Inferno has delineated in the damned the characteristics which my school gives to the born criminal. Shakespeare has done better, and has divined many criminal characteristics through the greater intensity of the crime in the criminal woman. Virile even when compared with the criminal man, Lady Macbeth is crueler than her husband, and, more than that, has many of the characteristics of men:

"Bring forth men-children only,
For thy undaunted mettle should compose
Nothing but males."

And Macbeth, as cool in the crime as the artful contriver of it, is hysterical and hypnotic, and in the accesses reproduces the acts and words of the tragedy, showing that the author knew that hysterics and somnambulists often repeat the acts and the emotions which mark the climax of their malady.

Hamlet has the folly of doubts and hallucinations, simulates the ravings of a madman, but in his suspicious cunning discovers and anticipates what is contemplated to his harm, is homicidal through fear, and is yet often discreet, and a good lover, save that his love vanishes before the fixed idea.

In Ophelia, disappointed love, the contact with a madman or a pretended one, the death of her father almost under her very eyes, provoke a species of madness which would now be called mental confusion, with vague ideas of persecution, dim recollections of love betrayed and of her father, incoherent and confused expressions ending in automatic suicide. This confirms our conclusions.

Genius has also anticipated an epoch in the use and abuse of lunatics, just because time is canceled for genius, because genius anticipates the future work of centuries. But on this subject the inquiry is pertinent why, while in the complaisant literary world such creations as the Argenson of Daudet, the Jack of Zola, and the Eliza of Goncourt find, if not an immediate, a kindly and ready acceptance--while all the great artists, even the most ancient ones, have given the type which I assign to the born delinquents to executioners and criminals--the world has refused to accept the existence of the criminal type of insanity in genius, and the relations in criminals between epilepsy and crime which are nevertheless received in romance and the drama. It is because when we are in the presence of true figures, made to move before us under a strong light by the great artists, the consciousness of the truth which lies dormant in all of us, smothered and broken under distortion by the schools, reawakens, and rebels against the conventional forms which they have imposed; all the more so because the charm of art has vastly magnified the lines of the truth, has rendered them more evident, and has thus much diminished the effort required to master them. If, on the other hand, we base our conclusion upon cold statistics and what I should call a skeleton study of the facts, we find the old views rising in confusion with those of sentiment and the artistic sense, and we arrive at nothing.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] Compendium of the Tenth Census of the United States, Part II, p. 1659. See documents in the new statistical laboratory, the only one in Italy, of Professor Cognetti, recently published at Turin.

[B] Bodio. Bulletin de l'Institut international de Statistique, 1889, pp. 112 and 128. See some Sanitary Statistics in Italy and other European States, by Dr. Rasori.

COLONIAL EXPANSION AND FOREIGN TRADE.

BY JACOB SCHOENHOF.

Fifty years have elapsed since the adoption of free trade by England. It was hoped that the free entrance of commodities extended to all the world would pave the way to an era of mutual peace and good will. But, judging by the political situation, and taking the armaments as an outward sign of good intentions, the era of peace and good will among nations is certainly far off. To get a trading advantage here and a concession from a semibarbarous country there is still the ambitious striving of the cabinets and the diplomacy of Europe. To give the striving emphasis, industry is taxed to the breaking point and labor to the starving point. Russia exhausts her resources in a railroad through the Siberian waste in her endeavor to obtain an outlet to the sea, which is jealously closed to her at the southwestern end of her dominions by England. The trader of Manchester, fearing for his markets, grows frantic at the prospect of Russian cotton goods being brought to China or to India. The mere acquisition of a port in Manchuria by Russia threatens to seal his doom. But he might look on with complacency. Russia's labor is very dear, capital is dear, wages are on the Asiatic level, famine still stalks through the land, intercommunication is made difficult by the lack of roads, and her wonderful natural resources lie unimproved because the eyes of greed, like those of the dog crossing the stream, are turned on the coveted piece of meat he sees reflected in the water, and to grasp which he drops the one he holds in his mouth. France bristles with bayonets, and is constantly at pains to increase her naval armaments, about whose seaworthiness her own minister of marine expresses suspicions, in obedience to a nervous restlessness for foreign acquisition. England, after her feat in civilizing savages and barbarians in the customary fashion, shown again at Omdurman, is ready to turn her war dogs on France, because the latter has the temerity to demand a slice of Soudanese territory. Well might she have given as hush-money, or for the mere grace of the action, a few thousand square miles of a country closed to access except by the permission of Great Britain, which has successfully pre-empted every desirable bit of land in sight.

Germany, instead of using her newly liberated energies at home in an endeavor to elevate the miserable condition of her working classes, taxes their bread and meat, never too freely supplied, to increase the size of her armies and the number of her battle ships. The defense and expansion of her colonial empire is her leading thought. A strange paradox: The workingman and the peasant are overburdened with taxes on the necessaries of life, so as to procure markets for a limited quantity of factory products outside of the field secured in open competition.

While professing friendship and brotherly love, they all have their eyes on their neighbor's throat, fearful only lest the other might clutch first.

As we are in danger of being drawn into this vortex, it is well to examine the range of possibilities and see what the trade amounts to, to obtain which the scientific intellect of Europe and America has been strained to its limits to discover new means of destruction for attack and defense unknown to the other brothers in the common bond of civilization.

It is a matter of course that trade among European nations does not come within this circle, nor of European nations with the United States. It does not depend on battle ships. In the annexed tables I have classified the countries in three classes: (1) Independent states; (2) colonies of European countries, populated by people of European stock; and (3) colonies and dependencies of European countries, but of non-European stock.

I have reduced the values of imports and exports of the different countries, published in their own currencies, to American dollars. As the values are paper currencies, silver currencies, or conventional values, and of fluctuating rates, I have in such instances taken a yearly average, which will be found in the footnotes of the tables.

_I. Trade of Independent Countries other than of Europe and North America._

Key:
(A) Number of inhabitants.
(B) Importations. Thousands of dollars.
(C) Exportations. Thousands of dollars.
(D) Imports per capita. Dollars.
(E) Exports per capita. Dollars.

---------------------------+---------+---------+---------+-------+------
NAMES OF COUNTRIES. | (A) | (B) | (C) | (D) | (E)
---------------------------+---------+---------+---------+-------+------
_Asia_ (1895). | | | | |
| | | | |
China[A] | 383,253 | 128,772 | 107,499 | .34 | .28
Japan[B] | 42,270 | 90,681 | 62,443 | 2.14 | 1.47
All other states | 27,000 | 30,000 | 82,000 | 1.10 | 1.18
| | | | |
_America._ | | | | |
| | | | |
Argentina[C] | 4,000 | 103,058 | 108,671 | 26.50 | 27.17
Brazil[D] | 16,000 | 96,000 | 97,000 | 6.00 | 6.06
Chile[E] | 2,700 | 69,200 | 72,900 | 25.62 | 27.00
Peru[F] | 2,600 | 7,560 | 9,000 | 2.90 | 3.30
Mexico[G] | 12,600 | 42,000 | 22,000 | 3.32 | 1.76
Uruguay[H] | 800 | 25,000 | 30,000 | 31.25 | 37.50
Venezuela[I] | 2,300 | 17,000 | 22,000 | 7.40 | 9.56
All other states | 11,300 | 34,000 | 46,800 | 3.00 | 4.14
| | | | |
_South Africa_ | | | | |
| | | | |
Independent states | 1,000 | 75,000 | 12,000 | 75.00 | 12.00
+---------+---------+---------+ |
Total independent states | 505,800 | 718,271 | 622,313 | |
+=========+=========+=========+ |
Asiatic states | 452,500 | 249,453 | 201,942 | |
American and South African | 53,300 | 468,818 | 420,371 | |
---------------------------+---------+---------+---------+-------+------

FOOTNOTES:

[A] Haikwan tael, 74.9 cents.

[B] Yen, 52.9 cents.

[C] Peso, gold, 96.5 cents.

[D] Milreis, paper (1896), 20-1/2 cents.

[E] Peso, gold.

[F] Soler, 43 cents.

[G] Dollar (47 cents) for exports, gold dollar for imports.

[H] Peso, $1.

[I] Bolivar, 19.3 cents.

The year is 1896, and where a different one is taken it is so marked against the country in the table. The figures only represent the direct merchandise trade. All specie and bullion shipments are eliminated from the account.

_II. Trade of India and Dependencies and of Colonies and other Possessions of the United Kingdom (Year ending March, 1897)._

Key:
(A) Number of inhabitants.
(B) Importations. Thousands of dollars.
(C) Exportations. Thousands of dollars.
(D) Imports per capita. Dollars.
(E) Exports per capita. Dollars.

---------------------------+---------+---------+---------+-------+------
NAMES OF COLONIES AND | | | | |
OTHER POSSESSIONS. | (A) | (B) | (C) | (D) | (E)
---------------------------+---------+---------+---------+-------+------
India and its | | | | |
dependencies[A] | 290,690 | 284,026 | 378,732 | .97 | 1.30
| | | | |
_Colonies._ | | | | |
| | | | |
Cape Colony | 1,820 | 91,800 | 39,000 | 50.04 | 20.15
Natal | 778 | 18,000 | 6,500 | 23.15 | 8.20
Gold Coast and other | | | | |
Central African | | | | |
possessions | 36,700 | 19,000 | 17,000 | .52 | .46
Canada | 5,125 | 118,000 | 121,000 | 23.05 | 24.04
West Indies | 3,614 | 30,000 | 25,000 | 8.33 | 6.94
Australasia and Oceanica | 4,793 | 204,500 | 210,000 | 42.65 | 43.75
+---------+---------+---------+ |
Trade of all countries | | | | |
under British flag | 343,520 | 765,326 | 797,232 | |
+=========+=========+=========+ |
Trade of colonies with | | | | |
white population | 16,130 | 461,320 | 411,584 | |
Trade of Asiatic | | | | |
dependencies | 290,690 | 284,026 | 378,732 | |
---------------------------+---------+---------+---------+-------+------

FOOTNOTE:

[A] Rupee, 32 cents. For Straits Settlement and Ceylon, Mexican
dollars @ 47 cents.

_III. Trade of Foreign Possessions of all other Countries than the United Kingdom._

Key:
(A) Number of inhabitants in thousands.
(B) Importations in thousands of dollars.
(C) Exportations in thousands of dollars.
(D) Imports per capita. Dollars.
(E) Exports per capita. Dollars.
------------------------+--------+--------+--------+-------+-------
COUNTRIES AND THEIR | (A) | (B) | (C) | (D) | (E)
COLONIAL POSSESSIONS. | | | | |
------------------------+--------+--------+--------+-------+-------
_A. France_ (1894). | | | | |
| | | | |
Asia | 21,821 | 16,000 | 25,000 | .73 | 1.14
Africa, outside of | | | | |
Algeria and Tunis | 24,500 | 13,000 | 22,000 | .53 | .50
America and Oceanica | 460 | 14,500 | 12,600 | 31.50 | 27.40
| | | | |
_B. Germany_ (1897). | | | | |
| | | | |
Africa | 10,200 | 2,189 | 1,078 | .21 | .10
New Guinea | 400 | 72 | 50 | .18 | .12
| | | | |
_C. Italy._ | | | | |
| | | | |
Africa | 400 | 5,600 | 3,000 | |
| | | | |
_D. Netherlands_ (1895).| | | | |
| | | | |
East India | 34,000 | 61,000 | 89,600 | 1.80 | 2.63
| | | | |
_E._ | | | | |
| | | | |
Philippines | 7,600 | 11,000 | 20,000 | 1.50 | 2.63
------------------------+--------+--------+--------+-------+-------

_Summary of Statistical Tables of the Trade of Colonies and Dependencies of European States and of Independent States other than of Europe and the United States._

Key:
(A) Number of inhabitants in thousands.
(B) Importations. Thousands of dollars.
(C) Exportations. Thousands of dollars.
(D) Inhabitants. Per cent to total.
(E) Imports. Per cent to total.
(F) Exports. Per cent to total.
----------------------+----------+---------+---------+-----+-----+-----
NAMES OF DIVISIONS BY | | | | | |
COUNTRIES, COLONIES, | (A) | (B) | (C) | (D) | (E) | (F)
AND RACES. | | | | | |
----------------------+----------+---------+---------+-----+-----+-----
Totals of tabulations | | | | | |
I, II, and III |1,584,099 |1,587,758|1,540,858|100 |100 |100.0
| | | | | |
Under British flag | 343,520 | 765,320| 797,232| 36 | 48.3| 50.0
| | | | | |
Under all other flags | 605,180 | 818,779| 790,527| 64 | 51.7| 49.8
| | | | | |
Peoples of European | | | | | |
descent | 69,430 | 909,020| 831,984| 7.3| 57.4| 52.4
| | | | | |
Peoples of other races| 879,271 | 675,079| 755,774| 92.7| 42.6| 47.6
| | | | | |
Anglo-Saxon | 17,130 | 519,300| 407,584| 1.8| 32.8| 25.7
| | | | | |
Latin-American | 52,300 | 389,700| 424,400| 5.5| 24.6| 26.7
| | | | | |
Asiatic races | 806,611 | 618,079| 706,274| 85.0| 39.0| 44.0
| | | | | |
African races | 72,500 | 57,000| 49,500| 7.7| 3.6| 3.6
| | | | | |
States and colonies, | | | | | |
wool chief export | 11,100 | 441,300| 394,500| 1.2| 27.8| 24.9
----------------------+----------+---------+---------+-----+-----+-----

In examining these tables carefully the reader can form an idea as to how the world's trade is divided, and see what the world is arming to its teeth about.