Innate Cruelty--Its Three Forms--Dumollard--Andreas Bichel--A Dutch Priest-- Other instances of Inherent Cruelty--Cruelty united to Refinement--A Hungarian Bather in Blood--Suddenness with which the Passion is developed--Cannibalism; in pregnant Women; in Maniacs--Hallucination; How Produced--Salves--The Story of Lucius--Self-deception.
What I have related from the chronicles of antiquity, or from the traditional lore of the people, is veiled under the form of myth or legend; and it is only from Scandinavian descriptions of those afflected with the wolf-madness, and from the trials of those charged with the crime of lycanthropy in the later Middle Ages, that we can arrive at the truth respecting that form of madness which was invested by the superstitious with so much mystery.
It was not till the close of the Middle Ages that lycanthropy was recognized as a disease; but it is one which has so much that it is ghastly and revolting in its form, and it is so remote from all our ordinary experience, that it is not surprising that the casual observer should leave the consideration of it, as a subject isolated and perplexing, and be disposed to regard as a myth that which the feared investigation might prove a reality.
In this chapter I purpose briefly examining the conditions under which men have been regarded as werewolves.
Startling though the assertion may be, it is a matter of fact, that man, naturally, in common with other carnivora, is actuated by an impulse to kill, and by a love of destroying life.
It is positively true that there are many to whom the sight of suffering causes genuine pleasure, and in whom the passion to kill or torture is as strong as any other passion. Witness the number of boys who assemble around a sheep or pig when it is about to be killed, and who watch the struggle of the dying brute with hearts beating fast with pleasure, and eyes sparkling with delight. Often have I seen an eager crowd of children assembled around the slaughterhouses of French towns, absorbed in the expiring agonies of the sheep and cattle, and hushed into silence as they watched the flow of blood.
Teh propensity, however, exists in different degrees. In some it is manifest simply as indifference to suffering, in others it appears as simple pleasure in seeing killed, and in others again it is dominant as an irresistible desire to torture and destroy.
This propensity is widely diffused; it exits in children and adults, in the gross-minded and the refined, the the well-educated and the ignorant, in those who have never had the opportunity of gratifying it, and those who gratify it habitually, in spite of morality, religion, laws, so that it can only depend on constitutional causes.
The sportsman and the fisherman follow a natural instinct to destroy, when they make war on bird, beast, and fish: the pretence that the spoil is sought for the table cannot be made with justice, as the sportsman cares little for the game he has obtained, when once it is consigned to his porch. The motive for his eager pursuit of bird or beast must be sought elsewhere; it will be found in the natural craving to extinguish life, which exists in his soul. Why does a child impulsively strike at a butterfly as it flits past him? He cares nothing for the insect when once it is beaten down at his feet, unless it be quivering in its agony, when he will watch it with interest. The child strikes at the fluttering creature because it has life in it, and he has an instinct within him impelling him to destroy life wherever he finds it.
Parents and nurses know well that children by nature are cruel, and that humanity has to be acquired by education. A child will gloat over the suffereings of a wounded animal till his mother bids him "put it out of his misery." An unsophisticated child would not dream of terminating the poor creature's agonies abruptly, any more than he would swallow whole a bon-bon till he had well sucked it. Inherent cruelty may be obscured by after impressions, or may be kept under normal restraint; the person who is constitutionally a Nero, may scarcely know his own nature, till by some accident the master passion becomes dominant, and sweeps all before it. A relaxation of the moral check, a shock to the controlling intellect, an abnormal condition of body, are sufficient to allow the passion to assert itself.
As I have already observed, this passion exits in different persons in different degrees.
In some it is exhibited in simple want of feeling for other people's sufferings. This
temperament may lead to crime, for the individual who is regardless of pain in another, will
be ready to destroy that other, if it suit his own purposes. Such an one was the pauper
Dumollard, who was the murderer of at least six poor girls, and who attempted to kill several
others. He seems not to have felt much gratification in murdering them, but to have been
so utterly indifferent to their sufferings, that he killed them solely for the sake of their
clothes, which were of the poorest description. He was sentenced to the guillotine, and
executed iin 1862.
GO BACK