From this point of view it is hardly necessary to remark upon the absurdity of Lombroso’s assertion that the jurists, who formerly condemned and punished animals, were more logical and consistent than those who now pass sentence of death on cretins like Grandi or cranks (_grafomani matteschi_) like Passannante and Guiteau (_Archivio di Psichiatria._ Torino, 1881, Vol. II. Fasc. IV.), since he utterly ignores the preventive character and purpose of judicial punishment and its practical utility in checking the homicidal propensities of such persons, whereas the criminal prosecution and capital punishment of a pig for infanticide will not have the slightest effect in preventing other pigs from mangling and devouring little children.
That animals might be deterred from doing violence to men by putting one of their kind to death and suspending its body as a scarecrow is maintained by a distinguished writer in the first half of the sixteenth century, Hierolymus Rosarius, the nuntius of Pope Clement VII. to the court of Ferdinand I., then King of Hungary, who states that in Africa crucified lions are placed near towns, and that other lions, however hungry they may be, are kept away through fear of the same punishment: _cujus pœnæ metu, licet urgeat fames, desinunt_. He records also that in riding from Cologne towards Düren, he and his companions saw in the vast forest two wolves in brogans hanging on a gallows, just like two thieves, as a warning to the rest of the pack: “Et nos ab Agrippina Colonia Duram versus equitantes in illa vasta silva, vidimus duos caligatos lupos non secus quam duos latrones, furcæ suspensos; _quo similis pœnæ formidine a maleficio reliqui deterreantur_.” In like manner the American farmer sets up a dead hawk as a deterrent for the protection of his hens. We may add that Rosarius entertained a high opinion of the intelligence and moral character of animals and wrote a book to prove their frequent superiority to men in the use of their rational faculties. This very clever and original work entitled: _Quod animalia bruta sæpe ratione utantur melius homine_, was first published by Gabriel Naudé at Paris in 1648; an enlarged edition was issued by Ribow at Helmstedt in 1728, with a dissertation on the soul in animals.