After Death What?

by Cesare Lombroso, William Sloane Kennedy (Translator)

After Death What? is a book written by Cesare Lombroso, an Italian criminologist and physician, that explores the concept of life after death from a scientific and philosophical perspective. Lombroso examines various religious and spiritual beliefs about the afterlife and compares them to scientific evidence and theories, such as the laws of thermodynamics and the concept of energy conservation. He also delves into the possibility of communication with the dead and the existence of ghosts and other supernatural phenomena. The book is a fascinating and thought-provoking exploration of one of humanity's most enduring what happens to us after we die?1909. Researches into Hypnotic and Spiritualistic Phenomena and Their Interpretation.This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the old original and may contain some imperfections such as library marks and notations. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions, that are true to their original work.

440 pages, Paperback

First published September 15, 1988

About the author

Italian criminologist, physician, and founder of the Italian School of Positivist Criminology. Lombroso rejected the established Classical School, which held that crime was a characteristic trait of human nature.

Instead, using concepts drawn from physiognomy, early eugenics, psychiatry and Social Darwinism, Lombroso's theory of anthropological criminology essentially stated that criminality was inherited, and that someone "born criminal" could be identified by physical defects, which confirmed a criminal as savage, or atavistic.

Reviews

[Joseph Hirsch · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ditching the Calipers, picking up the Planchette

I love combing through these books in the "Forgotten" series. Their catalog is up to something like six-hundred thousand titles, on subjects ranging from witchcraft to cooking. Reaching into their stack is like going to the record store and picking vinyl from the dollar bin at random. You may get a gem or you may end up with dreck.

I'd read of Cesare Lombroso, known by some as the father of criminology and by others as a pseudo-scientist who lived and died by the now-discredited science of phrenology. I had a neutral view of Lombroso coming into this book. Having finished it, I'm still not sure what to think of him, his philosophy, or his ideas.

This book concerns itself with psychic phenomena, primarily with the spiritualist and medium Eusapia Palladino, a woman who supposedly could make tables levitate and manifested ectoplasm and spirits on photographic plates. Madame Palladino was repeatedly caught at various forms of humbug and chicane while doing her parlor tricks, but I believe most of her luck ran out well after Lombroso penned this piece (his ideas reached their vogue roughly at the heart of the Fin de siècle period, about a decade before Europe was torn apart by a fratricidal conflict from which it's still arguably reeling).

Lombroso entertains both the possible existence of psychic phenomena and the idea that claims to psychic phenomena can be discredited, though on a continuum he should probably be placed closer to the believer than the skeptic side of things (his analogy being that, if a fake is found out, it doesn't prove that all supposed psychics are fake, anymore than a pair of dentures proves there are no real teeth).

Arguing about whether or not there are ghosts (or using instruments to measure spiritual activity) isn't really what interests me, since people cling to belief (whether in spirits or scientism) with a fervor that defies logic, and so trying to talk anyone into or out of anything is a waste of time. What's most interesting about the book are those byways (too rare and intermittent, in my opinion) when Lombroso leaves the parlor and writes about doings further afield, especially shaman, priests, and sooths of ancient antiquity and far-flung Africa. It's important to remember that, while he doesn't show the greatest sensitivity in exploring the "Dark Continent" he is head and shoulders above most of his peers in the nascent science of anthropology in his willingness to at least document the customs and beliefs of the people he writes about without debasing them to grist for what the Germans called "Völkerschau" (human zoos, featuring members of the Khoikhoi tribe were all the rage in Europe at the time). Some of Lombroso's theories about perceiving with the left half of the body versus the right, as well as a kind of psychic harmony achieved in altered states, also serves as a fascinating kind of precursor to what would eventually become known as the bicameral hypothesis.

These really fascinating moments are, alas, too few and far between, for me to give this one more than a tepid recommendation. It's worth checking out, though, if you've got a few dollars and a couple hours to kill and you want to learn some knowledge too esoteric to use even on Jeopardy's Daily Double.

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

A FAMED CRIMINOLOGIST REVEALS HIS BELIEF IN SPIRITUALISM

Cesare Lombroso (1835-1909) was an Italian criminologist and physician; although an atheist, late in his life he embraced Spiritualism, under the influence of the medium Eusapia Palladino (with whom he had a physical relationship). [NOTE: Page references below pertain to the 1988 366-page Aquarian Press edition.]

He wrote in the Preface to this 1908 book, "When, at the close of a career... I began investigations into the phenomena of spiritism and afterwards determined to publish a book on the subject, my nearest friends rose against me on every side, crying, 'You will ruin an honorable reputation...' ... But all this talk did not make me hesitate for a single moment... It seemed to me a duty that, up to the very last of the few days now remaining to me, I should unflinchingly stand my ground in the very thick of the fight... note this well, that, however doubtful each separate case may appear, in the ensemble they form such a compact web of proof as wholly to baffle the scalpel of doubt." (Pg. xv-xvi)

He admits about Eusapia Pallodino, "Many are the crafty tricks she plays, both in the state of trance, and out of it---for example, freeing one of her hands, held by the controllers, for the sake of moving objects near her... and feigning to adjust her hair and then slyly pulling out one hair and putting it over the little balance tray of a letter weigher in order to lower it... And yet her deepest grief is when she is accused of trickery during the séances---accused unjustly, too, sometimes, it must be confessed, because we are now sure that phantasmal limbs are superimposed (or added to) her own and act as their substitute, while all the time they were believed to be her own limbs detected in the act of cozening for their owner's behoof..." (Pg. 102)

Discussing the appearance of mediums in "savage tribes," he states, "Thus the pathological epilepsoid origin of the medium is attested by the universal consensus of all ancient and barbarous peoples---a consensus carried to the point of adoration of epilepsy and to the artificial creation of epileptics in order thereby to secure a prophet, who is the genius of primitive peoples." (Pg. 155)

He also concedes, "the first impression (and I have not been without it myself) is that [Spiritualism] is a question of trickery---all this medium business... Let us add that even the scientist must agree that no group of natural phenomena lends itself more readily to fraud and doubt than does that of Spiritualism. Because, in the first place, all the rarest and most important occurrences always take place in obscurity, and no experimenter can receive as proved truth events which take place in the dark where they cannot be well controlled and observed." (Pg. 304-305)

He asserts, "It is certain that the spirits of the dead exhibit the personal peculiarities they had when living, only in a more conspicuous way." (Pg. 344)

This book will be of keen interest to anyone studying the history of Spiritualism.