for behoof of "students and others who desire to prepare themselves for philosophic pursuits," with a series of topics that have been much discussed in MIND:-Definition of Philosophy; its relation to Religion, to Natural Science, to Empirical Psychology; its Division (here made into Noetics, Metaphysics, Esthetics, Ethics), &c. These topics may soon again be coming to the front; and an effort will be made to give due consideration to the author's views by the side of any others that may be presented. There is the more need to pay him this attention because of the note he himself has taken of all that has already appeared in MIND on the subjects; but he is also otherwise so familiar with philosophical literature, and evidently so conversant with the needs and difficulties of students, that he deserves to be carefully listened to on his own account. Whether the questions raised, and discussed in so comprehensive a manner as they appear to be in the volume, are quite as much questions for the "beginner" as the author regards them, may be doubted.

Principles and Practice of Morality; or, Ethical Principles Discussed and Applied. By EZEKIEL GILMAN ROBINSON, D.D., LL.D., President of Brown University. Boston: Silver, Rogers & Co., 1888. Pp. xii..

252.

"The body of the book is divided into three parts: the first being devoted to the ascertainment and distribution of fundamental principles; the second to a discussion of these principles, under the general heading of Theoretic Morality; and the third to Practical Morality. The principles are ascertained by an analysis, first of moral action and then of personality, and are distributed under the four general divisions of conscience, moral law, will and virtue. Each of these receives distinct and independent treatment, special attention being given to the discussion of conscience and of the theories of virtue and grounds of obligation. In the treatment of these latter points, all the principles involved in the latest controversies among moralists are brought under review. The real ground of moral obligation, it is maintained, is in the eternal nature of God, all other grounds being regarded as requiring in the last analysis a recognition of this as the only ultimate. The treatise properly comes under the general title of intuitional."

Par

L'Homme Criminel. Etude anthropologique et médico-legale. CESARE LOMBROSO. Traduit sur la ive. Edition italienne par M. G. REGNIER et M. A. BOURNET, avec Préface par M. LETOURNEAU

Criminel-né-Fou moral-Epileptique. 2me Edition française. Paris F. Alcan; Turin: Bocca Frères, 1887. Pp. xxiv., 682. La Criminologie. Etude sur la Nature du Crime et la Théorie de la Pénalité. Par R. GAROFALO, Agrégé de l'Université de Naples. Ouvrage traduit de l'Italien et entièrement refondu par l'Auteur. Paris F. Alcan, 1888. Pp. xiii., 420.

Dégénérescence et Criminalité. Essai physiologique par CH. FÉRÉ, Médecin de Bicêtre. Avec 21 graphiques dans le texte. Paris: F. Alcan, 1888. Pp. 178.

La Contagion du Meurtre. Etude d'Anthropologie criminelle par Le Dr. PAUL AUBRY, Lauréat de l'Académie de Médecine (Prix Monbinne, 1887), Membre correspondant de la Société médico-psychologique, Membre de la Société d'Anthropologie de Paris. Paris: F. Alcan, 1888. Pp. 184.

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These books are all contributions to the new and important science of "Criminology". Prof. Lombroso, whose great work on the subject is made more accessible by the present French translation, has long been active and influential; the movement of which he is at the head having already extended itself from Italy into France, witness from 1886 M. Tarde's brilliant and original study, La Criminalité Comparée (MIND Xi. 587), so frequently cited by the Italian criminologists in these latest issues of their works. The investigations of the criminological school do not merely aim at constituting a new department of anthropology. While differing on many points of detail, the writers of the school agree in certain broad practical conclusions, viz., the necessity for retaining capital punishment and perpetual detention in extreme cases of the "criminal anomaly" (see L'Homme Criminel, Author's Preface, p. xiii.). These conclusions, however, are not developed in any detail in Prof. Lombroso's work, which is essentially a scientific study of criminals with a view to determining the characters of the criminal type or types. Beginning with an account of isolated phenomena of crime" in animals, and of the adumbrations of punishment that are met with among the social animals (pt. i. ch. 1), the author describes in the second place crime and punishment among savages (ch. 2), then "moral insanity and crime among children" (ch. 3). Thus the foundation is laid for the thesis maintained with the aid of most elaborate researches in the next two parts (ii. "Pathological Anatomy and Anthropometry of Crime," pp. 142-255; iii. "Biology and Psychology of the Born Criminal," pp. 257-669), that the criminal is the atavistic representative of the prehistoric man. The author's views have undergone some modification since the appearance of the first edition of his work. He now seeks to identify the anthropological type of the "born criminal" with the medical type of the "morally insane' (pt. iii. ch. 13); also defining the criminal and the morally insane types as sub-species of the "epileptoid" form of degeneration (pt. iii. ch. 14). His original thesis he combines, in the two chapters just mentioned, with his later ideas. The conclusions to which his arguments point are that so-called "moral insanity" is no real form of alienation, but is a "cretinism of the moral sense"; that it is thus identical with innate criminality; and that this consists in a certain combination of atavism with "epileptoid" degenerescence. Independent of his assignment of the factors of the criminal type to atavism or degenerescence, which must at present be more or less speculative, and in which some wavering is perceptible even now, the author's positive achievement is the experimental fixation, at least provisional, of the type itself. As to the existence of the "criminal anomaly" as a definite object of fruitful scientific research, there can, after Prof. Lombroso's investigations, be no doubt. The anatomical and physiognomical characters which he finds, as the result of statistical inquiries, to be marks of the criminal type may be divided into (1) anomalies that may be plausibly referred to atavism as being points in which the criminal agrees with the Mongolian or with savage races and differs from the normal European, (2) “pre-atavistic" characters, going back not to primitive man but to the lower animals, (3) absolutely "atypical" characters. In the "born criminal there is effacement of the national type. European criminals of different races resemble one another more than they resemble non-criminals of their own race. anatomical and physiognomical characters of the criminal type are found, singly or in combination, in a large percentage of persons condemned for crimes, though not in all. Their appearance in persons not condemned for crimes is relatively infrequent. When the cases are successively

The

considered of persons presenting one, two, &c., criminal characters, it is found that, as the number of characters becomes greater, the probability that the person presenting them has been condemned for a crime becomes greater in proportion. The complete criminal type, presenting all the characters, is found with great frequency among criminals; in a still larger percentage of the special class of habitual criminals; quite exceptionally among persons not condemned for any crime. None of the experimentally ascertained features of the criminal type, however, are infallible marks of criminality. The largest and most interesting division of the book is that which contains the author's physiological and psychological investigations of criminals-their degrees of sensitiveness to pain and to stimuli, physical and mental, their tattooing (on which he especially insists as an atavistic character), their argot, their religion, their literature, the "organisation of crime with its Draconian codes, &c. All this forms a perfect example of scientific work of the kind. The author finds himself forced to the conclusion that the true criminal type is incorrigible. Only in one case has he observed a genuine "moral metamorphosis "of a "born criminal". In this case an attack of insanity had for its after-effect the permanent transformation of a prisoner condemned for " vol à main armée " into a philanthropist (pp. 403-4).

If Prof. Lombroso is the great scientific initiator of the Italian criminological school, Signor Garofalo is the thinker who has best and most consistently set forth its practical conclusions in relation to their theoretical basis. He has been the first, for example, to state quite definitely the result to which its researches point as regards "moral insanity". This term, he contends, ought to be expelled from the vocabulary of science (p. 91). A person who is devoid of certain moral instincts is anomalous (vitiosus, as the jurists say), not diseased (morbosus). What the mental pathologist calls "moral insanity" is simply instinctive criminality. When criminal acts proceed from a permanent criminal character and temperament, then they are acts of the person, and therefore punishable if any actions are at all. The criminal acts of the insane do not proceed from such a permanent character and temperament, but are results of the disease, that is, suffering, of the personality. The social sentiment justifies the adoption of different forms of repression in the case of "infirmity" and of "monstrosity". Penal legislation, according to the view developed by the author, ought to be the expression of the "natural reaction" of society against "natural criminality". By "naturally criminal" acts are meant hurtful actions that are universally regarded as criminal, "that is to say, which offend the moral sense of all communities not savage". Of these there are two kinds, viz., those that offend the average sentiment of pity and those that offend the average sentiment of probity. There are two great classes of criminals, each marked by deficiency, in a greater or less degree, of one of these elementary altruistic sentiments, and consequently by a predominating tendency to commit one or other of the two kinds of hurtful actions. In the "great instinctive criminals " both sentiments are entirely absent. The object of punishment, when the criminal anomaly " exists, is the permanent or temporary elimination of the criminal from society, with which he is incompatible. In the case of those criminals in whom the total absence of the sentiment of pity (much the most deeply rooted of the two forms of social sentiment) has been made manifest, the elimination must be absolute and irrevocable; for the existence of criminals of this type is incompatible with all society. With minor criminals, what society ought to aim at is the reduction of the criminal anomaly to latency. In extreme cases of the absence of the sentiment of probity, perpetua

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detention in some form is necessary. The deterrent effect of punishment on others ought to be looked upon in all cases of "natural criminality as a secondary "useful effect". The direct aim here is to resist the criminal activity of dangerous individuals by the appropriate mode of "elimination". Acts that are incompatible with the existence of a particular society or state, as well as acts that are incompatible with all society, have to be repressed; but when, in the case of such "political" crimes, the average sentiments of compassion and of justice are not offended, punishment is no longer a "natural reaction" with a view to the elimination of the offender. Its primary object, and not merely its secondary useful effect, is here simply to deter persons in general from the commission of the forbidden classes of actions. In all cases alike, the ultimate justification of punishment is social necessity. The idea of a "natural reaction" of society prescribes the form that the application of this principle shall take in cases where there is a criminal anomaly, and at the same time, by keeping in view the degree of the criminal anomaly in the individual, mitigates its rigour. Of crime in the "natural," as distinguished from the "political" sense explained above, the defect of moral instincts is a condition sine qua non (p. 171). Crime is not the mere result of defective social arrangements. The economical circumstances of classes and countries, so far as can be inferred from statistics, have no appreciable influence on the number of crimes committed. At most they affect the numerical proportions of the different kinds of crime. The conditions that really influence the amount of crime are the severity or mildness of punishments, and, above all, the certainty of their infliction. By statistical comparison, the author shows that all over Europe except in England there has been of late an increase of crime, especially of violent crime, while in England, on the contrary, there has been a diminution. This he ascribes to the progressive softening of penal laws and customs on the Continent, and to the fact that "England is precisely the country where modern penal theories have had least influence, where the death-penalty is applied frequently, and where other penalties are severe" (p. 215). He finds that the indulgence of French and Italian juries, and certain laxities of procedure in Italy, tend to increase violent crime to such an extent that in some districts it has probably reached its " 'point of saturation"; while in England "le caractère des habitants, peu portés à la sympathie pour les criminels, durs même et impitoyables pour toute transgression à la loi, y rend le jury encore possible" (p. 367). Among the causes of the excessive mildness in the repression of crime that has followed the exaggerated severity that lasted down to the present century, has been the interaction of medical theories with the old juristic maxims that the crime is to be measured by the degree of "moral responsibility," and that the penalty is to be proportioned to the crime so measured. The logical result of the demonstration of "irresistible impulse" in more and more cases must be, so long as these maxims prevail, the continual extension of the realm of irresponsibility, and with it of impunity. Both theory and practice, however, show that the admission of “irresistible impulse" as an extenuating circumstance has for its consequence that precisely the worst criminals, those in whom there is no natural check to the most atrocious actions, escape punishment. Thus society is injured in two ways. The criminals are able to repeat their crimes. and punishment fails of its deterrent effect on others. The theory of penal legislation, therefore, if it is to promote the general security, needs a scientific renewal" from the social point of view.

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With this conclusion M. Féré is in perfect agreement. What have

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been called "the conquests of medicine and science over magistrates and laws are, he says, also conquests over public security and private interests (p. 114). His general view, however, differs much from that of the Italian school. He regards criminality not as atavistic, but simply as one among other forms of " degenerescence". After summarising in an introduction (pp. 1-42) the results of his former book, Sensation et Mouvement (see MIND xii. 471), he goes on to apply his conclusions as regards degeneration to the special phenomena of criminality. Degenerescence, he finds, may take the forms of criminality, insanity, pessimism or suicidal impulse. In all its forms, it is increased by civilisation. It is a kind of "hereditary exhaustion," surmenage capitalisé". One form of degenerescence may be transmitted hereditarily under another, usually a connected, form. Criminality, however, is distinguished among the forms of degenerescence by a greater frequency of "direct heredity (p. 63). Its development in the individual is not absolutely fatal. The occasion, as well as morbid heredity, is a condition of its being brought into action. As yet no definite group of anatomical characters has been established from which the presence of criminal instincts can be inferred with absolute certainty. In these last points, it will be observed, there is no irreconcilable disagreement with the Italian criminological school. The great difference that is nevertheless manifest depends on this, that M. Féré's criminal "degenerescence is only one variety of the "criminal anomaly" as defined by the Italian school, and that he recognises no other variety. He finds, for example, in Signor Garofalo's remark that "the moral anomaly of certain criminals" has been very well defined as "une névrasthénie morale combinée à une névrasthénie physique " the concession that criminality in general is of the nature of a "névrose (p. 82). In fact, the criminality he himself considers is exclusively of this "neurasthenic" type. This in part explains his rejection of Signor Garofalo's distinction between the "moral anomaly" of the criminal and the "malady" of the insane. His point of view is almost identical with that of M. Letourneau in the short preface set before the translation of Prof. Lombroso's work; though the conclusions of the two physiologists as to the theory of punishment diverge in exactly opposite directions from those of the Italian school. M. Letourneau, regarding the "born criminals" of the anthropologists exclusively as diseased, and therefore suffering, would submit them to a therapeutic rather than a punitive treatment. Féré, overlooking in precisely the same way the distinction between a permanent criminal anomaly of the personality and a disease by which the personality is attacked, yet insists that social security and not the feeling of pity for the diseased ought to be paramount. His practical suggestions, however,-except some in which he agrees with Signor Garofalo,--are exclusively concerned with the therapeutic treatment of the insane. He places the absolute right of society to deal as it pleases with all the "degenerate as a kind of last resort in the background; refusing in the meantime to draw any theoretical distinction between acts committed under hallucination, for example, and acts that are the result of a temperament or of a character" (see ch. vii.). Within its limits, as a study of selected types of degeneration, the essay is full of interest, but when there is any reference to practice these limits have to be borne in mind.

M.

M. Aubry's monograph is an example of the kind of special investigation that is now being undertaken on the lines laid down by the criminological school. His aim is to show from a series of cases the effects of "suggestion," whether direct by action or indirect by recitals,