Lombroso in Science and Fiction.
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LOMBROSO IN SCIENCE AND FICTION. BY GINO CARLO SPERANZA. IF the American magazine reader of aver age education were asked to give the name of some contemporary Italian scientist the answer in the majority of cases would probably be Lombroso. I have often asked this question of lawyers and physicians, with the same result. In books, monographs and articles published in this country dealing with the problems of crime which I have examined, Lombroso is the Italian criminologist most often cited. Next to him come Ferri and perhaps Mantegazza. Very few others are cited, and it would seem that only a very small number of students of crime in our country have any knowledge of the works of Sergi, Garofalo, Ferriani. Collajanni, Sighele, Perrero or Morselli. Possibly this is due to the fact that, with the exception of one or two of Ferrero's and Morselli's books, there are no English translations of the scholarly contributions of these Italians to criminologie science. It would, therefore, appear that to a large number of educated Americans, if indeed not to a majority of them, what I might call Lombrosoism and criminology are one and the same thing; or, in other words, that to a good many of our countrymen Cesare Lombroso is the greatest Italian exponent of criminologie science. The question naturally presents itself whether such a view is correct, and the ques tion gains importance from the fact that criminology being to-day a very young science (if a science at all) its high priests should be closely examined lest perchance they utter false oracles to the detriment of the truth for which they stand. This being so, it cannot be expected that criminology in its embryonic or experi mental stage, will escape the pitfalls and dangers which beset youth, whether it be in
man, in science, or in government. It is natural enough that the enthusiasm of its disciples may at times so strengthen their personal equation as to blind their judgment or sense of proportion between cause and effect. And it is to avoid such dangers that the critical student must insist that the up holders of the new doctrines produce indis putable facts as a basis of their deductions or theories, and sufficiently numerous as to quantity as to make their average something more than a mere numerical majority. They cannot expect the public to accept eagerly any theory which tends in practice to sub vert well-established or dearly cherished principles, nor that it will readily follow them into regions which, although by stress of logic they may appear to be the natural sequence of certain premises, are not yet lighted up by facts. How far are these criticisms or question ings applicable in the case of Lombroso's work? It is not denied that we owe to him the initial interest in the study of crime; that he is the founder of the Italian school of criminal science; that to him more than to any other man we owe the collection of an amazing number of facts bearing upon the subject of the criminal. An indefatigable worker, he has drawn information from numberless sources with perhaps more en thusiasm than discrimination. But it is by no means an unsupported opinion that many of these specimens which he has gathered appear to the scientific stu dent more as the interesting jumble of a curiosity shop than the convincing array of the scientific museum. He has collected, but not sifted; heaped together, but not classi fied. With the persistency and zeal charac teristic of the Jewish race to which he be longs, he has unhesitatingly and unswerv
