INTRODUCTION.
THE POSITIVE SCHOOL OF CRIMINAL LAW.
During the past twelve or fourteen years Italy has poured forth a
stream of new ideas on the subject of crime and criminals; and
only the short-sightedness of her enemies or the vanity of her
flatterers can fail to recognise in this stream something more
than the outcome of individual labours.
A new departure in science is a simple phenomenon of nature,
determined in its origin and progress, like all such phenomena, by
conditions of time and place. Attention must be drawn to these
conditions at the outset, for it is only by accurately defining
them that the scientific conscience of the student of sociology is
developed and confirmed.
The experimental philosophy of the latter half of our century,
combined with human biology and psychology, and with the natural
study of human society, had already produced an intellectual
atmosphere decidedly favourable to a practical inquiry into the
criminal manifestations of individual and social life.
To these general conditions must be added the plain and everyday
contrast between the metaphysical perfection of criminal law and
the progressive increase of crime, as well as the contrast between
legal theories of crime and the study of the mental
characteristics of a large number of criminals.
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