I have already spoken of penal jurisprudence in its relations with
criminal sociology, and may now cite a few examples of the more or
less direct and avowed influence of the new data on penal
legislation.
The legislators of to-day, vaguely impressed by statistical and
biological, ethnographical and anthropological data, and still
imbued with the old prejudice of social and political
artificiality, were at first hurried into a regular mania for
legislation, under which every newly observed social phenomenon
seemed to demand a special law, regulation, or article in the
penal code. Then, as Spencer has said in one of his most
brilliant essays, the citizen finds himself in an inextricable
network of laws, decrees, regulations and codes, which surround
him, support him, fetter and bind him, even before his birth and
after his death. For those whom M. Bordier calls
the gardeners and trussmakers of society, forgetting the natural
character of social phenomena, picture society as so much paste,
to which the cook may give any form he pleases, whether pie-crust,
dumpling, or tart.
Hence we see on all sides, side by side with dogma in the
classical sciences of law, economy, and politics, empiricism in
the laws themselves.
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