Lombroso in Science and Fiction. The author draws from his store of curi osities striking cases of Anglo-Saxon undemonstrativeness, such as the meeting of Stanley and Livingstone in Central Africa, and of Kitchener and Neufeld in the Soudan. Then he enters into an historical study of the kiss; he ransacks the literatures of Greece, Persia and India to show its origin and development. He examines the influ ence of what is known as the "suggestion of the crowd" as one of the causes of the Hobson epidemic, adding that the newly devel oped imperialistic tendencies may have had some influence also, and ends by finding in Hobson's exceptional heroism a potent excuse for the breach of Anglo-Saxon de corum. We have here a type of his more recent contributions. It is a characteristic mixture of facts and nonsense, intermingled with stray bits of science; it is a jumble of imag inary premises and over-bold and overgeneral deductions. It is scientific fiction like Wells' "War of the Worlds," or Verne's "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea." But Wells and Verne are self-confessed romancers; they make no claim to scien tific exactness. Lombroso, on the other hand, demands a hearing as a scientist and, in America at least, he is looked upon as the head of the new school of criminology. It is obvious, therefore, that his scientific fic tions and pleasing vagaries may do a great
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deal of harm to the new science of which he is admittedly the founder. The study of the criminal is too important and vital a problem to let it fall into disre pute; it has been hard enough work for stu • dents of criminal sociology to get even a half-hearted hearing in our country. It is the duty of all who wish our criminal and penal systems improved and brought into harmony with scientific progress to raise their voices against the confounding of sci entific data with figments of the imagina tion. They must do so even at the painful cost of showing how some of the high priests of science have turned into false prophets. There are many excellent works dealing with the problems of crime and punishment not only by continental writers but by Eng glish-speaking students. Let us read less of the more recent sensational writings of Lombroso and Mantegazza and more of the less alluring but more scholarly works of Sergi, Morselli, Ferri, Garofalo, Perrero, Ferriani, Colajanni and Beltrani-Scalia among the Italians; Tarde, Corre, Prins and Michaux among the French; Benedikt Krohne, Aschrott and Von Hamel among the Germans, and Pike, Du Cane, Ellis, Wines, Macdonald, Barrows and Morrison among those who write in our tongue. We shall then find that criminology is a far different and a far less fanciful science than the majority of us have been led to believe by some current magazine articles.
