CRIMINAL ANTHROPOLOGY IN ITALY.1 By Helrn Zimmern. I. "Enemy" ye shall say, but net "Wicked one"; "diseased one" ye shall say, but not "wretch"; "fool" ye shall say, but not " sinner." — F. Nifxzsche.
IF we were asked to name in what particu To the Italians belongs the merit of re lar Italy stands to-day quite head and viving the study of a question with which shoulders above her fellows, we should un philosophy, law, and medicine have always hesitatingly say in the science of criminal been occupied. It has been well remarked anthropology. This is an essentially Italian I that whenever philosophical studies have free study, whose origin we discover as early as! expansion, that whenever the desire to safe1320, when the King of the Two Sicilies | guard society, the spirit of toleration, the decreed that no one methods of ameliorating should be permitted to the fate of the guilty, have practice medicine who been studied by thinkers, had not studied anatomy their conceptions have for at least one year. eventually conquered public opinion. It is to After this, in the four the glory of Italy, the teenth century, we find men who devoted them land where Roman law, the foundation of modern selves to the study of law, was born, that it has skulls, thus laying the again put into the cruci basis of the science of ble this problem of crimi craniology. It was Ital nality, and that it has pro ians, therefore, who initi ceeded to the study of ated this science, and to this problem by the only Italy has been reserved truly scientific method — the proud place of bring namely, that of studying ing it to its high develop the psychology of crimi ment in the nineteenth nals and their pathologi century, even though the cal abnormities. It will discoveries of Darwin, be its distinction to have which gave it a fresh im Cesare Lombroso declared against illusory petus, date from England. Beyond question the peninsula is at the head enthusiasms, and to have founded a science which will contribute to the more efficacious and front of all studies connected with crimi protection of society. The recognized chief nal anthropology and not of criminal an thropology only, but of all cognate sciences of this Italian school is Prof. Cesare Lombroso, of Turin, who has illustrated his connected with crime and the criminal. theories by a number of remarkably able ■This article appeared originally in "Appleton's Popular and interesting books. Until quite recent Science Monthly." Through the courtesy of Messrs. I). Aply, to the world at large, the criminal pleton & Co., we are permitted to republish it. Ed.
