420
The Green Bag
obscene or pure solely according to the point of view of the particular reader or hearer. Such point of view he says cannot be known or foreseen in advance. It is therefore impossible to define “obscene" or any similar word in any penal statute establishing a penalty for
principles.
It is sufficient to say that
we find ourselves unable to accept Mr. Schroeder's premises, or to follow his logic, and we find his conclusions vague.
By these remarks we imagine that we will qualify in the author's classification
as “intellectual bankrupts." comforted,
We are
doing or writing anything obscene, and
somewhat
however,
so any such statute ought to be regarded
we consider that we will be in good
when
as void for uncertainty, and as con
company when we are thereby placed
trary to the “due process" and “ex post
with the many illustrious jurists whose opinions seem to be contrary to our
facto" clauses of the United States Con stitution. It is admitted that courts are not in accord with the author upon his general propositions, but he cites many cases to support the various de tails from which he works out his main propositions. Regarding the courts, he says at page 163: —
author's contentions.
LOMBROSO'S CRIMINAL MAN. Criminal Man: according to the classification of Cesare Lombroso. Briefly summarized by hi8 daughter. Gina Lombroso Ferrero. G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York and London. Pp. 332 (appelldix and index). (82 net.)
ruptcy If weof may our American determine judges the intellectual by their bank~ utter incapacity for using logical processes in the pres ence of slight emotional irritation, then I fear
that our courts must be adjudged to have assumed obligations largely in excess of their intellectual resources.
The author heavily condemns the United States postal authorities for re
fusing to carry through the mails the so-called sexology books, or any maga zines advertising them, and he intimates that their general sale and distribution is thereby prevented. He is apparently ignorant of the fact that such books are now on sale in many book stores in
New York and other cities and are being regularly advertised in our monthly magazines that have free use of the mails. In view of these facts, the unre strained language about the United States Post-ofiice and Mr. Anthony
Comstock and similar people whom he calls “professional purists,” and “moral ists-for-revenue” seems to lose force. It would be out of place in this re view to try to refute or controvert any of the author's many statements and
HIS book is not in any sense a trans lation of Lombroso's principal
work “L'Uomo Delinquente" (Criminal Man). That book has reached its fifth edition and has been translated intO French, German and Spanish, but it has never been translated into English
And the present small volume of a little more than three hundred pages is merely a brief summary of the ideas set forth at length in that great work, together
with an appendix in which we are given the briefest possible summary of Lom broso's chief writings. The merits of the present volume are that it gives us in a brilliant and com pact form an authoritative statement of the theories of the great Italian crimi nologist and in a few pages gives us 8 glance at all his principal writings. The very brevity of the work, which is one
of its chief advantages, is also its defect, for in such a short book it is impossible
to argue sufliciently fully the theories that are much controverted. For in stance, Lombroso’s theory that there is a type of born criminal that can be
