TWO SCIENTIFIC CONGRESSES. 199 



the Governments are sometimes disposed to take what represen- 

 tatives they can get in order to save expense ; and, besides, their 

 appointees are likely to be men whose interest is rather in the 

 practical and administrative side of criminology than in the 

 purely scientific side. I am far from meaning by this to make 

 any disparaging reference to the Government representatives in 

 the congress of this summer, but only to say that the general 

 policy is likely to give the development of the work of the 

 organization a set in a practical rather than a scientific direc- 

 tion. This, indeed, already shows itself in the work of the con- 

 gress. Of course, a congress on administrative criminology 

 there has been a congress on " Prison Reform " would be a 

 good thing ; but what criminology as a science needs the rather 

 is the earnest discussion of the fundamental concepts on which 

 it rests ; especially seeing that the origin of the movement which 

 issued in the organization of the present congress and which 

 gave rise to the phrase "criminal anthropology" was an ex- 

 tremely one-sided and in many respects extravagant and unsci- 

 entific one. 



This year's congress did not make much progress in settling 

 fundamental questions such as the real definition of criminality 

 from a psychological point of view, or the classification of crimi- 

 nal classes, or the nature of moral insanity, all of which are neces- 

 sary preliminaries to the more practical problems of treatment, 

 etc. but spent its time in sharp, sometimes violent, discussions 

 between the school of criminal anthropologists in Italy, led by 

 Lombroso and Ferri, and the party of doubters who have as yet 

 little to offer in its place. Among the more serious and impor- 

 tant papers I may mention : V. Hamel, L'Anarcliisme ; Dalle- 

 magne, Degenerescence et criminalite ; Tarde, La Criminalite 

 jprofessionnelle ; Ballet, Les Persecutes processifs ; ISTaecke, La 

 Psycliiatrie crimmelle ; Legrain, Consequences sociales de I'al- 

 coolisme des ascendants ; and Mr. Francis Galton's report on his 

 " finger-print " method of identification. 



The next session of this congress is to be held in the Hague, on 

 invitation of the Dutch Government, in 1901. 



It is in line with the criticism made above to the effect that 

 this congress is not sufficiently severe in its devotion to the pure 

 science of the criminal to suggest that the psychologists of the 

 other congress should give more attention to what is called crimi- 

 nal psycJwlogy. The psychology of abnormal types of mind has 

 been greatly advanced in recent years, especially in France ; and 

 this advance has extended to a great many phases of mental de- 

 fect. But the particular line of defect which criminology has 

 in view has not been much treated by professed psychologists, 

 although the first determination of criminology as to whether 



