SYMBOLS. 539 



SYMBOLS. 



By HELEN ZIMMEEN. 



rpHE progress made by the experimental school of anthro- 

 -L pology in Italy is proved by the works which are appearing 

 in rapid succession by such men as Lombroso, Ferri, Gorofalo, 

 Cogliolo, Sighele, and Bianchi, to mention but a few. The study 

 of criminality and degeneration has in these later years greatly 

 modified the juridical canon, and that which once appeared mon- 

 strous heresy is now shown to be truth ; nor, owing to the power 

 of science, are the summary judgments any longer possible of 

 which Dante wrote when describing Minos : 



"Judges and sends according as he girds h'lm:'' {Longfellow's translation.) 



Guglielmo Ferrero, author of a work entitled Symbols in 

 their Relation to the History and Philosophy of Law and Soci- 

 ology, also belongs to this school, being one of its youngest mem- 

 bers. In order to introduce him to our readers it is enough to 

 mention his collaboration with Cesare Lombroso in his great 

 work. Criminal Woman (La Donna Delinquente), discussed in 

 these pages, which was written as a companion to the Professor's 

 former work. Criminal Man (L'Uomo Delinquente). Symbols is 

 an accurate, minute, conscientious study of a phenomenon innate 

 in humanity, and the volume appears opportunely at the present 

 time, when fiction and dramatic literature are so often inspired 

 by symbolism. On this account besides scientists, novelists, and 

 dramatists are invited to make use of the book, above all in Italy, 

 where, unfortunately, gentlemen of that kidney study but little 

 and talk at random. Guglielmo Ferrero says in his preface : 

 "This book is only an essay, only a rapid transit across an im- 

 mense unexplored region of the history of mankind " ; adding : 

 " The moral miseries of man have been much studied ; the many 

 devious ways of the passions, love, hate, vanity, covetousness, 

 have been explored ; but his intellectual miseries have been stud- 

 ied but little, those wretched errors into which man falls by rea- 

 son of the organic weaknesses of his intelligence, owing to which 

 the paths of humanity up to the present day have been bathed 

 so often in blood and tears." 



Such the genesis of Ferrero's book ; such its raison d'etre, as 

 I deduce from his own words : " If we reflect that accidental 

 changes of name have generated ferocious rites, that for a ques- 

 tion regarding statues or pictures blood ran in floods under the 

 Byzantine Empire ; that at this day, at any moment, Europe 

 might blaze up with fires of war, provoked by some unlucky 

 metaphor, or by an ill-expressed phrase exchanged on account of 



