1 5 6 



offence ; that popular instruction, instead of being a 

 preventive means, is, on the contrary, a goad, etc. 



These ideas in evident disagreement with the inductions 

 of criminal biology, psychology and sociology, as I have 

 proved elsewhere, did not, however, hinder the agreement 

 of the positivists of the new school. In fact these per- 

 sonal and old-fashioned conceptions of M. Garofalo passed 

 almost unperceived. His action was specially marked by 

 the importance and greater development which he gave to 

 the purely juridical inductions of the new school which 

 he systematised in a plan of penal reforms and reforms of 

 procedure possible even to-day, to eliminate the most 

 acute absurdities which the positivist doctrine and his 

 experience as a magistrate, although a little one-sided, 

 had caused him to notice in penal justice. He was the 

 jurist of the new school, M. Lombroso was its anthro- 

 pologist, and I its sociologist. 



But whilst with M. Lombroso and myself the progres- 

 sive and heterodox tendency was more and more accen- 

 tuated, even to socialism, one could already foresee that 

 with M. Garofalo the orthodox and reactionary tendencies 

 would become more vivid until he had abandoned the 

 common ground on which we had fought together and 

 on which we might still fight. 



After the recital of this personal episode we must now 

 examine the contents of this "Socialist superstition" to 

 see in the schism of positive criminologists which of them 

 follows best the discipline of experimental science and 

 traces most rigorously the trajectory of human evolution. 



We must see which of the two is more scientific, he 

 who, carrying the experimental method beyond the re- 

 searches limited by criminal anthropology into the field 

 of the whole of social science, accepts all the logical con- 

 sequences of scientific observations and gives his open 

 adherence to Marxian socialism ; or he who, a positivist 

 and an innovator in a special branch of the science, 

 remains a conservative in other branches to which he 

 refuses to apply the positive method and which he no 

 longer studies with a critical spirit, being content with 

 the easy and superficial repetition of the data of common 

 place and routine. 



The perusal of this book gives immediate evidence from 

 the first to the last page of a marked contrast between 

 M. Garofalo, the heterodox criminologist, always- ready 

 for an acute criticism of classic criminology, always a 

 rebel to the commonplaces used by juridical tradition, 

 and M. Garofalo the anti-socialist, the orthodox socio- 

 logist, the man of routine, who finds everything good 

 in the present world, including the unproductive and 

 insolent luxury of sportsmen ; who curses the French 

 Revolution in order to make an idyllic description of 



