uman ideals: Without an ideal,
neither an individual nor a collectivity can live, without it humanity
is dead or dying. For it is the fire of an ideal which renders the life
of each one of us possible, useful and fertile. And only by its help can
each one of us, in the more or less short course of his or her
existence, leave behind traces for the benefit of fellow-beings. The
invitation extended to me proves that the students of Naples believe in
the inspiring existence of such an ideal of science, and are anxious to
learn more about ideas, with which the entire world of the present day
is occupied, and whose life-giving breath enters even through the
windows of the dry courtrooms, when their doors are closed against it.

* * * * *

Let us now speak of this new science, which has become known in Italy by
the name of the Positive School of Criminology. This science, the same
as every other phenomenon of scientific evolution, cannot be
shortsightedly or conceitedly attributed to the arbitrary initiative of
this or that thinker, this or that scientist. We must rather regard it
as a natural product, a necessary phenomenon, in the development of that
sad and somber department of science which deals with the disease of
crime. It is this plague of crime which forms such a gloomy and painful
contrast with the splendor of present-day civilization. The 19th century
has won a great victory over mortality and infectious diseases by means
of the masterful progress of physiology and natural science. But while
contagious diseases have gradually diminished, we see on the other hand
that moral diseases are growing more numerous in our so-called
civilization. While typhoid fever, smallpox, cholera and diphtheria
retreated before the remedies which enlightened science applied by means
of the experimental method, removing their concrete causes, we see on
the other hand that insanity, suicide and crime, that painful trinity,
are growing apace. And this makes it very evident that the science which
is principally, if not exclusively, engaged in studying these phenomena
of social disease, should feel the necessity of finding a more exact
diagnosis of these moral diseases of society, in order to arrive at some
effective and more humane remedy, which should more victoriously combat
this somber trinity of insanity, suicide and crime.

The science of positive criminology arose in the last quarter of the
19th centur