Eagle River review. [volume] (Eagle River, Wis.) 1890-1927, 1909-12-03
CESARE LOMBROSO.
Tribute to His Life and His Work
By an Admirer.

Lombroso took the great gospel of
mercy to sinners and made it scientific
and matter of fact. Here was "a kind
heart driving a powerful intelligence like
an electric searchlight into the darkest
corners of dungeons. For intellect is
not the chilly thing that some people
suppose. 1t is emotion heated to mean
descence 1t is the warmth of human
feeling bursting into white light.
Ine debate as to whether hearts or
heads do most good in the world is real
ly meaningless-sinc good heads are i'm
possible without that absorbed interest
IN life, which is the same as sympathy
Lombroso made the whole world kinder
TO criminals by proving that they are
sick. His demonstration was perhaps
the most crushing reproof to phariseeism
that has been delivered in thousand
years. He showed that it is by the
grace of God, and by no virtue of our
own. that most of us are out of jail. The
proof was the more convincing, because
it didn't preach. The gospeller deplOyeG
his facts-and passed on. Probably the
enduring moral lessons are all TO be
taught in this way-by thinkers and OBJ
servers who do not set up to be moral
lists.
Lombroso's doctrine that moral defec
yves and dellnquentS are a social product
that their sins are i'll some sense so
cial sins for which the race is RESPONSE
ble-lS counterpart Of the historic
church doctrine that the multitude are
saved by the holiness of the saints. Both
these teachings challenge our egotism
and prepare us for social service and
citizenship. Perhaps the good doctor Of
Turin exaggerated the influence of mere
heredity, and took too little account of
education and environment. | think he
did But he was tremendously right in
insisting that no man can be bad without
a bad backing.
PenOlogy-the science of dealing eff
fectiyely with lawbreakers passes
through three stages.
In the earliest and crudest phase, the
punishment Of criminals is simply vim
dictive. Society gets mad and revenges
itself upon the offender.
But modern civilization has tended
gradually, through the middle ranges of
its development, to a less malignant and
a more prudential state Of mind.
The old vindictiveness gives way to
another motive. The alater codes turn
from the thought of the deserts Of the
criminal to another thought-the pro-
of development the penalties of the law
may be very severe, yet the judicial
feeling is supposed not to be vengeful.
The convict is coolly sacrificed to the
public good.
But it was impossible for the modern
age to stop here, because the atmos-
phere Of our time is full of the thought
of correlation of all persons, all facts, all
forces-the idea that society is an or
ganic growth, in which everybody is
somehow indissolubly related to every
body else. SO it has come to pass that
the science of penology has entered into
a new, a third stage. 1t is no longer
intent upon hurting the criminal. Nor
is it possible to leave him out Of consid-
Grafton and attend merely to the safe
guarding of other people.
We have come to the conclusion in
these latter years-and Cesare Lombroso
has done more. than any other man to
help us to it-that. penalties should be
healing and salutary to those that suffer
them. We must save society by vigOr
ously doing good to its enemies.-Charles
Ferguson.