



Produced by Afra Ullah and PG Distributed Proofreaders




THE POSITIVE SCHOOL OF CRIMINOLOGY

Three Lectures

Given at the University of Naples, Italy on April 22, 23 and 24, 1901


By Enrico Ferri

Translated by Ernest Untermann


Chicago

Charles H. Kerr & Company

1908





THE POSITIVE SCHOOL OF CRIMINOLOGY


I.

My Friends:

When, in the turmoil of my daily occupation, I received an invitation,
several months ago, from several hundred students of this famous
university, to give them a brief summary, in short special lectures, of
the principal and fundamental conclusions of criminal sociology, I
gladly accepted, because this invitation fell in with two ideals of
mine. These two ideals are stirring my heart and are the secret of my
life. In the first place, this invitation chimed with the ideal of my
personal life, namely, to diffuse and propagate among my brothers the
scientific ideas, which my brain has accumulated, not through any merit
of mine, but thanks to the lucky prize inherited from my mother in the
lottery of life. And the second ideal which this invitation called up
before my mind's vision was this: The ideal of young people of Italy,
united in morals and intellectual pursuits, feeling in their social
lives the glow of a great aim. It would matter little whether this aim
would agree with my own ideas or be opposed to them, so long as it
should be an ideal which would lift the aspirations of the young people
out of the fatal grasp of egoistic interests. Of course, we positivists
know very well, that the material requirements of life shape and
determine also the moral and intellectual aims of human consciousness.
But positive science declares the following to be the indispensable
requirement for the regeneration of human 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 century, as a result of this strange contrast, which would be
inexplicable, if we could not discover historical and scientific reasons
for its existence. And it is