Lombroso, prophet and criminologist / [Guglielmo Ferrero].

  • Guglielmo Ferrero
Date:
1908
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Lombroso, prophet and criminologist / [Guglielmo Ferrero]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    LOMBROSO, PROPHET AND CRIMINOLOGIST BY GUGLIELMO FERRERO G'ESARE LOMBROSO belongs, like v_y Spencer, Darwin, and Taine, to the class of naturalist philosophers who have applied the methods of natural science to the study of psychological and social phe¬ nomena. After studying medicine, he became a professor of psychiatry, and de¬ voted himself to pathological anatomy, to anthropology, to morbid and normal psy¬ chology and to sociology; but if I were asked to say what Lombroso really is, I should neither call him a naturalist nor an anthropologist, nor a sociologist; I should call him a Jewish prophet in the garb of a modern philosopher. This is the most accurate and comprehensive def¬ inition of his personality. A MODERN PROPHET Lombroso belongs to a Hebrew family of Verona, and among all the great Jews of the present century he is perhaps the one in whom are most intensely embodied the most original characteristics of his race, namely, the ethical spirit and the passion for social reform. Renan has al¬ ready noted, that whereas the mission of Greece was esthetic and philosophic, that of the Jews is moral. While Greece was strong to realize the ideal of absolute beauty and perfect wisdom, the Jews of antiquity were tormented by a longing to found the kingdom of absolute justice. This longing was manifested in prophecy, that singular phenomenon of Hebrew his¬ tory. The prophets from Isaiah to Jesus, who was the last and greatest prophet of all, were social reformers who strove to purify the morals of their nation; and the entire literature of prophecy, which forms the most profound part of Hebrew literature, is one impassioned propaganda in favor of virtue and justice, conveyed to a world full of vice and violence. After the lapse of many centuries the gift of prophecy may once more be noted in the Hebrew men of genius of modern times, who are all more or less critics and moral reformers—Spinoza, the founder of the first great modern ethical theory; Heine, the implacable scoffer at the moral contradictions of his country; Marx and Lassalle, the two great leaders of German socialism, who strove to reform the commercial morality of our times; and Max Nordau, who has analyzed the “conventional lies of our civilization” in a profound and terrible book. This spirit of ancient prophecy, which was above all a work of criticism and moral reform, is very powerful in Lom¬ broso, and obviously distinguishes him from the other great naturalist philoso¬ phers of the present century, such as Spen¬ cer, Darwin, and Taine. The latter have studied and solved great problems, but they were always animated by the purely intellectual desire of solving a scientific question; thus, Darwin wrote the “Ori¬ gin of Species” with the intention of ex¬ pounding one of the most important prob¬ lems of biology; Spencer formulated the theory of evolution for the sake of fur¬ nishing a new and general formula of life; Taine wrote “De rintelligence” in order to establish the psychology of thought upon a new basis. Lombroso, on the contrary, is always urged on to scien¬ tific research by deep moral motives. In all his books he, on the one hand, proves himself a physiologist and psychologist who applies the methods of science to the study of certain questions; on the other,