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 420 NEW BOOKS. speaking, the penal code should be recast and reconstituted in accord- ance with a different conception of the idea of justice. But Dr. de Fleury considers this fundamental change ae impossible in existing circumstances. He thinks that the public mind is not prepared for it and that the reform of penal law must be made step by step. In this general statement he is no doubt correct. But when he proceeds to deal with the manner in which penal and penitentiary reform should be effected it is not so easy to agree with him. One of his proposals is that habitual criminals should be treated with greater severity. In a great many cases habitual criminals are people of unstable mental balance, feeble mentally and physically. These facts Dr. de Fleury repeatedly insists upon. Yet his proposals would have the effect of subjecting such persons to a regimen which would still further deteriorate them. In this condition they would be ultimately let loose upon society and would be more dangerous than ever. Penal reform cannot take this course. The true method of dealing with the habitual criminal or recidivist is to ex- clude him from society for a period which will cover the age at which criminal activity is at its height. In many instances this would be a long period. But during this period prison discipline should never be of such a severe character as to deteriorate him either in body or mind. It should be directed rather to improve him with a view to the fact that he will one day be a free citizen, for it is in the interests of society that he should not abuse his freedom when at last he gets it. In justice, however, to Dr. de Fleury, it must be mentioned that he has little faith in repression and intimidation whatever form they may take. With all modern students of the criminal population he considers that the true line of progress lies in removing the individual and social conditions which tend to produce crime. Crime springs from certain abnormal conditions in the individual and in his surroundings. Diminish the action of these conditions and you will at the same time diminish the amount of crime. Punishment does not affect these conditions : hence its failure to protect society against its criminal elements. Society can only be protected by individual and social amelioration. The struggle against crime is in reality a struggle against all those conditions in society which tend to degrade and deteriorate the individuals who compose it. Ueber das Sollen und das Gute : eine begriffsanalytische Untersuchung. Von FRED BON. Leipzig : Wilhelm Engelmann, 1898. Pp. iv., 188. The scope of this book may be indicated in the words with which the author concludes his introduction : ' The road that I have taken is in my opinion the only one by which Ethics can be successfully rescued from the shifting ground of popular phraseology. . . and made into a separate science ' (p. 18). If this claim is correct, the book is obviously of the first importance ; and I propose therefore to examine the grounds by which Herr Bon attempts to justify it, although the greater part of his work consists of matter of which the bearing on this claim is only indirect. Herr Bon expresses his grounds in the sentence immediately following that quoted above, ' Indeed,' he says, ' I venture to affirm, that hitherto no scientific Ethics has been possible and in the future too will not be possible, until we are clear about the question, not what morality (das Sittliche) is, but what we will agree to call by that name '. Herr Bon's contention is, in short, that the sole requisite for the establishment of a scientific Ethics is a definition of the words we are going to use, that is at the same time perfectly precise and perfectly arbitrary. He argues in