Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/562

546 these utterances we recognize the great informing idea of the positive juridical school, the reasoning of Lombroso and of the other modern criminalists and sociologists. Ferrero, in summing up, to support his assertion, cites many practical examples, civil and penal, too long to be quoted here. He says: "From these rapid indications, which I hope to be able, in the future, to develop in a longer and more complete work, we may gather how the future of justice and of juridical institutions lies in the abolition of codes, in the abandonment of juridical principles which are dangerous generalizations and determining causes of ideo-emotional arrest; in the institution of boards of arbitration, composed of honest and intelligent persons, charged with judging ex æquo et bono, appealing, not to the authority of our fathers, but to the authority of their consciences: perhaps also it may be in the abolition of the profession of magistrate, and in a varied choice, often renewed, of arbiters, among persons of intelligence, instruction, and integrity, of diverse occupations; because the constitution of a class of magistrates favors professional ideo-emotional arrests. At all events, since the gravest danger to the right administration of justice lies in the production of this arrest, the normal and supreme scope of all reform should be to prevent, in the best manner possible, that for any reason ideo-emotional arrest should be produced in those who administer justice."

When that day dawns, if ever it see daylight, no pessimist will be able any longer to repeat, for the shame and condemnation of modern society, the bitter verses which Goethe has put into the mouth of Mephistopheles:

 Customs and laws in every place, Like a disease, an heirloom dread, Still trail their curse from race to race, And furtively abroad they spread. To nonsense, reason's self they turn; Beneficence becomes a pest; Woe unto thee, that thou'rt a grandson born! As for the law born with us, unexpressed— That law, alas! none careth to discern."

Guglielmo Ferrero—who, by the way, is quite a young man, not far advanced in the twenties—has shown in this book not only great promise but great achievement; and proved once more what a wonderful amount of talent is possessed by that Italian nation to which we owe so much of our culture and civilization.