Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/782

760 autobiography of a convict, founded on authentic papers committed to his hands by the eminent psychiatrist Silvio Yenturi, director of the lunatic asylum at Catanzaro, a book which was translated immediately on its appearance into German, but which no English publisher has had the courage to issue, though it states at once in its preface that its scope is purely scientific, and that the word "Romance" is employed in a subjective, sense. This piece of pathological literature throws a lurid light upon the inner nature of the criminal. Bianchi has written a long and careful preface, in which he points out just how and why this human document has scientific value. As yet, Bianchi has not had time to write many books, but his careful, studious articles are all of value, and denote his knowledge, intuition, and observation.

Limits of space, which we have already exceeded, oblige us to leave unmentioned yet other valiant followers of criminal anthropology in Italy, but we hope we have said enough to prove that this science has in the peninsula both numerous and able adherents, and that Italy is justified in considering herself at the head and front of studies of this nature—a position which, indeed, few dispute to her. Seeing how useful is this science as an auxiliary to the right study of history, literature, and political economy, it would be well if its propagation were more encouraged at universities, in place of philosophy and metaphysics, which, when untouched by this new breath, have become fossilized and are as arid as they are sterile.



YEAR of abnormal conditions in trade and industry brings; out a plentiful crop of predictions of great approaching changes. If the prophets of economic revolution, who base their prophecies upon half-digested statistics, were to be gathered, and their confident prognostications exhibited in the light of ascertained results, or even of rationally tested tendencies, the asylum of Laputa, as described by Swift, would be of secondary interest. We have been treated in recent years to many a sensational diagnosis of social trouble, fraught with dangers to the body politic. No one will deny that such dangers exist and are even threatening to break upon us or to carry on their operation until only an explosion can clear the atmosphere and permit a renovation on new lines of activity.