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The Green Bag

obscene or pure solely according to the point of view of the particular reader or hearer. Such point of view he says cannot be known or foreseen in advance. It is therefore impossible to deﬁne “obscene" or any similar word in any penal statute establishing a penalty for

principles.

It is sufficient to say that

we ﬁnd ourselves unable to accept Mr. Schroeder's premises, or to follow his logic, and we ﬁnd his conclusions vague.

By these remarks we imagine that we will qualify in the author's classiﬁcation

as “intellectual bankrupts." comforted,

We are

doing or writing anything obscene, and

somewhat

however,

so any such statute ought to be regarded

we consider that we will be in good

when

as void for uncertainty, and as con

company when we are thereby placed

trary to the “due process" and “ex post

with the many illustrious jurists whose opinions seem to be contrary to our

facto" clauses of the United States Con stitution. It is admitted that courts are not in accord with the author upon his general propositions, but he cites many cases to support the various de tails from which he works out his main propositions. Regarding the courts, he says at page 163: —

author's contentions.

LOMBROSO'S CRIMINAL MAN. Criminal Man: according to the classiﬁcation of Cesare Lombroso. Brieﬂy summarized by hi8 daughter. Gina Lombroso Ferrero. G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York and London. Pp. 332 (appelldix and index). (82 net.)

ruptcy If weof may our American determine judges the intellectual by their bank~ utter incapacity for using logical processes in the pres ence of slight emotional irritation, then I fear

that our courts must be adjudged to have assumed obligations largely in excess of their intellectual resources.

The author heavily condemns the United States postal authorities for re

fusing to carry through the mails the so-called sexology books, or any maga zines advertising them, and he intimates that their general sale and distribution is thereby prevented. He is apparently ignorant of the fact that such books are now on sale in many book stores in

New York and other cities and are being regularly advertised in our monthly magazines that have free use of the mails. In view of these facts, the unre strained language about the United States Post-oﬁice and Mr. Anthony

Comstock and similar people whom he calls “professional purists,” and “moral ists-for-revenue” seems to lose force. It would be out of place in this re view to try to refute or controvert any of the author's many statements and

HIS book is not in any sense a trans lation of Lombroso's principal

work “L'Uomo Delinquente" (Criminal Man). That book has reached its ﬁfth edition and has been translated intO French, German and Spanish, but it has never been translated into English

And the present small volume of a little more than three hundred pages is merely a brief summary of the ideas set forth at length in that great work, together

with an appendix in which we are given the briefest possible summary of Lom broso's chief writings. The merits of the present volume are that it gives us in a brilliant and com pact form an authoritative statement of the theories of the great Italian crimi nologist and in a few pages gives us 8 glance at all his principal writings. The very brevity of the work, which is one

of its chief advantages, is also its defect, for in such a short book it is impossible

to argue suﬂiciently fully the theories that are much controverted. For in stance, Lombroso’s theory that there is a type of born criminal that can be