The subject of this little book is, as its title shows, Cesare Lombroso, the man and the investigator; it makes no attempt to deal adequately with Lombroso, the reformer of criminology and criminal sociology. To do justice to Lombroso’s work in the latter respect would be impossible, without at the same time writing the history of the Italian school of “positive criminal jurisprudence” and that of the influence of that school upon important tendencies of the public life of all the leading civilized peoples. It would also be impossible without dealing at the same time with the plan of the new German criminal code. For many reasons I have refrained from any such attempt; above all, in view of limits of space. None the less, I have dealt with Lombroso’s activity as a reformer as far as this was essential in order to do justice to the personality of the deceased investigator.

Certain brief sections of this book have, with considerable modifications, been taken over from my earlier publications upon the development of criminal anthropology. Entirely new, however, is the attempt here made to demonstrate how high is the position Lombroso may justly be said to have occupied in a brilliant epoch of positive study of the world, of mankind, and of society. In order to illustrate the positive mode of thought, I have in an Appendix, to which I especially direct the reader’s attention, attempted a tabular statement of the facts and documents of positivism during the middle decades of the nineteenth century. The inclusion in this tabular statement of the principal writings of Herbert Spencer is the result of mature consideration and of a renewed careful study of his essay entitled “Reasons for Dissenting from the Philosophy of M. Comte.” Comte’s philosophy represents merely the reflection of positivism about itself, and is no more than the introduction to the completer development of positivism.