Criminal Psychology | Page 5

these aspects.
And as the several Continental countries have contributed in different ways to these
various aspects,--France, Germany, Italy, most abundantly, but the others each its share,--
the effort was made also to recognize the different contributions as far as feasible.

viii>
The selection made by the Committee, then, represents its judgment of the works that are
most useful and most instructive for the purpose of translation. It is its conviction that this
Series, when completed, will furnish the American student of criminal science a
systematic and sufficient acquaintance with the controlling doctrines and methods that
now hold the stage of thought in Continental Europe. Which of the various principles and
methods will prove best adapted to help our problems can only be told after our students
and workers have tested them in our own experience. But it is certain that we must first
acquaint ourselves with these results of a generation of European thought.
In closing, the Committee thinks it desirable to refer the members of the Institute, for
purposes of further investigation of the literature, to the ``Preliminary Bibliography of
Modern Criminal Law and Criminology'' (Bulletin No. 1 of the Gary Library of Law of
Northwestern University), already issued to members of the Conference. The Committee
believes that some of the Anglo- American works listed therein will be found useful.
COMMITTEE ON TRANSLATIONS.
Chairman, WM. W. SMITHERS,
_Secretary of the Comparative Law Bureau of the American Bar Association,
Philadelphia, Pa_.
ERNST FREUND,
Professor of Law in the University of Chicago. MAURICE PARMELEE,
Professor of Sociology in the State University of Kansas. ROSCOE POUND,
Professor of Law in the University of Chicago. ROBERT B. SCOTT,
Professor of Political Science in the State University of Wisconsin. JOHN H.
WIGMORE,
_Professor of Law in Northwestern University, Chicago_.

INTRODUCTION TO THE ENGLISH VERSION.
WHAT Professor Gross presents in this volume is nothing less than an applied

psychology of the judicial processes,--a critical survey of the procedures incident to the
administration of justice with due recognition of their intrinsically psychological
character, and yet with the insight conferred by a responsible experience with a working
system. There is nothing more significant in the history of institutions than their tendency
to get in the way of the very purposes which they were devised to meet. The adoration of
measures seems to be an ineradicable human trait. Prophets and reformers ever insist
upon the values of ideals and ends--the spiritual meanings of things--while the people as
naturally drift to the worship of cults and ceremonies, and thus secure the more
superficial while losing the deeper satisfactions of a duty performed. So restraining is the
formal rigidity of primitive cultures that the mind of man hardly moves within their
enforced orbits. In complex societies the conservatism, which is at once profitably
conservative and needlessly obstructing, assumes a more intricate, a more evasive, and a
more engaging form. In an age for which machinery has accomplished such heroic
service, the dependence upon mechanical devices acquires quite unprecedented
dimensions. It is compatible with, if not provocative of, a mental indolence,-- an attention
to details sufficient to operate the machinery, but a disinclination to think about the
principles of the ends of its operation. There is no set of human relations that exhibits
more distinctively the issues of these undesirable tendencies than those which the process
of law adjusts. We have lost utterly the older sense of a hallowed fealty towards
man-made law; we are not suffering from the inflexibility of the Medes and the Persians.
We manufacture laws as readily as we do steam-rollers and change their patterns to suit
the roads we have to build. But with the profit of our adaptability we are in danger of
losing the underlying sense of purpose that inspires and continues to justify measures,
and to lose also a certain intimate intercourse with problems of theory and philosophy
which is one of the requisites of a professional equipment

and one nowhere better
appreciated than in countries loyal to Teutonic ideals of culture. The present volume
bears the promise of performing a notable service for English readers by rendering
accessible an admirable review of the data and principles germane to the practices of
justice as related to their intimate conditioning in the psychological traits of men.
The significant fact in regard to the procedures of justice is that they are of men, by men,
and for men. Any attempt to eliminate unduly the human element, or to esteem a system
apart from its adaptation to the psychology of human traits as they serve the ends of
justice, is likely to result in a machine-made justice and a mechanical administration. As
a means of furthering the plasticity of the law, of infusing it with a large human
vitality--a movement of large