The Positive School of Criminology

Positive School of Criminology,
by Enrico Ferri

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Title: The Positive School of Criminology Three Lectures Given at the
University of Naples, Italy on April 22, 23 and 24, 1901
Author: Enrico Ferri
Release Date: January 2, 2004 [EBook #10580]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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THE POSITIVE SCHOOL OF CRIMINOLOGY
Three Lectures

Given at the University of Naples, Italy on April 22, 23 and 24, 1901
By Enrico Ferri
Translated by Ernest Untermann
Chicago
Charles H. Kerr & Company
1908

THE POSITIVE SCHOOL OF CRIMINOLOGY
I.
My Friends:
When, in the turmoil of my daily occupation, I received an invitation,
several months ago, from several hundred students of this famous
university, to give them a brief summary, in short special lectures, of
the principal and fundamental conclusions of criminal sociology, I
gladly accepted, because this invitation fell in with two ideals of mine.
These two ideals are stirring my heart and are the secret of my life. In
the first place, this invitation chimed with the ideal of my personal life,
namely, to diffuse and propagate among my brothers the scientific
ideas, which my brain has accumulated, not through any merit of mine,
but thanks to the lucky prize inherited from my mother in the lottery of
life. And the second ideal which this invitation called up before my
mind's vision was this: The ideal of young people of Italy, united in
morals and intellectual pursuits, feeling in their social lives the glow of
a great aim. It would matter little whether this aim would agree with
my own ideas or be opposed to them, so long as it should be an ideal
which would lift the aspirations of the young people out of the fatal
grasp of egoistic interests. Of course, we positivists know very well,
that the material requirements of life shape and determine also the
moral and intellectual aims of human consciousness. But positive

science declares the following to be the indispensable requirement for
the regeneration of human ideals: Without an ideal, neither an
individual nor a collectivity can live, without it humanity is dead or
dying. For it is the fire of an ideal which renders the life of each one of
us possible, useful and fertile. And only by its help can each one of us,
in the more or less short course of his or her existence, leave behind
traces for the benefit of fellow-beings. The invitation extended to me
proves that the students of Naples believe in the inspiring existence of
such an ideal of science, and are anxious to learn more about ideas,
with which the entire world of the present day is occupied, and whose
life-giving breath enters even through the windows of the dry
courtrooms, when their doors are closed against it.
* * * * *
Let us now speak of this new science, which has become known in
Italy by the name of the Positive School of Criminology. This science,
the same as every other phenomenon of scientific evolution, cannot be
shortsightedly or conceitedly attributed to the arbitrary initiative of this
or that thinker, this or that scientist. We must rather regard it as a
natural product, a necessary phenomenon, in the development of that
sad and somber department of science which deals with the disease of
crime. It is this plague of crime which forms such a gloomy and painful
contrast with the splendor of present-day civilization. The 19th century
has won a great victory over mortality and infectious diseases by means
of the masterful progress of physiology and natural science. But while
contagious diseases have gradually diminished, we see on the other
hand that moral diseases are growing more numerous in our so-called
civilization. While typhoid fever, smallpox, cholera and diphtheria
retreated before the remedies which enlightened science applied by
means of the experimental method, removing their concrete causes, we
see on the other hand that insanity, suicide and crime, that painful
trinity, are growing apace. And this makes it very evident that the
science which is principally, if not exclusively, engaged in studying
these phenomena of social disease, should feel the necessity of finding
a more exact diagnosis of these moral diseases of society, in order to
arrive at some effective and more humane remedy, which should more

victoriously combat this somber trinity of insanity, suicide and crime.
The