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.
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