All this has been going on in Europe for forty years past, and in
limited fields in this country. All the branches of science that can
help have been working,--anthropology, medicine, psychology,
economics, sociology, philanthropy, penology. The law alone has
abstained. The science of law is the one to be served by all this.
But the public in general and the legal profession in particular
have remained either ignorant of the entire subject or indifferent
to the entire scientific movement. And this ignorance or indifference
has blocked the way to progress in administration.

The Institute therefore takes upon itself, as one of its aims, to
inculcate the study of modern criminal science, as a pressing duty
for the legal profession and for the thoughtful community at large.
One of its principal modes of stimulating and aiding this study is
to make available in the English language the most useful treatises
now extant in the Continental languages. Our country has started
late. There is much to catch up with, in the results reached elsewhere.
We shall, to be sure, profit by the long period of argument
and theorizing and experimentation which European thinkers and
workers have passed through. But to reap that profit, the results of
their experience must be made accessible in the English language.

The effort, in selecting this series of translations, has been to
choose those works which best represent the various schools of
thought in criminal science, the general results reached, the points
of contact or of controversy, and the contrasts of method--having
always in view that class of works which have a more than local
value and could best be serviceable to criminal science in our country.
As the science has various aspects and emphases--the anthropological,
psychological, sociological, legal, statistical, economic,