In no other way can we obtain so clear an idea of Lombroso as a sociologist as from a study of his remarkable book on political criminals and revolutions.[33] (See above, Chapter III., pp. 64–79.) Moreover, the manner in which he was led to undertake the writing of this work is in itself especially characteristic of his methods of investigation.[34] In the year 1884 there was an exhibition at Turin of the relics of those who fought for Italian freedom; in this exhibition were to be seen likenesses of the originators and leaders of this movement, the men who worked and fought beside Mazzini, Garibaldi, and Cavour. It was the study of these physiognomies that led Lombroso to draw his distinction between revolutionists and rioters, and led further to his general analysis of political criminals. This course is extremely characteristic of his method of research. Lombroso at all times and in all places starts from the immediate study of individuals, and proceeds thence to the formulation of general sociological theories. This method of procedure differentiates him as an isolated phenomenon among modern sociologists; but the method was that employed by Goethe and Lavater. To enable us to characterize more closely Lombroso’s method in sociology, let us quote from two of our greatest thinkers, Kant and Goethe. Kant writes: “Thoughts without contents are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.” Goethe says (“Zur Morphologie,” p. 2): “To the man of understanding, to take note of the particular, to observe with precision, to distinguish each from other, is in a sense that which arises out of an idea, and also that which leads up to an idea. Such a one has found his own way home through the labyrinth, without troubling himself about a clue which might have provided him with a more direct path; to such a one a piece of metal which has not been passed through the coining press, and whose value therefore is not apparent, seems a troublesome possession. He, on the other hand, who stands on higher ground is apt to despise the individual instance, and to comprise in a lifedestroying generalization that which can possess life only in isolation.” In hardly any province of thought is the contrast thus characterized by the great morphologist and observer so clearly marked as in the science of society. Lombroso has described for us individual human beings to the number of many thousand, personally examined by himself in respect both of mental qualities and of bodily characteristics. In addition, we owe to him a number of personal descriptions of deceased celebrities—“pathographies,” as they have recently been termed; these comprise the vast material collected by him in his research into the nature of genius. His work on “Cardanus” (Girolamo Cardano [Jerome Cardan], natural philosopher and physician, 1501–1575), published in 1855, when he was still a student, was the first modern pathography; it contains the germ of Lombroso’s theory of genius.