Since I estimate at a very high value Lombroso’s importance in relation to the origin and growth of the present international movement for the reform of our penal methods, I may be allowed to quote further from the learned Van Hamel, and to join with him in saying, in this connection: “Differences in matters of detail affect in no way the uniformity of principles. Such differences must, indeed, be regarded, not merely as inevitable, but positively as advantageous. They are inevitable owing to the differences in human temperament and in national character. They are advantageous because, owing to their existence, new ideas will find their way into acceptance in certain forms, when, if they had sought acceptance in other forms, they would certainly have been rejected. Differences of detail must never lead us to overlook uniformity of principle, nor to overlook the common origin of ideas thus differing in matters of detail. The advocates of the modern penal methods must never forget that these owe their very existence to the positive school of Italian thought.” How did it happen that Lombroso, the anthropologist and psychiatrist, was led to a criticism of the science of law? He had discovered intuitively, and believed he could establish inductively, the fact that there exist “born criminals” or “criminal natures.” His whole course of mental development—viz., the fact that he was strongly influenced by the evolutionary theories of Vico and Marzolo, by the English utilitarians, by the French positivists, and, to some extent also, by the German materialists of the middle of the nineteenth century—had induced the conviction that the first object of punishment should be the protection of society, and the second the improvement of the criminal. It was for these purposes, he considered, that law had come into existence.