_Lombroso's Theory of Crime_. Lombroso, and the Italian school of criminologists generally, attribute crime chiefly to atavism, that is, reversion to primitive types. They claim that the criminal in modern society is merely a biological reversion to the savage type of man; that the criminal constitutes therefore a distinct "anthropological variety"; and that there is a marked "criminal type" which can be made out even before a person has committed a crime. They say further that the criminal type is marked physically by having five or more of the stigmata of degeneration, and that it is marked mentally by having the characteristics of the savage or nature man. We cannot stop to criticize in full this completely biological theory of crime which is offered by Lombroso and his followers. Undoubtedly crime has biological roots, and these we have attempted to point out in discussing the influence of degeneracy upon crime. But to claim that the criminal constitutes a well-marked "anthropological variety" of the human species, as Lombroso argues, is to set up a claim for which there is no foundation. What Lombroso thinks are the marks of the criminal are simply the marks belonging to the degenerate classes in general. That is, they are found among the insane and feeble-minded, for example, as well as in some classes of criminals. There is then no criminal type which clearly separates the criminal from other classes of degenerates, and which will mark a man out as belonging to the criminal class even before he has committed a crime. Lombroso and some of his school have altogether overemphasized the physical and anatomical side of the study of the criminal, and slighted the sociological side of such study. Moreover, Lombroso's statements, which he makes in very general terms, apply, if they apply at all, not to criminals as a class, but only to instinctive criminals, as indeed he himself has acknowledged.