A point of practical importance, which the criminal anthropologist has to consider is the relation of moral to penal responsibility. If there is no freedom of the will and the commission of crime is the necessary result of physiological idiosyncrasies, hereditary predispositions, brachycephalous, dolichocephalous or microcephalous peculiarities, anomalies of cerebral convolution, or other anatomical asymmetries, over which the individual has no control and by which his destiny is determined, then he is certainly not morally responsible for his conduct. But is he on this account to be exempt from punishment? The vast majority of criminalists answer this question unhesitatingly in the negative, declaring that penal legislation is independent of metaphysical opinion, and that punishment is proper and imperative so far as it is essential to the protection and preservation of society. If the infliction of the penalties depriving a man of his freedom or his life is found to secure these ends, it is the duty of the tribunals established for the administration of justice to impose them without troubling themselves about the mental condition of the culprit or stopping to discuss problems which belong to the province of the psychiater. Legal tribunals are not offices in which candidates for the insane asylum are examined or certificates of admission to reformatories issued, but are organized as a terror to evil-doers in the general interests of society, and all their decisions should have this object in view. If a madman is not hanged for murder, it is solely because such a procedure would exert no deterring influence upon other madmen; society protects itself, in cases of this kind, by depriving the dangerous individual of his liberty and thus preventing him from doing harm; but it has no right to inflict upon him wanton and superfluous suffering. Even if it should be deemed desirable to kill him, the method of his removal should be such as to cause the least possible pain and publicity. Here, too, the welfare of society is the determinative factor.