The national system for elementary education must be extended so as to become as comprehensive and as actual as possible. The tendency of evolution is towards the institution of a public elementary school truly general, truly national, secular, and uniform in character. Such a school is the school of the future. _C._--DEPARTMENT OF CRIMINAL LAW CHAPTER I CRIMINALITY IN YOUTH _Introductory._--The foundations of the classical criminal law have been shattered. New ideas begin to prevail, new institutions appear and develop. The old criminal law will soon altogether disappear. In harmony with the general tendency of evolution, whereby our whole legal system tends to become an affair of local administration, criminal law tends to be transformed even more rapidly than other branches of law into a department of local administrative activity. We are to-day in the period of transition, in which this transformation is being effected. The aim of medical science is not merely to cure individual cases of disease, but to prevent the origination, recurrence, and diffusion of disease. Criminal law has similar aims, its highest aim of all being, not to punish, but to prevent crime. It regards as of primary importance, not individual liberty, but the interest of society, and it considers, not the crime, but the criminal. The transformation that is going on is further advanced in some portions of criminal law than it is in others. The most advanced portion of all is the one which concerns youthful criminals. _The Causes of Criminality in Youth._--The three causes of criminal offences are: (_a_) inherited predisposition; (_b_) bad educational influences; (_c_) poverty. (The climatic and physiological causes of criminality are of little importance, and are, essentially, social causes.) (_a_) According to the theory of the “born criminal,”[6] most youthful criminals are born criminals. The view is correct to this extent only, in so far as a certain proportion--by no means a large one--of youthful criminals are born criminals; but many youthful criminals, although they have come into the world physically, mentally and morally degenerate, are not for this reason necessarily to be regarded as born criminals. To-day more degenerate individuals are born than formerly. It is more probable that the children of persons suffering from syphilis, tuberculosis, and alcoholism, and the children of prostitutes and criminals, will become criminals, than the children of sound individuals. We find, in fact, that a notably large proportion of all criminals are the offspring of persons of the former classes.