The postulate of the "Positive" School, with which the name of the celebrated Professor Lombroso will always be associated, is that crime or criminality is a morbid or pathological state akin to disease, or, in other words, an abnormal state, due to certain physical or mental defects, made manifest by certain stigmata or "_tares physiologiques_"--the result either of inherited defect or reversion to atavistic type, or in short, that there is "a criminal type" _i.e._, a race of beings predestined to criminal acts, against whom any system of punishment would be futile, as by nature such beings would not be amenable to the deterrent influences of penal law. This theory--of which the logical result would be either elimination of the unfit, or the translation into the province of medicine of all legal procedure--has failed to command general assent or approval. Like all half-truths, it is extremely dangerous, for it is, of course, the fact that morbid conditions are associated, to a certain degree, with crime, and, like all sensational dogmas, based on untested observation, it affected the public imagination, prone to believe that the criminal is a sort of "bogey-man"--the stealthy enemy of peaceful persons, ever ready to leap in the dark. This uneasy feeling encouraged the idea that the criminal was a class by himself--an abnormal being, the child of darkness, without pity and without shame, and with the predatory instincts of a wild beast. Thus gradually the common belief has taken root that there is a criminal type, and that it is persons of this particular brand or species who commit crime, and go to Prison. This belief is what Dr. Goring calls the great "superstition" of the day, which stands in the way of Prison reform, which darkens counsel in dealing with crime, which renders rehabilitation difficult, and which stifles and discourages the zeal of the philanthropist, to whom the "criminal" is a man of like passions with himself, and amenable to the same influences; and not predestined to crime and anti-social conduct, from which no human effort could save him.