On the Continent of Europe there has been proceeding since 1869 an attempt to reconcile the extreme views of the Italian School as to the predestination by atavistic or innate disposition to criminal acts with the theory that the causes of crime are to be sought exclusively in social condition. In that year, was founded _l'Union Internationale de droit pénal_, of which the most distinguished founders were three Professors of Law--Van Hamel, Prins, and Von Liszt, Professors of Law at the Universities of Antwerp, Belgium, and Berlin, respectively. Since that date, Congresses have been held at Brussels, Berne, Christiania, Lisbon and Buda-Pesth. The object of this School, while admitting the value of experimentation by anthropological and sociological study and research, was to encourage preventive work, so that the occasion of crime might be anticipated, be it that of social circumstance which induced the predisposition to the anti-social act (the occasional criminal), or the psycho-physiological state which, unless discovered and checked in the beginning by appropriate preventive handling, medicinal or institutional, is likely to become the parent of conduct dangerous to the community (the habitual criminal). The two factors, external and internal, often co-exist, and the difficulty of the problem must be intensified by their co-existence. It is, therefore, only by the 'individualization of punishment' i.e., by a careful, and exact, and scientific system of preventive diagnosis that a true and correct assessment of criminal responsibility can be attained. This is the modern system--the point to which the long road of penal device, theory, and invention leads. The problem is scientific and social. To deal with it effectively we require not only what science can disclose in the sphere of mental diagnosis, and therapeutics (psychiatry), but what the improvement of social condition can effect in raising the standard of life.