h suicide, like the English.

We will now proceed to analyze the facts from the point of view of
their true social value.

=Limits of Penal Law in the Sexual Domain.=--If we would avoid
injustice and ridiculous contradictions, we should keep to the
principle that penal justice has only the right to intervene in cases
where individuals or society are injured, or run the risk of being
injured. It is also necessary to examine, in each case, whether the
person who has committed the offense was not irresponsible and
affected with mental disease at the time; or whether his
responsibility was not diminished, _i.e._, whether he was not
seriously abnormal without being quite insane. The conception of
responsibility, necessarily relative, should be understood in the
sense of relative liberty, which we have defined above.

According to the result of the inquiry (culpability being proved) the
judge will have to decide how society can be best protected against
the repetition of such acts, and how the culprit may be most easily
improved, provided he is capable of improvement.

If, for example, the culprit is an inebriate, his detention in a home
for inebriates will protect society and benefit the individual much
better than all the fines and imprisonments at present in force.

If he is an incorrigible recidivist, incapable of resisting his
criminal impulses, the law should keep him under observation in a safe
place, or deprive him only of certain dangerous liberties. It is not
so difficult to decide these questions as the public imagines. The
antecedents of the criminal, his previous convictions, and a careful
study of his psychology will nearly always lead to a clear diagnosis
and prognosis. In this case a mutual understanding between
psychiatrists and jurists will produce excellent results. It is
needless to say that if it is only a case of transient cerebral
obnubilation, such as sunstroke or somnambulism, etc., the culprit
should be acquitted.

=Rape, etc.=--Normal coitus may render a penal action legitimate when
it is obtained by force or stratagem (rape, abuse of a feeble-minded
or hypnotized person, etc.). It is evident that measures of protection
against such acts are urgent, and that persons abused in this way
should have the right to heavy indemnities. What we require is not so
much extenuation of penalty for the culprit as greater protection for
his victims.

In cases of rape, when the woman becomes pregnant again