rd, which would enable us
to say that equity demands a definite punishment for a definite crime.
We can find some opportunistic expedient, but not a solution of the
problem. Of course, if we could decide which is the gravest crime, then
we could also decide on the heaviest sentence and formulate a descending
scale which would establish the relative fitting proportions between
crime and punishment. If it is agreed that patricide is the gravest
crime, we meet out the heaviest sentence, death or imprisonment for
life, and then we can agree on a descending scale of crime and on a
parallel scale of punishments. But the problem begins right with the
first stone of the structure, not with the succeeding steps. Which is
the greatest penalty proportional to the crime of patricide? Neither
science, nor legislation, nor moral consciousness, can offer an absolute
standard. Some say: The greatest penalty is death. Others say: No,
imprisonment for life. Still others say: Neither death, nor imprisonment
for life, but only imprisonment for a time. And if imprisonment for a
time is to be the highest penalty, how many years shall it last
--thirty, or twenty-five, or ten?

No man can set up any absolute standard in this matter. Giovanni Bovio
thus arrived at the conclusion that this internal contradiction in the
science of criminology was the inevitable fate of human justice, and
that this justice, struggling in the grasp of this internal
contradiction, must turn to the civil law and ask for help in its
weakness. The same thought had already been illumined by a ray from the
bright mind of Filangieri, who died all too soon. And we can derive from
this fact the historical rule that the most barbarian conditions of
humanity show a prevalence of a criminal code which punishes without
healing; and that the gradual progress of civilization will give rise
to the opposite conception of healing without punishing.

Thus it happens that this university of Naples, in which the illustrious
representative of the classic school of criminology realized the
necessity of its regeneration, and in which Bovio foresaw its sterility,
has younger teachers now who keep alive the fire of the positivist
tendency in criminal science, such as Penta, Zuccarelli, and others,
whom you know. Nevertheless I feel that this faculty of jurisprudence
still lacks oxygen in the study of criminal law, because its thought is
still influenced by the overwhelming authority of the