A T the National Conference of Criminal Law and Criminology, held in Chicago, at Northwestern University, in June, 1909, the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology was organized; and, as a part of its work, the following resolution was passed: “ Whereas , it is exceedingly desirable that important treatises on criminology in foreign languages be made readily accessible in the English language, Resolved , that the president appoint a committee of five with power to select such treatis

W HAT Professor Gross presents in this volume is nothing less than an applied psychology of the judicial processes,—a critical survey of the procedures incident to the administration of justice with due recognition of their intrinsically psychological character, and yet with the insight conferred by a responsible experience with a working system. There is nothing more significant in the history of institutions than their tendency to get in the way of the very purposes which they were devised to

T HE present work was the first really objective Criminal Psychology which dealt with the mental states of judges, experts, jury, witnesses, etc., as well as with the mental states of criminals. And a study of the former is just as needful as a study of the latter. The need has fortunately since been recognized and several studies of special topics treated in this book—e.g. depositions of witnesses, perception, the pathoformic lie, superstition, probability, sensory illusions, inference, sexual

T HE present version of Gross’s Kriminal Psychologie differs from the original in the fact that many references not of general psychological or criminological interest or not readily accessible to English readers have been eliminated, and in some instances more accessible ones have been inserted. Prof. Gross’s erudition is so stupendous that it reaches far out into texts where no ordinary reader would be able or willing to follow him, and the book suffers no loss from the excision. In other plac

O F all disciplines necessary to the criminal justice in addition to the knowledge of law, the most important are those derived from psychology. For such sciences teach him to know the type of man it is his business to deal with. Now psychological sciences appear in various forms. There is a native psychology, a keenness of vision given in the march of experience, to a few fortunate persons, who see rightly without having learned the laws which determine the course of events, or without being ev

S OCRATES , dealing in the Meno with the teachability of virtue, sends for one of Meno’s slaves, to prove by him the possibility of absolutely certain a priori knowledge. The slave is to determine the length of a rectangle, the contents of which is twice that of one measuring two feet; but he is to have no previous knowledge of the matter, and is not to be directly coached by Socrates. He is to discover the answer for himself. Actually the slave first gives out an incorrect answer. He answers th

Our conclusions depend upon perceptions made by ourselves and others. And if the perceptions are good our judgments may be good, if they are bad our judgments must be bad. Hence, to study the forms of sense-perception is to study the fundamental conditions of the administration of law, and the greater the attention thereto, the more certain is the administration. It is not our intention to develop a theory of perception. We have only to extract those conditions which concern important circumstan

Bibliography including texts more easily within the reach of English readers. Abbott, A. Brief for the Trial of Criminal Causes. New York, 1889. 2d ed., Rochester, 1902. Abbott, B. V. Judge and Jury. New York, 1880. Antonini, G. Studi di psicopatologia forense. 1901. Archer, T. The Pauper, the Thief and the Convict; Sketches of Names, Haunts and Habits. London, 1865. Arnold, G. F. Psychology applied to Legal Evidence and other Constructions of Law. New York & Calcutta, 1906. Aschaffenbur

Works on Psychology of General Interest. Angell, James R. Psychology. New York. H. Holt & Co. 1904. Baldwin, J. M. Handbook of Psychology. New York, 1891. Bell, Sir Charles. The Hand—Its Mechanism and Vital Endowments. Philadelphia, 1835. Binet, A. Le fatigue intellectuelle. Paris, 1898. Bourdon, B. L’expression des émotions et des tendances dan le langage. Paris, 1892. Chamberlain, Alexander Francis. The Child: a study in the evolution of man. London, 1907. Cowles, E. The Mental Symptom