Law: The New Psychology

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to be ir- responsible so far as criminal acts are concerned, though otherwise responsible and even brilliant in understanding his environment and making the best of it? If this knowledge is to be of much service to Society, will it not be necessary for these tests to be applied before opportunities to commit crimes arise, and must not those in whom dangerous psychopathic traits are discovered, be, as it were, "sentenced in advance"? And, even if the discovery of these psychopathic traits be scientifically possible, is such a procedure administratively practical, and, if administratively practical, can it be carried out with regard to the constitutional guarantees of life and liberty which, in Anglo-Saxon countries, have been relied upon so long and, on the whole, with such good results?

"The rule of the road," says Bernard Shaw, "is simply a device to let you know what the other fellow is going to do. The purpose in part of all law is, for that matter, to let one person know what another is going to do, to permit the realization of reasonable expectations."

The new theory of criminal responsibilities may be "true" just as Einstein's theory of relativity may be "true." And yet, it may be well for the criminal law to retain the seasoned conceptions of human accountability just as it may be well for the Pennsylvania Railroad Co. to continue to rely upon the principles of Newtonian physics in the operation of its trains.