The author advocates the study of crime from an individual-society point of view. The idea of private revenge has been replaced by the abstract idea of justice according to the law of the land. The prohibitions enforced by the herd are mainly directed against the most instinctive impulses. The unconscious hatred evinced by the herd is a defencemechanism, identification occurring with the culprit, defence occurring against the instinctive criminality of the individual. By means of identification and projection hatred is the unconscious affect of society to crime. Punishment of the criminal is a rationalisation in that it is concerned with individual sin and not sin in the abstract. It would be advisable for the State to employ psychological knowledge in its methods of dealing with the criminal. Punishment should fit the offender rather than the crime.