CRIMINAL WOMAN. 223 



toward which the minds of women have worked for so many 

 centuries in order to create and consolidate it : thus, if a woman, 

 who though not wanting in chastity loses it easily, she must be 

 more deeply abnormal than a woman who when exposed to great 

 temptations forgets to respect other people's property. This fact 

 is almost normal ; the other being instead most abnormal. This 

 is the reason that women who have become prostitutes by chance 

 present many of the characteristics of those born with a natural 

 tendency to prostitution ; while female criminals who are almost 

 normal have little in common with innate criminals, these last 

 being a double exception from many points of view, and a spo- 

 radic monstrosity." The last chapters treat of insane, epileptic, 

 and hysterical criminals. 



This terrible but most necessary examination of criminal 

 women occupies a large volume of six hundred and fifty pages. 

 What remedy can be found ? This is the subject of the second 

 volume, which will soon apj)ear, and in which Lombroso will speak 

 of the different social importance of crime and prostitution, the 

 two different forms of male and female crime. The present vol- 

 ume is largely illustrated by designs which serve as proofs of the 

 data collected. It is most interesting to see the reproduction of 

 the different types of female delinquents. As usual, Lombroso 

 speaks with the true modesty of a scientific man. 



" Not one line of this work," he writes, " justifies the many 

 tyrannies of which women have been and are still the victims 

 from the tabu, which forbids them to eat meat or to touch cocoa- 

 nuts, up to that which prevents them learning or, still worse, car- 

 rying on a profession once they have learned it. These are cruel 

 and overbearing practices by whose means we have certainly 

 contributed to maintain and, what is worse, to increase the in- 

 feriority of woman, so as to be able to despoil her for our advan- 

 tage, while hypocritically we were covering the docile victim 

 with praises which we did not believe, and which were a prepara- 

 tion for fresh sacrifices rather than an ornament." 



His love for his science he has again and again abundantly 

 proved. It is deeply interesting to read the conclusion he himself 

 draws from his labors a conclusion that "all who believe in 

 woman and her future can but rejoice in." 



Much suggestive work has recently been accomplished in the domain of chem- 

 istry, in the attempt to apply the principle of gravitation to account for the inter- 

 actions of the molecules of the elements. "So far," says Prof. Reynolds, of the 

 University of Dublin, " the fundamental hypothesis of ' Newtonian chemistry ' 

 has led to conclusions which are not at variance with the facts of the science, 

 while it gives promise of help in obtaining a solution of the great problem of the 

 nature of chemical action." 



