SUPERSTITION AND CRIME. 213 



accused, who had the reputation of being a lazy, malicious, and 

 crafty person, and was therefore denied the extenuation of honest 

 self-deception. Indeed, in such cases it is always more or less difficult 

 to determine where sincere delusion ceases and conscious swindling 

 begins. Just at this point the annals of superstition present many 

 puzzling problems, the solution of which is of special interest as 

 well as of great practical importance not only to the psychol- 

 ogist and psychiater, but also to the legislator and jurisprudent, 

 who have to do with the enactment and administration of crimi- 

 nal laws. 



In the penal codes of the most civilized nations the agency of 

 superstition as a factor in the promotion of crime is almost wholly 

 ignored, and, as this was not the case in former times, the omission 

 would seem to assume that the general diffusion of knowledge in 

 our enlightened age had rendered all such specifications obsolete and 

 superfluous. Only in the Russian penal code, especially in the sec- 

 tions Ulosheniye and Ustav on felonies and frauds, as cited by Lowen- 

 stimm, do we find a distinct recognition and designation of various 

 forms of superstition as incentives to crime. Thus, in paragraph 

 1469 of the first of these sections, the murder of " monstrous births 

 or misshapen sucklings " as changelings is expressly mentioned, 

 and the penalty prescribed; and in other clauses of the code punish- 

 ments are imposed for the desecration of graves and mutilation of 

 corpses, in order to procure talismans or to prevent the dead from 

 revisiting the earth as vampires, and for various offenses emanating 

 from the belief in sorcery and diabolical possession. The practice 

 of opening graves and mutilating dead bodies is quite common, and 

 arises in general from the notion that persons who die impenitent and 

 without extreme unction, including suicides and victims to delirium 

 tremens, apoplexy, and other forms of sudden death, as well as 

 schismatics, sorcerers, and witches, come forth from their graves and 

 wander about as vampires, sucking the blood of individuals during 

 sleep and inflicting misery upon entire communities by producing 

 drought, famine, and pestilence. The means employed to prevent 

 this dangerous metamorphosis, or at least to compel the vampire to 

 remain in the grave, differ in different countries. In Russia the 

 deceased is buried with his face downward, and an ashen stake driven 

 through his back, while in Poland and East Prussia the corpse is 

 wrapped up in a fish net and covered with poppies, owing, doubtless, 

 to the soporific qualities of this plant. Preventive measures of this 

 kind are often taken with the consent and co-operation of the clergy 

 and local authorities. Thus, in 1849, at Mariensee, near Dantzig, in 

 West Prussia, a peasant's wife came to the Catholic priest of the 

 parish and complained that an old woman named Welm, recently 



