TEE RELATIONS OF WOMEN TO CRIME. 3 



I have already called attention to the fact that intellectual devel- 

 opment obeys other laws than those which relate to crime. This re- 

 quires to be brought out more clearly in relation to women. In this 

 age women are receiving more chivalric attention, more material 

 respect, than in any other known to history. In this century they are 

 accorded the full right, and are given the aid of some of the best intel- 

 lects among the other sex, to adjust those wrongs under which they 

 have labored for ages. They are identified with every scheme of love 

 and purity which demands good motives and a sympathy that never 

 slumbers. It is for this reason, then, that, when we associate women with 

 the idea of crime, it is difficult to believe that they are not influenced 

 by other laws than those which aifect men. There is nothing in a 

 brawny hand and coarse muscle which tends to evil. The hand which 

 executes may be white and begemmed. The mind which plans may 

 be cultivated and refined. 



In the study before us, we shall be obliged to resort to other facts 

 than those simply contained in tabulated statements of crime. Sta- 

 tistics has done much in social studv, and in this instance it has 

 pointed out the existence of law in human action in the aggregate ; 

 but it has gone no deeper. We can establish by its means a probable 

 difference in the degree to which the sexes are affected by crime ; we 

 can so group these numerical statements that they will be a mutual 

 check upon each other, but if we are to learn any thing of the under 

 stratum of human life, of its curves and faults, of which we see only 

 here and there an upheaval upon the surface of society, we must 

 study sexual and general character, w^e must observe the mutual rela- 

 tion and dependence of the sexes and classes upon each other, and 

 give due credit to the cerebral and physical differences which go to 

 make up the sum of sex all of which are beyond the province of 

 figures to express. In the course of these papers, therefore, I shall 

 esort to statistics only to the extent I have mentioned. The popular 

 character which I have endeavored to give them also forbids the re- 

 sort to statistical detail, except to the extent which is inseparable 

 from the nature of the study. 



As in hygiene so in crime, there is not one law for woman and 

 another for man. The emotions which impel to crime are few, and to 

 the operation of which the sexes are both exposed. But, it does not 

 follow that these causes react in the production of crime to an equal 

 degree. The propensity to crime, as defined by its actual commis- 

 sion, is four times as great in men as in women.' Here at the outset 

 we are confronted by a remarkable contrast. But, allowed to stand 

 as here stated, it involves a vital error. A jDropensity to crime is its 

 existence latent in the possibilities of the individual. Justin Mc- 

 Carthy, in one of his novels, in describing a character defines her 

 virtue as purely anatomical while mentally most unchaste. Here the 



' Quetelel, "A Treatise on Man," p. 70. 



