4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



propensity was one thing and its physical expression another. It 

 therefore follows that if we are to reach the degree of woman's pro- 

 pensity to crime it must be by other means than a simple expression 

 of the difference in the actual perpetration of total crime. The pro- 

 pensity can be approximately measured by the degree of the offense. 

 Quality and degree are in lasv the measures of the punishment in- 

 flicted on the offender. This is called justice, and it is indeed tem- 

 pered with meicy when we compare it with the operations of law less 

 than a century ago, when it dealt with crime simply as a quality with- 

 out reference to degree. In its treatment of criminals, society took 

 its first scientific stand-point when it measured the propensity to evil 

 bv the degree of evil actually committed. It seems safe to assume 

 that in a certain limited range, as the degree of crime defines its pen- 

 alty, so also it expresses the extent of the propensity. Another fact 

 maybe approximately established from the same data. The causes of 

 crime, those deeply-hidden undercurrents existing in society, the ebb 

 and flow of which seem to register themselves in undeviating curves 

 of human conduct, must vary in intensity to the degree of crime 

 which is their natural outgrowth. Thus, a man who commits a crim- 

 inal act with the full knowledge that his life is jeopardized thereby 

 must surely be exposed to an influence far greater than one who, 

 under all circumstances, would shrink from the greater crime through 

 a sense of punishment, but would not hesitate to commit a lesser 

 offense. If this is not so, then society has been acting upon a false 

 theory in its repression of crime by the fear of punishment. But I 

 believe legislation for this purpose has been based upon a correct 

 knowledge of human nature, and that the average man with criminal 

 tendencies is, to a certain degree, deterred from criminal conduct by 

 a fear of punishment. There is strong confirmation of this in the 

 condition of society existing in the border States and raining regions, 

 in which there is a low estimate of the value of human life, not from 

 the fact that life is individually less precious there than elsewhere, 

 but that the tendency to this form of crime exists in greater force as 

 a natural outcome of the conditions under which human life is there 

 grouped. I believe it is just, therefore, to partly form an estimate of 

 the tendency to crime by the method I have adopted, aided by a sim- 

 ple comparison of the prevalence of crime in general in the sexes. 



The apparent great excess in the prevalence of crime among men 

 forms one of the most interesting facts of sex in crime. At the outset 

 we ought to reach, if possible, the cause. In this connection all ideas of 

 the innate morality of women over men must be abandoned. Modern 

 literature is full of a false and even morbid idea upon this subject. 

 M. Michelet has written a romance called "Woman," ' and it is a fair 

 sample of what may be termed the sentimental estimate of the. sex. 

 But the frail creature portrayed in the florid sentences of Michelet 



" Woman," from the French of M. Michelet, by J, W. Palmer. New York, 18'?4. 



