THE RELATIONS OF WOMEN TO CRIME. 339 



tions between the sexes characteristic of earlier ages liold on un- 

 chauged through this last period of life. 



It will be interesting to return for a moment and examine what 

 are the real proportions of the sexes, during the criminally most ac- 

 tive period of life, between twenty-one and thirty years. While we 

 wovild not expect in this period to find the groundwork laid for 

 criminal conduct, yet it is the term of life, in both sexes, in which the 

 effects of heredity, of early training, assume activity, and give shape 

 and color to the destiny of the individual. What goes before may be 

 called the germ period, and this the period of fruition. The years 

 which precede the meridional term of life are under the influence of 

 structural and intellectual genesis. It is the result of an aggregation 

 of forces tending to a common end. Life has not reached the level 

 of the conflicting emotions, passions, and activities, which at the com- 

 pletion of structure exist so potently. Activity at this period is the 

 expression of simple laws, which lead to a uniform result. Mr. Nel- 

 son, reasoning purely from statistics, ax'rives at the same conclusion, 

 that " in the juvenile period of life the tendency to crime is under 

 the influence of more constant laws or elements, and therefore shows 

 less fluctuation than in mature life." * The same conclusions hold 

 good at the closing years of life. Youth and old age unite in the de- 

 gree and quality of crime. The aggregate of crime in general is com- 

 mitted at the earlier part of this intermediate period of both sexes. 

 The crime of this decade of life is more than quadruple that of any 

 other. During this period occur those difierences in the tendency to 

 crime between the sexes which afl'ect the total results. During this 

 period, sex powerfully asserts its influence. Sex is no longer existing 

 potentially in incomplete structure ; but it is partly the sum of com- 

 pleted sti'uctural effort. Psychically, it is emotion, passion, and un- 

 conscious cerebral activity. Physically, it is the difference in devel- 

 opment and mechanical power. Each of these is a factor in the dif- 

 ferences real and apparent in the tendency to crime existing between 

 men and women. There are many other causes, some of the more im- 

 portant of which have already been referred to, and are of social rather 

 than sexual origin. But social factors operate more strongly at this 

 period than at any other. Society in all its phases is made up of the 

 activities of this period of life. Those forces which in their totality 

 express all there is of society, seem to concentrate and coincide with 

 those forces which express all there is of sex, and tend to one period 

 of life common to both men and women. 



2. In this connection it is proper to examine the bearings of 

 women to the hereditary tendency to crime. Recent study of the 

 relations of sex to crime has shown that the hereditary element in the 

 criminal tendency may assume sexual phases. This is exemplified by 

 the law of movement in the direction of the least resistance. The he- 



' loc. cit.f p. 407. 



