342 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



carefully studied by Mr. Dugdale 52.4 per cent, of the women fol- 

 lowing prostitution. If hereditary disease accompanies the entail- 

 ment of crime, paujierism is a matter of course ; the subject rarely 

 attaining the rank of a criminal, except in the most petty of the 

 offenses against jDroperty. Pauperism is a condition of effeteness. It 

 represents the dregs which drop downward through the several strata 

 of society. Moraliy, it is the most negative condition of humanity. 

 The pauper has sunk below the level of crime. He abstains from 

 crime, not by moral restraints, but by inertness. The woman with 

 the same taint has sunk below the level of the active phases of crime. 

 She drifts into harlotry because it is easier than to steal. If disabled, 

 she becomes a j^auper, and thus oscillates between the almshouse and 

 the brothel a passionless, nerA^eless being, with all the normal ener- 

 gies crushed out under the burden of entailed defects. 



3. It is a more difficult matter to trace through the complicated 

 net-work of passions, emotions, and motives, which underlies the de- 

 grees and varieties of crime, the purely sexual physical factor. The 

 main difficulty consists in discriminating this from 'the mental sexual 

 differences which may exist as a cause of differentiation in crime. It 

 is essential, if possible, to gain an approximate idea of the limits of 

 these differences. With the present data at command, this can be 

 accomplished only in the most superficial manner. There exists here 

 more than the suspicion of a great law, the operation of which, if 

 fully known, would clear up many of the doubts lingering around this 

 important subject. While the physical differences will serve to ex- 

 plain the varying relations of the sexes to crime in their broader and 

 more superficial aspects, the mental sexual traits will serve to define 

 the differences in motives, tendencies, and innate moral proclivities of 

 the sexes. Instead of being satisfied with the 'simple explanation, 

 that the extent of man's excess over woman as a criminal represents 

 the excess of woman over man as a moral being, this knowledcre 

 would show that this is not a question of comparative morality alone, 

 but one of intellectual equivalents. To study carefully the scope of 

 the moral equivalents of the sexes is to reach the relations of things in 

 their genesis. It is in this way that the relations of the sexes socially, 

 as well as in crime, will be taken out of the realm of sentimentalism 

 and placed upon a basis of fact. Sentimental views of the relation- 

 ship of women to crime exist so generally, that they act as a force in 

 the way of an unbiased investigation of the subject. Take, for in- 

 stance, such a writer as M. de Marsangy,* whose motive is the serious 

 one of the amelioration of the penal laws in their bearings upon wom- 

 en, who gravely concludes that man has a "nature less noble, less 

 delicate, less perfect than woman," and yet quotes approvingly that, 

 " Das Weib ist Engel ocler TeiifeV^ It is this personal bias which has 

 hitherto obscured this subject, and rendered the work of such writers 



'Zoc. 7., p. 133. 



