THE RELATIONS OF SEX TO CRIME. 729 



of civilization a scion, as it were, grafted upon the parent trunk 

 humanity is wedded to its original savagisni. Certain sociologists of 

 the religious school teach that crime is the outcome of civilization, 

 that it increases or decreases in proportion to the extent and quality 

 of religious teaching ; but an examination of the criminal returns of 

 various peoples shows that crime exists at nearly a fixed ratio without 

 regard to religion, be it what it may. Some forms of crime are, be- 

 yond doubt, increased by the artificial needs of society in its civilized 

 form, infanticide and abortion, for example ; yet even these crimes 

 prevail universally among the mq^ primitive races. Civilization 

 has not modified the crime, it has simply changed the motive. With 

 the tendency to crime existing at the ultimate fibres of man's psychi- 

 cal life, the expression of sexual cerebration in the criminal conduct 

 of w^omen assumes a naturalism called forth by no other social rela- 

 tion. As I have separately examined the matter of sexual mental 

 types in a former article, all that is necessary here is, to apply the 

 conclusions there reached to woman's tendency to crime. 



The crime of poisoning, with its remarkable ratio, has been used a 

 few pages back to illustrate the influence of the physical factor. It 

 was called the weapon of weakness. This weakness is twofold, physi- 

 cal and mental. Women possess moral courage, but not physical. 

 Timidity, a shrinking from bodily danger, a fear of combat, each an 

 analogue of the other, appear as mental traits in the average woman. 

 Here is an oflfense gauged to woman's mental and physical aptitudes. 

 By means of poison, a fatal blow may be given by the weakest arm 

 without the fear of combat, or of physical hurt. To a mind Avith crim- 

 inal tendencies, hampered by the reflex consciousness of weakness, the 

 security, the secrecy, are charming. The result is that, as a poisoner, 

 woman nearly equals man. This equality among the lists of crime no- 

 where else appears except in offenses against the currency, a crime also 

 remarkable for its secrecy, and freedom from personal encounter dur- 

 ing its perpetration. If a further extension of the statistics of crime 

 against the currency confirms the ratio of the sexes deducible from 

 Mr. Nelson's tables, it will amount to nearly a demonstration of the 

 fact here shadowed forth, that woman tends to equal man as a criminal 

 in those crimes which require neither physical courage nor strength 

 as conditions of their perpetration. The crime of vagrancy is the only 

 exception that offers itself, and which loses its force as an exception 

 under the law of criminal analogies. From the crime of poisoning, 

 the climax of the criminal tendency, downward through the ligliter 

 shades of offense, this phase of sexual cerebration may be detected. If 

 it were possible to give to woman the physical strength of man with 

 this mental trait existing in its present force as a sexual characteris- 

 tic, I doubt if it would alter essentially the known ratio of the sexes 

 for murder and the wounding of strangers 9 to 100. I venture this 

 prediction merely for the purpose of illustrating the potency of this 



