730 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



mental factor touching woman's criminal relations. In robbery from 

 the person, although the enormous disproportion in the ratio is in a 

 measure explained by differences in physical strength, yet there 

 remains much of this excess of men to be explained by other means. 

 That which remains to be explained by means other than that of sex- 

 ual differences of j^hysical strength may be stated in this way : The 

 ratio of the strength of the two sexes being fixed at 16 to 26, and the 

 ratio for crimes in general against property being 26 to 100, we never- 

 theless find that for the crime mentioned the ratio is reduced to 8 in 

 100. Here is a difference in ratio between two classes of the same 

 division of crime of 18 to 100.- Evidently, it is too largely in excess 

 of the ratio of sti-ength of the sexes, to be entirely accounted for by 

 that alone. This phase of sexual cerebration, together with woman's 

 social conditions, is competent to explain the differences remaining 

 unaccounted for. The crime of self-murder also brings out quite dis- 

 tinctly the action of this mental trait in women. An examination of 

 the methods of self-destruction reveals sexual peculiarities. Men prefer 

 cutting instruments and tire-arms, while women select poison, and hang- 

 ing and drowning (Quetelet). A collection of nearly five thousand 

 cases of suicide, by M. Brierre de Boismont,' reveals the fact that 

 hanging occurs more frequently among women than men, by a large 

 percentage. It will be noticed that women select those modes of sui- 

 cidal death which take the matter out of their own hands. They offer 

 a surety for their fainting sjjirits by closing the avenue of escape be- 

 hind them. However painful may be the death they seek, after the 

 fatal draught, the fall, or the plunge, all voluntary power of escape is 

 beyond their reach. Is it not from the consciousness that lack of 

 physical courage, or timidity, would involuntarily cause them to escape 

 from the pangs of death, that they select a method of destruction 

 which after the painless first step renders such a return impossible ? 

 Cortes, who knew the temper of his men, burned his ships upon the 

 shore ; and in the same way women assure tliemselves of the impossi- 

 bility of return ere they attempt suicide. 



The influence of the excess of the emotional life in women over 

 men, upon their criminal career, is not so marked as that of the psy- 

 chical traits just considered. I stated in a former chapter that there 

 was evidence which rendered it probable that those emotions or pas- 

 sions which serve as the incentives to crime approached in intensity 

 the same mental conditions in man. In that portion of these contri- 

 butions devoted to " Sexual Cerebration," emphasis was given to the 

 fact that the emotional life of woman exceeded that of man. At this 

 point in the study we can give this practical significance. The emo- 

 tions offer vulnerable places in woman's moral armor. These mental 

 sexual attributes which give such grace and beauty to woman's char- 

 acter cannot exist except at the expense of rigidity and sternness of 



' "Recherches Medico-Legale sur Suicide," Paris, 1860. 



