79 
very well what is read; she simply pronounces the words and they are 
for her the names of peculiar visual stimuli closely akin to the names of 
persons whom she knows; but these words as groups of words have really 
no meaning for her. 
It frequently happens in feeble-minded girls that there is some special 
line of action or work in which they can excel: this frequently offers 
possibilities for education which may be fruitful. These possibilities are 
easily discovered by the psycho-clinicist who may have the girl under ob- 
servation for a considerable length of time. Frequently feeble-minded girls 
can do simple sewing, cooking, cleaning, occasionally manifest talent in 
art or industrial work to a certain extent. Feeble-minded girls are 
usually strongly sexed. For this reason they are easily brought under the 
influence of lewd men and are led into immorality. It should be said, how- 
ever, that in the cases of this kind that lave come under my own observa- 
tion the girl has not comprehended at all the nature of her crime. For 
her the immorality has been a mere species of play, and she is not at 
all responsible for her act. Juvenile courts, however, rarely take this into 
consideration in disposing of the feeble-minded girl. Such girls are usually 
spoken of in the juvenile courts as sexual perverts. This characteriza- 
tion, however, is a sample of the looseness with which many courts 
exhibit scientific knowledge in their ministration of justice. It is my 
belief that many of the girls of this character who are sent to corrective 
institutions as sexual criminals possess only the normal sex development 
of the race, and are in no sense abnormal. They have been led into 
their immorality by men of low character who are ever ready to take 
advantage of mental weakness, and such girls are so constituted that 
they cannot possibly comprehend the ulterior results of the sexual act. 
It is considered no more seriously by them than the gratification of any 
other sensual pleasure. It must be borne in mind, too, that mere response 
to sense stimuli is one of the predominant characteristics of the feeble- 
minded girl, which fact places her far down in the scale of human in- 
telligence, more nearly in the category of the lower animals than that 
of human beings, who respond to complex situations with judgment 
and high discriminative powers. The latter she cannot do, because she 
has not the cerebral connections for such reactions. 
oi 
My third question is: ‘What shall we do with her This can be 
answered only in the light of her diagnosis. We must know her mental 
