INSTINCTIVE CRIMINALITY. 291 



due to woman's adoption of the ways, manners, educa- 

 tion, and mode of life of man is too large a question 

 to broach here, but there can be little doubt that for 

 the reason she is acquiring gout, general paralysis, 

 and other diseased conditions once almost or wholly 

 confined to man, modern woman is also acquiring 

 criminality. If woman will invade what has hitherto 

 been looked upon as man's sphere of labour, she must 

 riot, in the struggle for the prize, expect to escape the 

 heat and burden of the day and its consequences. 



We have already seen (p. 262) that criminals, 

 even when we include all classes, stand midway 

 between normal persons and the insane as regards 

 mature parentage ; and if we inquire farther we dis- 

 cover that age is not the only point upon which the 

 parents of criminals resemble those of insane, epileptic, 

 idiotic, scrofulous, and otherwise degenerate persons. 

 Drunkenness, for instance, the most active agent of 

 degeneration known, which we recognise as a potent 

 cause of idiocy, epilepsy, insanity, scrofula, suicide, and 

 every other form of constitutional degeneration, has 

 been known since the days of Galen to be one of the 

 most fruitful sources of instinctive criminality. " Care- 

 fully drawn statistics of the 4000 criminals who have 

 passed through Elmira Reformatory, New York, show 

 drunkenness clearly existing in the parents in 38.7 

 per cent., and probably in 1 1. 1 per cent. more. Out 

 of 7 1 criminals whose ancestry Rossi was able to trace, 

 in 20 the father was a drunkard, in 1 1 the mother. 

 Marro found that on an average 4 1 per cent, of the 



