FEEBLE-MINDEDNESS !287 



of the youthful crimmals who are feeble-iniiuk-d. Goddard 

 says, " It is easier for us to realize this if we remember how 

 many of the crimes that are commited seem fooHsh and sill v. 

 One steals something that he cannot use and cannot dispose 

 of without getting caught. A boy is offended because llic 

 teacher will not let him choose what he will study, and 

 therefore he sets fire to the school building. Another kills a 

 man in cold blood in order to get two dollars. Somebody- v\sv 

 allows himself to be persuaded to enter a house and pass out 

 stolen goods under circumstances where even slight intelli- 

 gence would have told him he was sure to be caught. Some- 

 times the crime itself is not so stupid but the perijotrator acts 

 stupidly afterwards and is caught, where an intelligent per- 

 son would have escaped. Many of the * unaccountable ' 

 crimes, both large and small, are accounted for once it is 

 recognized that the criminal may be mentally defective. 

 Judge and jury are frequently amazed at the folli/ of the 

 defendant — the lack of common sense that he displayed in 

 his act. It has not occurred to us that the folly, the crudity, 

 the dullness, was an indication of an intellectual trait tliat 

 rendered the victim to a large extent irresponsible." 



This same line of explanation Goddard applies with much 

 plausibility to drunkenness in relation to feeble-mindedness. 

 It is well known that drunkenness and feeble-mindedness are 

 often associated, and people have concluded that drunken- 

 ness causes feeble-mindedness. Goddard believes the reverse 

 of this to be true that feeble-mindedness occasions drunken- 

 ness, because the individual has not enough intelligence and 

 will power to resist temptation when it arises. 



Another social evil, prostitution, Goddard finds to l)e due 

 in large measure to feeble-mindedness. Binet tests nuide in 

 an Illinois reformatory of girls committed for innnorality 

 showed 97 per cent of them to be feeble-minded. A ^Fassa- 

 ehusetts Commission reports that Binet tests api)lie(l to 

 three hundred immoral women under detention in that state 

 proved 51 per cent of them to be feeble-minded, while tlie 

 rest had the mentality of children aged nine to twelve years. 



