And if these feelings are various, must they not be so intense and so far-reaching as to influence the attitude of the woman toward some event she has observed? It may be objected that the subjective attitude of a witness will never influence a judge, who can easily discover the objective truth in the one-sided observation of an event. But let us not deceive ourselves, let us take things as they are. Subjective attitude may become objective falsehood in spite of the best endeavor of the witness, and the examiner may fail altogether to distinguish between what is truth and what poetry. Further, in many instances the witness must be questioned with regard to the impression the event made on her. Particularly, if the event can not be described in words.
We must ask whether the witness’s impression was that an attack was dangerous, a threat serious, a blackmail conceivable, a brawl intentional, a gesture insulting, an assault premeditated. In these, and thousands of other cases, we must know the point of view, and are compelled to draw our deductions from it. And finally, who of us believes himself to be altogether immune to emotional induction? The witness describes us the event in definite tones which are echoed to us. If there are other witnesses the incomplete view may be corrected, but if there is only one witness, or one whom for some reason we believe more than others, or if there are several, but equally-trusted witnesses, the condition, view-point, and “fact,” remain inadequate in us. Whoever has before him a pregnant woman withher impressions altered in a thousand ways, may therefore well be “up in the air!”[263]
The older literature which develops an elaborate casuistic concerning cases in which pregnant women exhibited especial desires, or abnormal changes in their perceptions and expressions, is in many directions of considerable importance. We must, however, remember that the old observations are rarely exact and were always made with less knowledge than we nowadays possess.
A question which is as frequent as it is idle, concerns the degree of sexual impulse in woman. It is important for the lawyer to know something about this, of course, for many a sexual crime may be more properly judged if it is known how far the woman encouraged the man, and in similar cases the knowledge might help us to presume what attitude feminine witnesses might take toward the matter. First of all, the needs of individual women are as different as those of individual men, and as varied as the need for food, drink, warmth, rest, and a hundred other animal requirements. We shall be unable to find any standard by determining even an average. It is useless to say that sexual sensibility is less in woman than in man; because specialists contradict each other on this matter. We are not aided either by Sergi’s[264]assertion, that the sensibility is less than the irritability in woman, or by Mantegazza’s statement, that women rarely have such powerful sexual desire that it causes them pain. We can learn here, also, only by means of the interpretation of good particular observations. When, for example, the Italian positivists repeatedly assert that woman is less erotic and more sexual, they mean that man cares more about the satisfaction of the sexual impulse, woman about the maternal instinct. This piece of information may help us to explain some cases; at least we shall understand many a girl’s mistake without needing immediately to presuppose rape, seduction by means of promises of marriage, etc. Once we have in mind soberly what fruits dishonor brings to a girl,—scorn and shame, the difficulties of pregnancy, alienation from relatives, perhaps even banishmentfrom the paternal home, perhaps the loss of a good position, then the pains and sorrows of child-birth, care of the child, reduction of earnings, difficulties and troubles with the child, difficulties in going about, less prospect of care through wedlock,—these are of such extraordinary weight, that it is impossible to adduce so elementary a force to the sexual impulse as to enable it to veil the outlook upon this outcome of its satisfaction.
The well-known Viennese gynaecologist, Braun, said, “If it were naturally so arranged that in every wedlock man must bear the second child, there would be no more than three children in any family.” His intention is, that even if the woman agrees to have the third child, the man would be so frightened at the pains of the first child-birth that he never again would permit himself to bear another. As we can hardly say that we have any reason for asserting that the sexual needs of woman are essentially greater, or that woman is better able to bear more pain than man, we are compelled to believe that there must be in woman an impulse lacking in man. This impulse must be supposed to be so powerful that it subdues, let us say briefly, all the fear of an illegitimate or otherwise undesirable child-birth, and this is the impulse we mean by sexuality, by the maternal instinct.
It would seem as if nature, at least in isolated cases, desires to confirm this view. According to Icard there are women who have children simply for the pleasure of suckling them, the suckling being a pleasant sensation. If, now, nature has produced a sexual impulse purely for the sake of preserving the species, she has given fuller expression to sexuality and the maternal instinct when she has endowed it with an especial impulse in at least a few definite cases. This impulse will explain to the criminalist a large number of phenomena, especially the accommodation of woman to man’s desires; and from this alone he may deduce a number of otherwise difficultly explainable psychical phenomena.
There is, of course, a series of facts which deny the existence of this impulse—but they only seem to. Child-murder, the very frequent cruelty of mothers to their children, the opposition of very young women to bearing and bringing up children (cf. the educated among French and American women), and similar phenomena seem to speak against the maternal instinct. We must not forget, however, that all impulses come to an end where the opposed impulse becomes stronger, and that under given circumstances even the most powerful impulse, that of self-preservation, may be opposed. All actions ofdespair, tearing the beard, beating hands and feet together, rage at one’s own health, and finally suicide may ensue. If the mother kills her own child, this action belongs to the same series as self-damage through despair. The more orderly and numerous actions and feelings in this direction, e.g., the disinclination of women toward bearing children, may be explained also by the fact that it is the consequence of definite conditions of civilization. If we recall what unnatural, senseless, and half crazy habits with regard to nutrition, dressing, social adjustments, etc., civilization and fashion have forced upon us, we do not need to adduce real perversity in order to understand how desire for comfort, how laziness and the scramble for wealth lead to suppression of the maternal instinct. This may also be called degeneration. There are still other less important circumstances that seem to speak against the maternal instinct. These consist primarily in the fact that the sexual impulse endures to a time when the mother is no longer young enough to bear a child. We know that the first gray hair in no sense indicates the last lover, and according to Tait, a period of powerful sex-impulsion ensues directly after the climacterium. Now of what use, so far as child-birth is concerned, can such an impulse be?
But because natural instincts endure beyond their period of purposive efficiency, it does not follow that they are unconnected with that efficiency; we eat and drink also when the food is superfluous as nourishment. Wonderfully as nature has adjusted the instincts and functions to definite purposes, she still has at no point drawn fixed boundaries and actually destroyed her instrument where the need for it ceased. Just because nature is elsewhere parsimonious, she seems frequently extravagant; yet that extravagance is the cheapest means of attaining the necessary end. Thus, when woman’s passion is no longer required for the function of motherhood, its impulsion may yet be counted on for the psychological explanation of more than one criminal event.
What is important, is to count the maternal instinct as a factor in criminal situations. If we have done so, we find explanations not only of sexual impropriety, but of the more subtle questions of the more or less pure relation between husband and wife. What attitude the woman takes toward her husband and children, what she demands of them, what she sacrifices for them, what makes it possible for her to endure an apparently unendurable situation; what, again, undermines directly and suddenly, in spite of seemingly small value, her courage in life;—these are all conditions whichappear in countless processes as the distinguishing and explaining elements, and they are to be understood in the single term, “maternal instinct.” For a long time the inexplicability of love and sexual impulse were offered as excuses, but these otherwise mighty factors had to be assigned such remarkable and self-contradictory aspects that only one confusion was added to another and called explanation. Now suppose we try to explain them by means of the maternal instinct.
The criminal psychologist finds difficulties where hidden impulses are at work without seeming to have any relation to their results. In such cases the starting-point for explanation is sought in the wrong direction. I say starting-point, because “motive” must be conscious, and “ground” might be misunderstood. We know of countless criminal cases which we face powerless because we do indeed know the criminal but are unable to explain the causal connection between him and the crime, or because, again, we do not know the criminal, and judge from the facts that we might have gotten a clew if we had understood the psychological development of the crime. If we seek for “grounds,” we may possibly think of so many of them as never to approach the right one; if we seek motives, we may be far misled because we are able only to bring the criminal into connection with his success, a matter which he must have had in mind from the beginning. It is ever easy for us when motive and crime are in open connection: greed, theft; revenge, arson; jealousy, murder; etc. In these cases the whole business of examination is an example in arithmetic, possibly difficult, but fundamental. When, however, from the deed to its last traceable grounds, even to the attitude of the criminal, a connected series may be discovered and yet no explanation is forthcoming, then the business of interpretation has reached its end; we begin to feel about in the dark. If we find nothing, the situation is comparatively good, but it is exceedingly bad in the numerous cases in which we believe ourselves to have sighted and pursued the proper solution.
Such a hidden source or starting-point of very numerous crimes is sex. That it often works invisibly is due to the sense of shame. Therefore it is more frequent in women. The hidden sexual starting-point plays its part in the little insignificant lie of an unimportant woman witness, as well as in the poisoning of a husband for the sake of a paramour still to be won. It sails everywhere under afalse flag; nobody permits the passion to show in itself; it must receive another name, even in the mind of the woman whom it dominates.
The first of the forms which the sexual impulse takes is false piety, religiosity. This is something ancient. Friedreich points to the connection between religious activity and the sexual organization, and cites many stories about saints, like that of the nun Blanbekin, of whom it was said, “eam scire desiderasse cum lacrimis, et moerore maximo, ubinam esset praeputium Christi.” The holy Veronica Juliani, in memory of the lamb of God, took a lamb to bed with her and nursed it at her breast. Similarly suggestive things are told of St. Catherine of Genoa, of St. Armela, of St. Elizabeth, of the Child Jesus, etc. Reinhard says correctly that sweet memories are frequently nothing more or less than outbursts of hidden passion and attacks of sensual love. Seume is mistaken in his assertion that mysticism lies mainly in weakness of the nerves and colic—it lies a span deeper.
The use of this fact is simple. We must discover whether a woman is morally pure or sensual, etc. This is important, not only in violations of morality, but in every violation of law. The answers we receive to questions on this matter are almost without exception worthless or untrue, because the object of the question is not open to view, is difficult to observe, and is kept hidden from even the nearest. Our purpose is, therefore, best attained by directing the question to religious activity, religiosity, and similar traits. These are not only easy to perceive, but are openly exhibited because of their nature. Whoever assumes piety, does so for the sake of other people, therefore does not hide it. If religious extravagance can be reliably confirmed by witnesses, it will rarely be a mistake to assume inclination to more or less stifled sexual pleasure.
Examples of the relationship are known to every one of us, but I want to cite two out of my own experience as types. In one of them the question turned on the fact that a somewhat old, unmarried woman had appropriated certain rather large trust sums and had presented them to her servant. At first every suspicion of the influence of sex was set aside. Only the discovery of the fact that in her ostentatious piety she had set up an altar in her house, and compelled her servant to pray at it in her company, called attention to the deep interest of this very moral maiden in her servant.
The second case dealt with the poisoning of an old, impotenthusband by his young wife. The latter was not suspected by anybody, but at her examination drew suspicion to herself by her unctuous, pious appearance. She was permitted to express herself at length on religious themes and showed so very great a love of saints and religious secrets that it was impossible to doubt that a glowing sensuality must be concealed underneath this religious ash. Adultery could not be proved, she must have for one reason or another avoided it, and that her impotent husband was unsatisfactory was now indubitable. The supposition that she wanted to get rid of him in order to marry somebody else was now inevitable; and as this somebody else was looked for and discovered, the adduction of evidence of her guilt was no longer difficult.
How captious it is to prove direct passion and to attach reasonable suspicion thereto, and how necessary it is, first of all, to establish what the concealing material is, is shown in a remark of Kraus,[265]who asserts that the wife never affects to be passionate with her husband; her desire is to seduce him and she could not desire that if she were not passionate. This assertion is only correct in general. It is not, however, true that woman has no reason for affectation, for there are enough cases in which some woman, rendered with child by a poor man, desires to seduce a man of wealth in order to get a wealthy father for her child. In such and similar cases, the woman could make use of every trick of seduction without needing to be in the least passionately disposed.
Another important form of submerged sexuality is ennui. Nobody can say what ennui is, and everybody knows it most accurately. Nobody would say that it is burdensome, and yet everybody knows, again, that a large group of evil deeds spring from ennui. It is not the same as idleness; I may be idle without being bored, and I may be bored although I am busy. At best, boredom may be called an attitude which the mind is thrown into because of an unsatisfied desire for different things. We speak of a tedious region, a tedious lecture, and tedious company only by way of metonymy—we always mean the emotional state they put us into. The internal condition is determinative, for things that are boresome to one may be very interesting to another. A collection, a library, a lecture, are all tedious and boresome by transposition of the emotional state to the objective content, and in this way the idea of boredom gets a wide scope. We, however, shall speak of boredom as an emotional state. We find it most frequently among girls, young women, and amongundeveloped or feminine men as a very significant phenomenon. So found, it is that particular dreamful, happy, or unhappy attitude expressed in desire for something absent, in quiet reproaches concerning the lack of the satisfaction of that desire, with the continually recurring wish for filling out an inner void. The basis of all this is mainly sex. It can not be proved as such mathematically, but experience shows that the emotional attitude occurs only in the presence of sexual energy, that it is lacking when the desires are satisfied, but that otherwise, even the richest and best substitution can offer no satisfaction. It is not daring, therefore, to infer the erotic starting-point. Again we see how the moralizing and training influence of rigidly-required work suppresses all superfluous states which themselves make express demands and might want complete satisfaction.
But everything has its limits, and frequently the gentle, still power of sweet ennui is stronger than the pressure and compulsion of work. When this power is present, it never results in good, rarely in anything indifferent, and frequently forbidden fruit ripens slowly in its shadow. Nobody will assert that ennui is the cause of illicit relations, of seduction, of adultery and all the many sins that depend on it—from petty misappropriations for the sake of the beloved, to the murder of the unloved husband. But ennui is for the criminal psychologist a sign that the woman was unsatisfied with what she had and wanted something else. From wishing to willing, from willing to asking, is not such a great distance. But if we ask the repentant sinner when she began to think of her criminal action we always learn that she suffered from incurable ennui, in which wicked thoughts came and still more wicked plans were hatched. Any experienced criminal psychologist will tell you, when you ask him, whether he has been much subject to mistakes in trying to explain women’s crimes from the starting-point of their ennui. The neighborhood knows of the periods of this ennui, and the sinner thinks that they are almost discovered if she is asked about them. Cherchez la femme, cherchez l’amour; cherchez l’ennui; and hundreds of times you find the solution.
Conceit, too, may be caused by hidden sexuality. We need only to use the word denotatively, for when we speak of the conceit of a scholar, an official, or a soldier, we mean properly the desire for fame, the activity of getting oneself praised and recognized. Conceit proper is only womanish or a property of feminine men, and just as, according to Darwin, the coloration of birds, insects, and evenplants serves only the purposes of sexual selection and has, therefore, sexual grounds, so also the conceit of woman has only sexual purpose. She is conceited for men alone even though through the medium of other women. As Lotze wrote in his “Mikrokosmus,” “Everything that calls attention to her person without doing her any harm is instinctively used by woman as a means in sexual conflict.” There is much truth in the terms “means” and “sexual conflict.” The man takes the battle up directly, and if we deal with this subject without frills we may not deny that animals behave just as men do. The males battle directly with each other for the sake of the females, who are compelled to study how to arouse this struggle for their person, and thus hit upon the use of conceit in sexual conflict. That women are conceited does not much matter to us criminal psychologists; we know it and do not need to be told. But the forms in which their conceit expresses itself are important; its consequences and its relation to other conditions are important.
To make use of feminine conceit in the court-room is not an art but an unpermissible trick which might lead too far. Whoever wants to succeed with women, as Madame de Rieux says, “must bring their self-love into play.” And St. Prospère: “Women are to be sought not through their senses—their weakness is in their heart and conceit.” These properties are, however, so powerful that they may easily lead to deception. If the judge does not understand how to follow this prescription it does no good, but if he does understand it he has a weapon with which woman may be driven too far, and then wounded pride, anger, and even suggestion work in far too vigorous a manner. For example, a woman wants to defend her lover before the judge. Now, if the latter succeeds by the demonstration of natural true facts in wounding her conceit, in convincing her that she is betrayed, harmed, or forgotten by her protected lover, or if she is merely made to believe this, she goes, in most cases, farther than she can excuse, and accuses and harms him as much as possible; tries, if she is able, to destroy him—whether rightly or wrongly she does not care. She has lost her lover and nobody else shall have him. “Feminine conceit,” says Lombroso, “explains itself especially in the fact that the most important thing in the life of woman is the struggle for men.” This assertion is strengthened by a long series of examples and historical considerations and can serve as a guiding thread in many labyrinthine cases. First of all, it is important to know in many trials whether a woman has already taken up this struggle for men, i.e., whether she has a lover,or wishes to have a lover. If it can be shown that she has suddenly become conceited, or her conceit has been really intensified, the question has an unconditionally affirmative answer. Frequently enough one may succeed even in determining the particular man, by ascertaining with certainty the time at which this conceit first began, and whether it had closer or more distant reference to some man. If these conditions, once discovered, are otherwise at all confirmed, and there are no mistakes in observation, the inference is inevitably certain.
We learn much concerning feminine conceit when we ask how a man could have altered the inclination of a woman whose equal he in no sense was. It is not necessary in such cases to fuss about the insoluble riddle of the female heart and about the ever-dark secrets of the feminine soul. Vulpes vult fraudem, lupus agnum, femina laudem—this illuminates every profundity. The man in question knew how to make use of laudem—he knew how to excite feminine conceit, and so vanquished others who were worth much more than he.
This goes so far that by knowing the degree of feminine conceit we know also the vivacity of feminine sexuality, and the latter is criminologically important. Heinroth[266]says, “The feminine individual, so long as it has demands to make, or believes itself to have them, has utmost self-confidence. Conceit is the sexual characteristic.” And we may add, “and the standard of sexuality.” As soon as the child has the first ribbon woven into its hair, sexuality has been excited. It increases with the love of tinsel and glitter and dies when the aging female begins to neglect herself and to go about unwashed. Woman lies when she asserts that everything is dead in her heart, and sits before you neatly and decoratively dressed; she lies when she says that she still loves her husband, and at the same time shows considerable carelessness about her body and clothes; she lies when she assures you that she has always been the same and her conceit has come or gone. These statements constitute unexceptionable rules. The use of them involves no possible error.
We have now the opportunity to understand what feminine knowledge is worth and in what degree it is reliable. This is no place to discuss the capacity of the feminine brain, and to venture into the dangerous field which Schopenhauer and his disciples and modern anthropologists have entered merely to quarrel in. The judge’s business is the concrete case in which he must test the expressionsof a woman when they depend upon real or apparent knowledge, either just as he must test the testimony of any other witness, or by means of experts. We shall therefore indicate only the symptomatic value of feminine knowledge with regard to feminine conceit. According to Lotze, women go to theater and to church only to show their clothes and to appear artistic and pious; while M. d’Arconville says, that women learn only that it may be said of them, “They are scholars,” but for knowledge they care not at all.
This is important because we are likely, with regard to knowledge in the deepest sense of the word, to be frequently unjust to women. We are accustomed to suppose that the accumulation of some form of knowledge must have some definite, hence causally related, connection with purpose. We ask why the scholar is interested in his subject, why he has sought this knowledge? And in most cases we find the right reason when we have found the logical connection and have sought it logically. This might have explained difficult cases, but not where the knowledge of women is concerned. Women are interested in art, literature, and science, mainly out of conceit, but they care also for hundreds of other little things in order, by the knowledge of them, to show off as scholars. Conceit and curiosity are closely related. Women therefore often attain information that might cause them to be listed as suspects if it could not be harmlessly explained by conceit. Conceit, however, has itself to be explained by the struggle for men, because woman knows instinctively that she can use knowledge in this struggle. And this struggle for the other sex frequently betrays woman’s own crime, or the crime of others. Somebody said that Eve’s first thought after eating the apple was: “How does my fig-leaf fit?” It is a tasteful notion, that Eve, who needed only to please her Adam, thought only of this after all the sorrow of the first sin! But it is true, and we may imagine Eve’s state of mind to be as follows: “Shall I now please him more or less?” It is characteristic that the question about dress is said to have been thefirstquestion. It shows the power of conceit, the swiftness with which it presses to the front. Indeed, of all crimes against property half would have remained undiscovered if the criminals had been self-controlled enough to keep their unjustly acquired gains dark for a while. That they have not, constitutes the hope of every judge for the discovery of the criminal, and the hope is greater with the extent of the theft. It may be assumed that the criminal exhibits the fruits of his crime, but that it is difficult to discover when there is not much of it. This generalrule is much more efficacious among women than among men, for which reason a criminalist who suspects some person thinks rather of arresting this person’s wife or mistress than himself. When the apprentice steals something from his master, his girl gets a new shawl, and that is not kept in the chest but immediately decorates the shoulders of the girl. Indeed, women of the profoundest culture can not wait a moment to decorate themselves with their new gauds, and we hear that gypsies, who have been caught in some fresh crime, are betrayed mainly by the fact that the women who had watched the house to be robbed had been trying on bits of clothing while the men were still inside cleaning the place up. What was most important for the women was to meet the men already decorated anew when the men would finally come back.
The old maid is, from the sexual standpoint, legally important because she is in herself rather different from other women, and hence must be differently understood. The properties assigned to these very pitiful creatures are well-known. Many of the almost exclusively unpleasant peculiarities assigned to them they may be said really to possess. The old maid has failed in her natural function and thus exhibits all that is implied in this accident; bitterness, envy, unpleasantness, hard judgment of others’ qualities and deeds, difficulty in forming new relationships, exaggerated fear and prudery, the latter mainly as simulation of innocence. It is a well-known fact that every experienced judge may confirm that old maids (we mean here, always, childless, unmarried women of considerable age—not maids in the anatomical sense) as witnesses, always bring something new. If you have heard ten mutually-corroborating statements and the eleventh is made by an old maid, it will be different. The latter, according to her nature, has observed differently, introduces a collection of doubts and suggestions, introduces nasty implications into harmless things, and if possible, connects her own self with the matter. This is as significant as explicable. The poor creature has not gotten much good out of life, has never had a male protector, was frequently enough defenseless against scorn and teasing, the amenities of social life and friendship were rarely her portion. It is, therefore, almost inevitable that she should see evil everywhere. If she has observed some quarrel from her window she will testify that the thing was provoked in order to disturb her; if a coachman has run over a child, she suggests that he had been driving at her in order to frighten her; the thief who broke into her neighbor’s house really wanted to break into hers because she iswithout protection and therefore open to all attacks, so that it is conceivable that he should want to hurt her. As a rule there will be other witnesses, or the old maid will be so energetic in her testimonies that her “perceptions” will not do much damage, but it is always wise to be cautious.
Of course, there are exceptions, and it is well-known that exceptions occur by way of extreme contrast. If an old maid does not possess the unpleasant characteristics of her breed, she is extraordinarily kind and lovable, in such a way generally, that her all too mild and rather blind conceptions of an event make her a dangerous witness. It is also true that old maids frequently are better educated and more civilized than other women, as De Quincey shows. They are so because, without the care of husband and children, they have time for all kinds of excellences, especially when they are inclined thereto. It is notable that the founders of women’s charitable societies are generally old maids or childless widows, who have not had the joys and tasks of motherhood. We must take care, therefore, in judging the kindness of a woman, against being blinded by her philanthropic activity. That may be kindness, but as a rule it may have its source in the lack of occupation, and in striving for some form of motherhood. In judging old maids we deceive ourselves still more easily because, as Darwin keenly noted, they always have some masculine quality in their external appearance as well as in their activity and feeling. Now that kind of woman is generally strange to us. We start wrong when we judge her by customary standards and miss the point when, in the cases of such old maids, we presuppose only feminine qualities and overlook the very virile additions. We may add to these qualities the intrinsic productivity of old maids. Benneke, in his “Pragmatische Psychologie,” compares the activity of a very busy housewife with that of an unmarried virgin, and thinks the worth of the former to be higher, while the latter accomplishes more by way of “erotic fancies, intrigues, inheritances, winnings in the lottery, and hypochondriac complaints.” This is very instructive from the criminological point of view. For the criminalist can not be too cautious when he has an old maid to examine. Therefore, when a case occurs containing characteristic intrigues, fanciful inheritances, and winnings in the lottery, it will be well to seek out the old maid behind these things. She may considerably help the explanation.
Both professional and popular judgment agree that the largest majority of women have great fear of becoming old maids. We aretold how this fear expresses itself in foreign countries. In Spain, e.g., it is said that a Spanish woman who has passed her first bloom takes the first available candidate for her hand in order to avoid old-maidenhood; and in Russia every mature girl who is able to do so, goes abroad for a couple of years in order to return as “widow.” Everybody knows the event, nobody asks for particulars about it. Some such process is universal, and many an unfortunate marriage and allied crime may be explained by it. Girls who at seventeen or eighteen were very particular and had a right to be, are modest at twenty, and at twenty-six marry at any price, in order not to remain old maids. That this is not love-marriage and is often contrary to intelligence, is clear, and when neither heart nor head rule, the devil laughs, and it is out of such marriages that adultery, the flight of the wife, cruelty, robbery from the spouse, and worse things, arise. Therefore it will be worth while to study the history of the marriage in question. Was it a marriage in the name of God, i.e., the marriage of an old maid? Then double caution must be used in the study of the case.
There is some advantage in knowing the popular conception of when a girl becomes an old maid, for old-maidenhood is a matter of a point of view; it depends on the opinion of other people. Belles-lettres deals considerably with this question, for it can itself determine the popular attitude to the unmarried state. So Brandes discovers that the heroines of classical novelists, of Racine, Shakespeare, Moliere, Voltaire, Ariosto, Byron, Lesage, Scott, are almost always sixteen years of age. In modern times, women in novels have their great love-adventure in the thirties. How this advance in years took place we need not bother to find out, but that it has occurred, we must keep in mind.
Before concluding the chapter on sexual conditions, we must say a word about hysteria, which so very frequently has deceived the judge. Hysteria was named by the ancients, as is known, from ἡ ὑστἑρα, the womb,—and properly—for most of the causes of evil are there hidden. The hysterics are legally significant in various ways. Their fixed ideas often cause elaborate unreasonable explanations; they want to attract attention, they are always concerned with themselves, are always wildly enthusiastic about somebody else; often they persecute others with unwarranted hatred, and they are the source of the coarsest denunciations, particularly with regard to sexual crimes. Incidentally, most of them are smart and have a diseased acuity of the senses. Hearing and smell inparticular, are sometimes remarkably alert, although not always reliable, for hysterics frequently discover more than is there. On the other hand, they often are useful because of their delicate senses, and it is never necessary to show the correctness of their perception out of hand. Bianchi rightly calls attention to the fact, that hysterics like to write anonymous letters. Writers of these are generally women, and mainly hysterical women; if a man writes them, he is indubitably feminine in nature.
Most difficulties with hysterics occur when they suffer some damage,[267]for they not only add a number of dishonest phenomena, but also actually feel them. I might recall by way of example Domrich’s story, that hysterics regularly get cramps laughing, when their feet get cold. If this is true it is easy to conceive what else may happen.
All this, clearly, is a matter for the court physician, who alone should be the proper authority when a hysteric is before the court. We lawyers have only to know what significant dangers hysterics threaten, and further, that the physician is to be called whenever one of them is before us. Unfortunately there are no specific symptoms of hysteria which the layman can make use of. We must be satisfied with the little that has just been mentioned. Hysteria, I had almost saidfortunately, is nowadays so widespread that everybody has some approximate knowledge of how it affects its victims.
Feminine intelligence properly deserves a separate section. Intelligence is a function that has in both sexes some basis and purpose and proceeds according to the same rules, but the meaning of intelligence must be abandoned if we are to suppose it so rigid and so difficult to hold, that the age-long differences between man and woman could have had no influence on it. The fundamentally distinct bodies, the very different occupations of both sexes, their different destinies, must have had profound mutative influence on their intelligence. Moreover, we must always start with a difference of attitude in the two sexes, in which the purely positive belongs to one only, and we must see whether it is not intensified by the negative of the other. When one body presses on another the resulting impression is due, not only to the hardness of the first, butalso to the softness of the second, and when we hear about the extraordinary wit of a woman we must blame the considerable idiocy of the men she associates with. How many women are to be trusted for intelligence, is a question of great importance for the criminalist, inasmuch as right judgment depends on the attitude and good sense of the witnesses, and must determine the value of the material presented us.
We wish to make no detailed sub-divisions in what follows. We shall merely consider in their general aspects those functions which we are accustomed to find in our own work.
Concerning feminine sense-perception we have already spoken. There is no significant difference between the two sexes, although in conceptual power we find differences very distinct.
It may be generally said, as the daily life shows, that women conceive differently from men. Whatever a dozen men may agree on conceptually, will be differently thought of by any one woman. Now what is significant in this fact is, that generally the woman is correct, that she has a better conception,—and still under the same circumstances we continue to conceive in the same way, even for the tenth time. This fact demonstrates that a different form of organization, i.e., an essential difference in nature, determines the character of conception in the two sexes. If we compare values, the result will be different according to sex, even with regard to the very material compared, or to the manner in which it has been discovered. In the apprehension of situations, the perception of attitudes, the judgment of people in certain relations, in all that is called tact, i.e., in all that involves some abstraction or clarification of confused and twisted material, and finally, in all that involves human volitions, women are superior, and more reliable individually, then ten men together. But the manner in which the woman obtains her conception is less valuable, being the manner of pure instinct. Or suppose that we call it more delicate feeling—the name does not matter—the process is mainly unconscious, and is hence of less value only, if I may say so, as requiring less thought. In consequence, there is not only not a decrease in the utility of feminine testimony; also its reliability is very great. There may be hundreds of errors in the dialectical procedure of a man, while there is much more certainty in the instinctive conception and the direct reproduction of a woman. Hence, her statements are more reliable.
We need not call the source of this instinct God’s restitution for feminine deficiency in other matters; we can show that it is due to natural selection, and that the position and task of woman requires her to observe her environment very closely. This need sharpened the inner sense until it became unconscious conception. Feminine interest in the environment is what gives female intuition a swiftness and certainty unattainable in the meditations of the profoundest philosophers. The swiftness of the intuition, which excludes all reflection, and which merely solves problems, is the important thing. Woman perceives clearly, as Spencer says somewhere, the mental status of her personal environment; while Schopenhauer has incorrectly suggested that women differ from men intellectually because they are lazy and want short-cuts to attain their purpose. In point of fact, they do not want short-cuts—they simply avoid complicated inference and depend upon intuition, as they very safely may. Vision is possible only where perception is possible, i.e., when things are near. The distant and the veiled can not be seen, but must be inferred; hence, women let inference alone and do what they can do better. This suggests the value of these different interpretations of the feminine mode of conception. As lawyers we may believe women where intuition is involved; where inference is a factor we must be very careful. Sensory conception is to be understood in the same way as intellectual conception. According to Mantegazza,[268]woman has a particularly good eye for the delicate aspects of things but has no capacity for seeing things on the horizon. A remote, big object does not much excite her interest. This is explained by the supposed fact that women as a rule can not see so far as men, and are unable to distinguish the distant object so well. This is no explanation because it would be as valid of all short-sighted people. The truth is, that the definition of distant objects requires more or less reason and inference. Woman does not reason and infer, and if things miss her intuition, they do not exist for her.
Objectivity is another property that women lack. They tend always to think in personalities, and they conceive objects in terms of personal sympathies. Tell a woman about a case so that her interest will be excited without your naming the individuals save as A and B, and it will be impossible to get her to take a stand or to make a judgment. Who are the people, what are they, how old are they, etc.? These questions must be answered first. Hence the divergent feminine conceptions of a case before and after thenames are discovered. The personalizing tendency results in some extraordinary things. Suppose a woman is describing a brawl between two persons, or two groups. If the sides were equally matched in strength and weapons, and if the witness in question did not know any of the fighters before, she will nevertheless redistribute sun and wind in her description if one of the brawlers happens accidentally to have interested her, or has behaved in a “knightly” fashion, though under other circumstances he might have earned only her dislike. In such cases the fairy tale about telling mere facts recurs, and I have to repeat that nobody tells mere facts—that judgment and inference always enter into statements and that women use them more than men. Of course real facts and inferred ones can be distinguished,—infrequently however, and never with certainty. It is best, therefore, to determine whether the witness bears any relation to one of the parties, and what it is. And this relation will be an element in most cases inasmuch as one rarely is present at a quarrel without some share in it. But even if the latter case should occur, it is necessary, first of all, to hear every detail so as to get the woman’s attitude clearly in mind. The evidence of the woman’s mode of conception is of more importance than the evidence concerning the fact itself. And finding the former is easy enough if the woman is for a short time allowed to speak generally. When her attitude is known, the standard for adjusting her excuses of one and accusations of another, is easily discovered.
The same is true in purely individual cases. In the eyes of woman the same crime committed by one man is black as hell; committed by another, it is in all respects excusable. All that is necessary for this attitude is the play of sympathies and antipathies generated from whatever source. Just as the woman reader of romances favors one hero and hates another, so the woman witness behaves toward her figures. And it may happen that she finds one of them to have murdered with such “exciting excellence,” and the victim to have been “such a boresome Philistine,” that she excuses the crime. Caution is here the most necessary thing. Of course women are not alone in taking such attitudes, but they are never so clear, so typical, nor so determined as when taken by women.
Avenarius tells of an English couple who were speaking about angels’ wings. It was the man’s opinion that this angelic possession was doubtful, the woman’s that it could not be. Many a womanwitness has reminded me of this story, and I have been able to explain by use of it many an event. Woman says, “that must be” when she knows of no reason; “that must be” when her own arguments bore her; “that must be” when she is confused; when she does not understand the evidence of her opponent, and particularly when she desires something. Unfortunately, she hides this attitude under many words, and one often wishes for the simple assertion of the English woman, “that must be.” In consequence, when we want to learn their ratio sciendi from women, we get into difficulties. They offer us a collection of frequently astonishing and important things, but when we ask for the source of this collection we get “that must be,” in variations, from a shrug of the shoulders to a flood of words. The inexperienced judge may be deceived by the positiveness of such expressions and believe that such certainty must be based on something which the witness can not utter through lack of skill. If, now, the judge is going to help the “unaided” witness with “of course you mean because,” or “perhaps because,” etc., the witness, if she is not a fool, will say “yes.” Thus we get apparently well-founded assertions which are really founded on nothing more than “that must be.”
Cases dealing with divisions, distinctions and analysis rarely contain ungrounded assertions by women. Women are well able to analyse and explain data, and what one is capable of and understands, one succeeds in justifying. Their difficulty is in synthetic work, in progressive movement, and there they simply assert. The few observations of this characteristic confirm this statement. For example, Lafitte says that at medical examinations women are unable to do anything which requires synthetic power. Women’s judgments of men further confirm this position, for they are said to be more impressed with a minimal success, than with a most magnificent effort. Now there is no injustice, no superficiality in this observation; its object is simply parallel to their incapacity for synthesis. Inasmuch as they are able to follow particular things they will understand a single success, but the growth of efficiency toward the future requires composition and wide horizon, hence they can not understand it. Hence, also, the curious contradictions in women’s statements as suspicion rises and falls. A woman, who to-day knows of a hundred reasons for the guilt of some much-compromised prisoner, tries to turn everything the other way when she later learns that the prisoner has succeeded in producing some apparent alibi. So again, if the prosecution seems to be successful,the women witnesses for the defence often become the most dangerous for the defenders.
But here, also, women find a limit, perhaps because like all weaklings they are afraid to draw the ultimate conclusions. As Leroux says in “De l’Humanité,” “If criminals were left to women they would kill them all in the first burst of anger, and if one waited until this burst had subsided they would release them all.” The killing points to the easy excitability, the passionateness, and the instinctive sense of justice in women which demands immediate revenge for evil deeds. The liberation points to the fact that women are afraid of every energetic deduction of ultimate consequences, i.e., they have no knowledge of real justice. “Men look for reasons, women judge by love; women can love and hate, but they can not be just without loving, nor can they ever learn to value justice.” So says Schiller, and how frequently do we not hear the woman’s question whether the accused’s fate is going to depend on her evidence. If we say yes, there is as a rule a restriction of testimony, a titillation and twisting of consequences, and this circumstance must always be remembered. If you want to get truth from a woman you must know the proper time to begin, and what is more important, when to stop. As the old proverb says, and it is one to take to heart: “Women are wise when they act unconsciously; fools when they reflect.”
It is a familiar fact that women, committing crimes, go to extremes. It may be correct to adduce, as modern writers do, the weakness of feminine intelligence to social conditions, and it may, perhaps, be for this reason that the future of woman lies in changing the feminine milieu. But also with regard to environment she is an extremist. The most pious woman, as Richelieu says, will not hesitate to kill a troublesome witness. The most complicated crimes are characteristically planned by women, and are frequently swelled with a number of absolutely purposeless criminal deeds.
In this circumstance we sometimes find the explanation for an otherwise unintelligible crime which, perhaps, indicates also, that the first crime was committed by woman. It is as if she has in turpitude a certain pleasure to which she abandons herself as soon as she has passed the limit in her first crime.
This little matter is intended only for very young and inexperienced criminal justices. There is nothing more exciting or instructive thana quarrel with clever and trained women concerning worthy subjects; but this does not happen in court, and ninety per cent. of our woman witnesses are not to be quarrelled with. There are two occasions on which a quarrel may arise. The first, when we are trying to show a denying prisoner that her crime has already been proved and that her denials are silly, and the second, when we are trying to show a witness that she must know something although she refuses to know it, or when we want to show her the incorrectness of her conclusion, or when we want to lead her to a point where her testimony can have further value. Now a verbal quarrel will hurt the case. This is a matter of ancient experience, for whoever quarrels with women is, as Börne says, in the condition of a man who must unceasingly polish lights.[269]
Women have an obstinacy, and it is no easy matter to be passive against it. But in the interest of justice, the part of the wise is not to lose any time by making an exhibition of himself through verbal quarrels with women witnesses. The judge may be thoroughly convinced that his success with the woman may help the case, but such success is very rare, and when he thinks he has it, it is only apparent and momentary, or is merely naïve self-deception. For women do like, for the sake of a momentary advantage, to please men and to appear convinced, but the judge for whom a woman does this is in a state that requires consideration.
A few more particulars concerning feminine intelligence. They are, however, only indirectly connected with it, and are as unintelligible as the fact that left-handedness is more frequent and color-blindness less frequent among women than among men. If, however, we are to explain feminine intelligence at all we must do so by conceiving that women’s intellectual functioning stops at a definite point and can not pass beyond it.
Consider their attitude toward money. However distasteful Mammon may be in himself, money is so important a factor in life itself that it is not unintelligibly spoken of as the “majesty of cold cash.” But to make incorrect use of an important thing is to be unintelligent. Whoever wastes money is not intelligent enough to understand what important pleasures he may provide for himself, and whoever hoards it does not know its proper use. Now single women are either hoarders or wasters; they rarely take the middle way and assume the prudence of the housewife, which generally develops into miserliness. This is best observable in the foolishbargaining of women at markets, in their supposing that they have done great things by having reduced the price of their purchase a few cents. Every dealer confirms the fact that the first price he quotes a woman is increased in order to give her a chance to bargain. But she does not bargain down to the proper price, she bargains down to a sum above the proper price, and she frequently buys unnecessary, or inferior things, simply because the dealer was smart enough to captivate her by allowing reductions. This is indicated in a certain criminal case,[270]in which the huckster-woman asserted that she immediately suspected a customer of passing counterfeit coins because she did not bargain.
Now this tendency to hoard is not essentially miserliness, for the chief purpose of miserliness is to bring together and to own money; to enjoy merely the look of it. This tendency is an unintelligent attitude toward money, a failure to judge its value and properties. Now this failure is one of the principal reasons for numerous crimes. A woman needing money for her thousand several objects, demands it from her husband, and the latter has to provide it without her asking whether he honestly can or not. A wife is said to be uncurious only with regard to the source of her husband’s money. She knows his income, she knows the necessary annual expenses; she can immediately count up the fact that the two are equal—but she calmly asks for more.
Of course, I am not referring to the courageous helpmeet who stands by her husband in bearing the burdens of life. With her the criminalist has nothing to do. I mean only those light-headed, pleasure-loving women, who nowadays make the great majority, and that army of “lovers,” who have cost the country a countless number of not unworthy men. The love of women is the key to many a crime, even murder, theft, swindling, and treachery. First, there is the woman’s unintelligible arithmetic, then her ceaseless requirements, finally the man’s surrender to the limit of his powers; then fresh demands, a long period of opposition, then surrender, and finally one unlawful action. From that it is only a step to a great crime. This is the simple theme of the countless variations that are played in the criminal court. There are proverbs enough to show how thoroughly the public understands this connection between love and money.[271]
An apparently insignificant feminine quality which is connected with her intelligence is her notorious, “never quite ready.” The criminalist meets this when he is looking for an explanation of the failure of some probably extraordinarily intelligent plan of crime. Or when a crime occurs which might have been prevented by a step at the right minute, women are always ten minutes behind the time. But these minutes would not be gained if things were begun ten minutes earlier, and once a woman suffers real damage through tardiness, she resolves to be ten minutes ahead of time. But when she does so she fails in her resolution and this failure is to be explained by lack of intelligence. The little fact that women are never quite on time explains many a difficulty.
Feminine conservatism is as insignificant as feminine punctuality. Lombroso shows how attached women are to old things. Ideas, jewelry, verses, superstitions, and proverbs are better retained by women than by men. Nobody would venture to assert that a conservative man must be less intelligent than a liberal. Yet feminine conservatism indicates a certain stupidity, less excitability and smaller capacity for accepting new impressions. Women have a certain difficulty in assimilating and reconstructing things, and because of this difficulty they do not like to surrender an object after having received it. Hence, it is well not to be too free with the more honorable attributes such as piety, love, loyalty, respect to what they have already learned; closer investigation discovers altogether too many instances of intellectual rigidity.
In our profession we meet the fact frequently that men pass much more easily from honesty to dishonesty, and vice versa, that they more easily change their habits, begin new plans, etc. Generalizations, of course, can not be made; each case has to be studied on its merits. Yet, even when questions of fact arise, e.g., in searching houses, it is well to remember the distinction. Old letters, real corpora delicti, are much more likely to be found in the woman’s box than in the man’s. The latter has destroyed the thing long ago, but the former may “out of piety” have preserved for years even the poison she once used to commit murder with.
We shall speak here only of the honesty of the sort of women the courts have most to do with, and in this regard there is little to give us joy. Not to be honest, and to lie, are two different things; the latter is positive, the former negative, the dishonest persondoes not tell the truth, the liar tells the untruth. It is dishonest to suppress a portion of the truth, to lead others into mistakes, to fail to justify appearances, and to make use of appearances. The dishonest person may not have said a single untrue word and still have introduced many more difficulties, confusions and deceptions than the liar. He is for this reason more dangerous than the latter. Also, because his conduct is more difficult to uncover and because he is more difficult to conquer than the liar. Dishonesty is, however, a specially feminine characteristic, and in men occurs only when they are effeminate. Real manliness and dishonesty are concepts which can not be united. Hence, the popular proverb says, “Women always tell the truth, but not the whole truth.” And this is more accurate than the accusation of many writers, that women lie. I do not believe that the criminal courts can verify the latter accusation. I do not mean that women never lie—they lie enough—but they do not lie more than men do, and none of us would attribute lying to women as a sexual trait. To do so, would be to confuse dishonesty with lying.
It would be a mistake to deal too sternly in court with the dishonesty of women, for we ourselves and social conditions are responsible for much of it. We dislike to use the right names of things and choose rather to suggest, to remain in embarrassed silence, or to blush. Hence, it is too much to ask that this round-aboutness should be set aside in the courtroom, where circumstances make straight talking even more difficult. According to Lombroso,[272]women lie because of their weaknesses, and because of menstruation and pregnancy, for which they have in conversation to substitute other illnesses; because of the feeling of shame, because of the sexual selection which compels them to conceal age, defects, diseases; because finally of their desire to be interesting, their suggestibility, and their small powers of judgment. All these things tend to make them lie, and then as mothers they have to deceive their children about many things. Indeed, they are themselves no more than children, Lombroso concludes. But it is a mistake to suppose that these conditions lead to lying, for women generally acquire silence, some other form of action, or the negative propagation of error. But this is essentially dishonesty. To assert that deception, lying, have become physiological properties of women is, therefore, wrong. According to Lotze, women hate analysis and hence can not distinguish between the true and the false, but then women hate analysisonly when it is applied to themselves. A woman does not want to be analyzed herself simply because analysis would reveal a great deal of dishonesty; she is therefore a stranger to thorough-going honest activity. But for this men are to blame. Nobody, as Flaubert says, tells women the truth. And when once they hear it they fight it as something extraordinary. They are not even honest with themselves. But this is not only true in general; it is true also in particular cases which the court room sees. We ourselves make honesty difficult to women before the court. Of course, I do not mean that to avoid this we are to be rude and shameless in our conversation with women, but it is certain that we compel them to be dishonest by our round-about handling of every ticklish subject. Any half-experienced criminal justice knows that much more progress can be made by simple and absolutely open discussion. A highly educated woman with whom I had a frank talk about such a matter, said at the end of this very painful sitting, “Thank God, that you spoke frankly and without prudery—I was very much afraid that by foolish questions you might compel me to prudish answers and hence, to complete dishonesty.”
We have led women so far by our indirection that according to Stendhal, to be honest, is to them identical with appearing naked in public. Balzac asks, “Have you ever observed a lie in the attitude and manner of woman? Deceit is as easy to them as falling snow in heaven.” But this is true only if he means dishonesty. It is not true that it is easy for women really to lie. I do not know whether this fact can be proven, but I am sure the feminine malease in lying can be observed. The play of features, the eyes, the breast, the attitude, betrays almost always even the experienced female offender. Now, nothing can reveal the play of her essential dishonesty. If a man once confesses, he confesses with less constraint than a woman, and he is less likely, even if he is very bad, to take advantage of false favorable appearances, while woman accepts them with the semblance of innocence. If a man has not altogether given a complete version, his failure is easy to recognize by his hesitation, but the opinions of woman always have a definite goal, even though she should tell us only a tenth of what she might know and say.
Even her simplest affirmation or denial is not honest. Her “no” is not definite; e.g., her “no” to a man’s demands. Still further, when a man affirms or denies and there is some limitation to his assertion. He either announces it expressly or the more trained earrecognizes its presence in the failure to conclude, in a hesitation of the tone. But the woman says “yes” and “no,” even when only a small portion of one or the other asserts a truth behind which she can hide herself, and this is a matter to keep in mind in the courtroom.
Also the art of deception or concealment depends on dishonesty rather than on pure deceit, because it consists much more in the use of whatever is at hand, and in suppression of material, than on direct lies. So, when the proverb says that a woman was ill only three times during the course of the year, but each time for four months, it will be unjust to say that she intentionally denies a year-long illness. She does not, but as a matter of fact, she is ill at least thirteen times a year, and besides, her weak physique causes her to feel frequently unwell. So she does not lie about her illness. But then she does not immediately announce her recovery and permits people to nurse and protect her even when she has no need of it. Perhaps she does so because, in the course of the centuries, she found it necessary to magnify her little troubles in order to protect herself against brutal men, and had, therefore, to forge the weapon of dishonesty. So Schopenhauer agrees: “Nature has given women only one means of protection and defence—hypocrisy; this is congenital with them, and the use of it is as natural as the animal’s use of its claws. Women feel they have a certain degree of justification for their hypocrisy.”
With this hypocrisy we have, as lawyers, to wage a constant battle. Quite apart from the various ills and diseases which women assume before the judge, everything else is pretended; innocence, love of children, spouses, and parents; pain at loss and despair at reproaches; a breaking heart at separation; and piety,—in short, whatever may be useful. This subjects the examining justice to the dangers and difficulties of being either too harsh, or being fooled. He can save himself much trouble by remembering that in this simulation there is much dishonesty and few lies. The simulation is rarely thorough-going, it is an intensification of something actually there.
And now think of the tears which are wept before every man, and not least, before the criminal judge. Popular proverbs tend to undervalue, often to distrust tearful women. Mantegazza[273]points out that every man over thirty can recall scenes in which it was difficult to determine how much of a woman’s tears meant realpain, and how much was voluntarily shed. In the notion that tears represent a mixture of poetry and truth, we shall find the correct solution. It would be interesting to question female virtuosos in tears (when women see that they can really teach they are quite often honest) about the matter. The questioner would inevitably learn that it is impossible to weep at will and without reason. Only a child can do that. Tears require a definite reason and a certain amount of time which may be reduced by great practice to a minimum, but even that minimum requires some duration. Stories in novels and comic papers in which women weep bitterly about a denied new coat, are fairy tales; in point of fact the lady begins by feeling hurt because her husband refused to buy her the thing, then she thinks that he has recently refused to buy her a dress, and to take her to the theatre; that at the same time he looks unfriendly and walks away to the window; that indeed, she is really a pitiful, misunderstood, immeasurably unhappy woman, and after this crescendo, which often occurs presto prestissimo, the stream of tears breaks through. Some tiny reason, a little time, a little auto-suggestion, and a little imagination,—these can keep every woman weeping eternally, and these tears can always leave us cold. Beware, however, of the silent tears of real pain, especially of hurt innocence. These must not be mistaken for the first. If they are, much harm may be done, for these tears, if they do not represent penitence for guilt, are real evidences of innocence. I once believed that the surest mark of such tears was the deceiving attempt to beat down and suppress them; an attempt which is made with elementary vigor. But even this attempt to fight them off is frequently not quite real.
As with tears, so with fainting. The greater number of fainting fits are either altogether false, or something between fainting and wakefulness. Women certainly, whether as prisoners or witnesses, are often very uncomfortable in court, and if the discomfort is followed immediately by illness, dizziness, and great fear, fainting is natural. If only a little exaggeration, auto-suggestion, relaxation, and the attempt to dodge the unpleasant circumstance are added, then the fainting fit is ready to order, and the effect is generally in favor of the fainter. Although it is wrong to assume beforehand that fainting is a comedy, it is necessary to beware of deception.
An interesting question, which, thank heaven, does not concern the criminal justice, is whether women can keep their word. When a criminalist permits a woman to promise not to tell anybody elseof her testimony, or some similar naïveté, he may settle his account with his conscience. The criminalist must not accept promises at all, and he is only getting his reward when women fool him. The fact is, that woman does not know the definite line between right and wrong. Or better, she draws the line in a different way; sometimes more sharply, but in the main more broadly than man, and in many cases she does not at all understand that certain distinctions are not permitted. This occurs chiefly where the boundaries are really unstable, or where it is not easy to understand the personality of the sufferer. Hence, it is always difficult to make woman understand that state, community, or other public weal, must in and for themselves be sacred against all harm. The most honest and pious woman is not only without conscience with regard to dodging her taxes, she also finds great pleasure in having done so successfully. It does not matter what it is she smuggles, she is glad to smuggle successfully, but smuggling is not, as might be supposed, a sport for women, though women need more nervous excitement and sport than men. Their attitude shows that they are really unable to see that they are running into danger because they are violating the law. When you tell them that the state is justified in forbidding smuggling, they always answer that they have smuggled such a very little, that nobody would miss the duties. Then the interest in smugglers and smuggling-stories is exceedingly great. We once had a girl who was born on the boundary between Italy and Austria. Her father was a notorious smuggler, the chief of a band that brought coffee and silk across the border. He grew rich in the trade, but he lost everything in an especially great venture, and was finally shot by the customs-officers at the boundary. If you could see with what interest, spirit, and keenness the girl described her father’s dubious courses you would recognize that she had not the slightest idea that there was anything wrong in what he was doing.
Women, moreover, do not understand the least regulation. I frequently have had cases in which even intelligent women could not see why it was wrong to make a “small” change in a public register; why it was wrong to give, in a foreign city, a false name at the hotel; or why the police might forbid the shaking of dust-cloths over the heads of pedestrians, even from her “own” house; why the dog must be kept chained; and what good such “vexations” could do, anyway.
Again, tiny bits of private property are not safe from women. Note how impossible it is to make women understand that privateproperty is despoiled when flowers or fruit are plucked from a private garden. The point is so small, and as a rule, the property owner makes no objections, but it must be granted that he has the right to do so. Then their tendency to steal, in the country, bits of ground and boundaries is well known. Most of the boundary cases we have, involved the activity of some woman.
Even in their own homes women do not conceive property too rigidly. They appropriate pen, paper, pencils, clothes, etc., without having any idea of replacing what they have taken away. This may be confirmed by anybody whose desk is not habitually sacrosanct, and he will agree that it is not slovenliness, but defective sense of property that causes women to do this, for even the most consummate housekeepers do so. This defective property-sense is most clearly shown in the notorious fact that women cheat at cards. According to Lombroso, an educated, much experienced woman told him in confidence that it is difficult for her sex not to cheat at cards. Croupiers in gambling halls know things much worse. They say that they must watch women much more than men because they are not only more frequent cheaters, but more expert. Even at croquet and lawn-tennis girls are unspeakably smart about cheating if they can thereby put their masculine opponents impudently at a disadvantage.
We find many women among swindlers, gamblers, and counterfeiters; and moreover, we have the evidence of experienced housewives, that the cleverest and most useful servants are frequently thievish. What is instructive in all these facts is the indefiniteness of the boundary between honesty and dishonesty, even in the most petty cases. The defect in the sense of property with regard to little things explains how many a woman became a criminal—the road she wandered on grew, step by step, more extended. There being no definite boundary, it was inevitable that women should go very far, and when the educated woman does nothing more than to steal a pencil from her husband and to cheat at whist, her sole fortune is that she does not get opportunities or needs for more serious mistakes. The uneducated, poverty-stricken woman has, however, both opportunity and need, and crime becomes very easy to her. Our life is rich in experiment and our will too weak not to fail under the exigencies of existence, if, at the outset, a slightest deviation from the straight and narrow road is not avoided. If the justice is in doubt whether a woman has committed a great crime against property, his study will concern, not the deed, butthe time when the woman was in different circumstances and had no other opportunity to do wrong than mere nibbling at and otherwise foolish abstractions from other people’s property. If this inclination can be proved, then there is justification for at least suspecting her of the greater crime.
The relation of women to such devilment becomes more instructive when it has to be discovered through woman witnesses. As a rule, there is no justification for the assumption that people are inclined to excuse whatever they find themselves guilty of. On the contrary, we are inclined to punish others most harshly where we ourselves are most guilty. And there is still another side to the matter. When an honest, well-conducted woman commits petty crimes, she does not consider them as crimes, she is unaware of their immorality, and it would be illogical for her to see as a crime in others that which she does not recognize as a crime in herself. It is for this reason that she tends to excuse her neighbor’s derelictions. Now, when we try to find out from feminine witnesses facts concerning the objects on which we properly lay stress, they do not answer and cause us to make mistakes. What woman thinks is mere “sweet-tooth” in her servant girl, is larceny in criminal law; what she calls “pin-money,” we call deceit, or violation of trust; for the man whom the woman calls “the dragon,” we find in many cases quite different terms. And this feminine attitude is not Christian charity, but ignorance of the law, and with this ignorance we have to count when we examine witnesses. Of course, not only concerning some theft by a servant girl, but always when we are trying to understand some human weakness.