Another important form of submerged s.e.xuality is ennui. n.o.body can say what ennui is, and everybody knows it most accurately. n.o.body 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 att.i.tude 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 ides 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 among
undeveloped or feminine men as a very significant phenomenon. So found, it is that particular dreamful, happy, or unhappy att.i.tude 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 s.e.x. It can not be proved as such mathematically, but experience shows that the emotional att.i.tude occurs only in the presence of s.e.xual energy, that it is lacking when the desires are satisfied, but that otherwise, even the richest and best subst.i.tution 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. n.o.body will a.s.sert 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 s.e.xuality. 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 even
plants serves only the purposes of s.e.xual selection and has, therefore, s.e.xual grounds, so also the conceit of woman has only s.e.xual 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 women as a means in s.e.xual conflict." There is much truth in the terms "means" and "s.e.xual 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. .h.i.t upon the use of conceit in s.e.xual 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. Prospre: "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 n.o.body 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 a.s.sertion 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 s.e.xuality, and the latter is criminologically important. Heinroth[1] 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 s.e.xual characteristic." And we may add, "and the standard of s.e.xuality." As soon as the child has the first ribbon woven into its hair, s.e.xuality 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 a.s.serts 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 a.s.sures you that she has always been the same and her conceit has come or gone. These statements const.i.tute unexceptionable rules. The use of them involves no possible error.
[1] Lehrbuch des Anthropologie. Leipzig 1822.
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 ex-
pressions of 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 acc.u.mulation 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 s.e.x 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 the *first question. 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, const.i.tutes 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 a.s.sumed that the criminal exhibits the fruits of his crime, but that it is difficult to discover when there is not much of it. This general
rule 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 s.e.xual standpoint, legally important because she is in herself rather different from other women, and hence must be differently understood. The properties a.s.signed to these very pitiful creatures are well-known. Many of the almost exclusively unpleasant peculiarities a.s.signed 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 is
without 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 are
told how this fear expresses itself in foreign countries. In Spain e. g., it is said that a Spanish woman who has pa.s.sed 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, n.o.body 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 G.o.d, 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 att.i.tude to the unmarried state. So Brandes discovers that the heroines of cla.s.sical 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 s.e.xual 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 , 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 coa.r.s.est denunciations, particularly with regard to s.e.xual crimes. Incidentally, most of them are smart and have a diseased acuity of the senses. Hearing and smell in particular, 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,[1] 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.
[1] Cf. H. Gross"s Archiv. VI, 334.
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 said *fortunately, is nowadays so widespread that everybody has some approximate knowledge of how it affects its victims.
(4) Particular Feminine Qualities.
Section 70. (a) Intelligence.
Feminine intelligence properly deserves a separate section. Intelligence is a function that has in both s.e.xes 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 s.e.xes, their different destinies, must have had profound mutative influence on their intelligence. Moreover, we must always start with a difference of att.i.tude in the two s.e.xes, 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, but
also 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 a.s.sociates 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 att.i.tude 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.
Section 71. I. Conception.
Concerning feminine sense-perception we have already spoken. There is no significant difference between the two s.e.xes, 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 circ.u.mstances 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 s.e.xes. If we compare values, the result will be different according to s.e.x, 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 att.i.tudes, 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 G.o.d"s rest.i.tution 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,[1] 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.
[1] Mantegazza: Fisiologia del piacere.
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 the
names 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 circ.u.mstances he might have earned only her dislike. In such cases the fairy tale about telling mere facts recurs, and I have to repeat that n.o.body 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 att.i.tude 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 att.i.tude 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 h.e.l.l; committed by another, it is in all respects excusable. All that is necessary for this att.i.tude 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 att.i.tudes, but they are never so clear, so typical, nor so determined as when taken by women.
Section 72. 2. Judgment.
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 woman
witness 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 att.i.tude under many words, and one often wishes for the simple a.s.sertion 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 a.s.sertions which are really founded on nothing more than "that must be."
Cases dealing with divisions, distinctions and a.n.a.lysis rarely contain ungrounded a.s.sertions by women. Women are well able to a.n.a.lyse 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 a.s.sert. 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"Humanit," "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 pa.s.sionateness, 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 t.i.tillation and twisting of consequences, and this circ.u.mstance 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 circ.u.mstance 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 pa.s.sed the limit in her first crime.
Section 73. 3. Quarrels with Women.
This little matter is intended only for very young and inexperienced criminal justices. There is nothing more exciting or instructive than
a 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 Brne says, in the condition of a man who must unceasingly polish lights.[1][1] Several sentences are here omitted.
Women have an obstinacy, and it is no easy matter to be pa.s.sive 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 naive 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 pa.s.s beyond it.
Consider their att.i.tude 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 h.o.a.rds it does not know its proper use. Now single women are either h.o.a.rders or wasters; they rarely take the middle way and a.s.sume the prudence of the housewife, which generally develops into miserliness. This is best observable in the foolish
bargaining 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,[1] in which the huckster-woman a.s.serted that she immediately suspected a customer of pa.s.sing counterfeit coins because she did not bargain.
[1] Chronique des Tribunaux, vol II. Bruxelles 1835.
Now this tendency to h.o.a.rd 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 att.i.tude toward money, a failure to judge its value and properties. Now this failure is one of the princ.i.p.al 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.[2]
[2] Cf. Lombroso and Ferrero, The Female Offender: Tr. by Morrison. N. Y. 1895.
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, superst.i.tions, and proverbs are better retained by women than by men. n.o.body would venture to a.s.sert 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 a.s.similating 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 pa.s.s 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.
Section 74. (b) Honesty.
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 person
does 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 s.e.xual trait. To do so, would be to confuse dishonesty with lying.