Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/211

 MORAL INFL UENCE OF PUBERAL DEVELOPMENT 1 97

No wonder, then, that, in man also, tendencies to violence develop in correlation with the physical conditions, especially in the degenerative state which most depends upon atavic condi- tions. Batef had already noted how the Indians in Brazil, easily managed in their early childhood, become at the age of puberty intolerant of any restraint.' Every day we hear of assaults and murders provoked by the sexual excitement and the passions which accompany it, and criminal statistics go to prove that these crimes, and in general violent criminality, are displayed especially at the time of the sexual development and of the maturity of youth. As appears from my studies on criminals faid before the congress of Geneva, crimes involving personal violence, which are almost altogether lacking before the age of fifteen, when criminality against property is already developed, quiskly reach a high percentage in the period following, so that at the age of twenty-five they have already reached the half, and in this same period are found eight-tenths of the mi.xed offenses of highwaymen, which are counted among the crimes against property. In the prison itself the most frequent infrac- tions of discipline — resistance to the guards, acts of violence against the furniture — occur among the young prisoners. '^ Only a few months ago, in a case tried at Vercelli, a mother testified that her son, an excellent young man, amiable, laborious, and helpful to the family, became, after he had been enticed into relations with a woman of evil life, lazy, thievish, and violent, going so far as to beat his own mother. The same thing has been observed in other young men. In my opinion the sodomy of degenerates cannot be referred to any other cause than the instinct of combativeness, and, therefore, of cruelty, which is developed along with the sexual instinct and reappears abnor- mally with it, and is exercised upon the object of the passion instead of being exercised upon rivals, in virtue of that law, called transfest, stated by Sully.

Paolo, a painter, a young man of eighteen years, and of good disposition, at a ball becomes acquainted with Catherine R., a

■ Spencer, Sociology, Vol. I.

' Antonio Marro, Icaratterideidelinquenti, p. 267. Torino, 1887.