Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 8.djvu/748

728. It must be observed that sexual cerebration in its relation to crime is not confined in its operation to the female sex. Its influence on men may be observed in many of the crimes in which they exceed their usual ratio of excess over women. Man's tendency to belligerency evidently accounts in a measure for his great excess in the crimes of murder and assassination. Attempts have been made to explain this by the frequency of drunkenness, and the street brawls which it leads to among men; but, when we take into consideration the fact that the ratio of the sexes for drunkenness in England is, 1 woman to 1.49 men (Quetelet), we perceive that this cause can but act to a very limited extent. The sexual mental tendency of man to the wager of battle, his physical strength, the almost unlimited opportunities afforded by the greater range of his activities, enable man to exceed his usual ratio of excess over woman in these two crimes. Crimes against property, such as robbery from the person or highway robbery, also offer evidence of the innate cerebral traits of the male. In this offense man stands almost alone. It requires for its successful perpetration bravery and daring. These are qualities belonging peculiarly to men. In view of the intensity of feeling which attends all discussion of matters in which women are concerned, either socially or sexually, I think it better to qualify the last sentence, by calling the attention of the reader to the very proper distinction between moral and physical courage. The first exists as the result of intellectual qualities, education, and moral training; the last is purely a phase of sexual cerebration. Some of the most beautiful examples of moral courage are constantly offered by women. It is the possession of physical courage which is requisite to the commission of the crime alluded to, and not its higher prototype, moral courage. This form of sexual cerebration in the male is the coefficient of belligerency in the perpetration of many crimes, and united to physical strength is, aside from opportunity, capable of explaining many of the circumstances attending man's excess over woman as a criminal.

The action of sexual cerebration in its normal expression, as affecting the relation of men to crime, has been traced far enough to demonstrate its important influence. Its operation in men is more easily detected than in women. Man's career as a criminal is attended by fewer complicating conditions. By the broader field of his activities, he is directly exposed to criminal influences, while woman is hedged in by the circumstances of her position. She lives in an atmosphere of restraining influences, each one of which tends to obscure the effect of the subtile yet potent sexual mental traits which characterize her as a woman. The extent to which woman conforms to a common mental type may be more surely measured by contrasting her as a criminal with man in his relation to crime, than by studying her alone in her usual social relations. Crime reveals to us some of the primeval tendencies of society. By crime, notwithstanding all the varied results