Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 8.djvu/751

Rh mind. Through all Nature may be found analogies which give probability to this. Nature, in her forms of fixity and power, is massive and rugged in her outlines; it is only in her phases of changing, transient life, that she assumes lines of beauty, delicacy of shape, and clothes her proportions in the subtile harmonies of color. I do not deny woman firmness of character; but surely, whatever firmness she possesses, it is not by reason of her emotions that it exists. Nor do I wish to be understood as saying that any excess of emotion woman may possess over man is necessarily the cause of inherent weakness of character; but, the idea I intend to convey is, that excessive development of the emotions affords a way of approach to the firmer characteristics of her mind of those exciting causes of crime, which, without these avenues, must act with less force as criminal factors. The evidence of this lies in the tendency of woman to exceed in a marked manner her ratio to crimes in general against the person when exposed to the action of causes which act more or less directly upon her emotional life. Women perpetrate crimes, involving human life, more frequently within the circle of their domestic relations than men (Quetelet). In view of this fact, let us inquire as to the probable motives which cause women to exceed men in crimes against persons within this restricted area. If we were to explain it as the result simply of the great opportunity women have of perpetrating crime in the family, it leads to the conclusion that women's criminal tendencies exceed those of men under favorable opportunities, and which men in the same relation possess to an equal extent. This we know is a wrong conclusion; therefore, while we must allow the great facilities afforded to women a certain value as a factor in this excess, yet it is not adequate to explain the fact. It is in the family that woman finds a field for the free action of her emotional life. It is as an outcome from these emotions that the family exists; it is through these emotions that the most deadly wounds may be inflicted upon her morality and self-respect. In the majority of cases, if through her error, or that of others, the family is a failure, the woman of the family is a failure also. In this can be found the strongest argument for encouraging woman to become expert in some form of labor, so as to enlarge the field of her self-dependence, that she may be able to secure safety for herself in the trying hour of domestic misfortune. While the family is called into existence by reason of the most potent sexual mental traits, and finds its strength and permanency in a temperate use and even balance of the emotions, it may become the source of the most active criminal impulses. Conjugal incontinence, jealousy, a misplaced love, may create the most deadly strife in the family circle. Especially is this true if the criminal tendency exists latent, as an inherited taint, in the members of the family, and ready to be kindled into life by emotions which, in others, free from inherited vice, would not pass beyond the control of the moral faculties. Man, whose activities are