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Section 69. (e) Submerged Sexual Factors.

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 a

false 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, impotent

husband 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,[1] 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 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 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 even

plants 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 women 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[2] 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 expressions

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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 η υστερα, 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 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,[3] 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 said fortunately, is nowadays so widespread that everybody has some approximate knowledge of how it affects its victims.