Ely Van de Warker

“ If this he so, it follows that crime must be studied as a natural phenomenon rather than as an accident. Those efforts which society has made to stamp out and confine this tendency to evil must, to an equal extent, spring from higher law; just as a breakwater is reared to protect an exposed harbor from the encroachments of storm and wave.
We have of late years come to look upon criminals as a special class of the community. We have come to complacently call them the "criminal class," just as we do the mercantile class or any other reputable order of men. ”

“ We must take a practical view of woman's character. She must be regarded as one in whom the passions burn with as intense heat as in the other sex. The limits of her morality are the same as man's. She attains purity in the same manner; and she meets sexual disaster through the same means. Her worldly view is bounded by the same horizon. She upholds for herself the same standard of success or failure. Temptations run in the same channel and are resisted by the same psychical traits. The forces of heredity play the some role in her mental and bodily life. ”

“ This pride of person is to many a struggling woman what a moral atmosphere is to others. To the one it is an instinct which keeps her from the degradation, and that conduct which leads to it; to the other it is the moral force which surrounds her and lifts her above the opportunities for evil. Viewed in this light, personal pride, as expressed in the adornment of person and home, may replace the purely moral sense to a certain extent. But pushed beyond the point at which it contributes to correct conduct, and allowed to exist solely as a sexual trait, it may become a strong incentive to crime. ”

“ I am inclined to regard all forces which have hitherto acted, and yet continue to act, upon the great mass of humanity in the creation of sentiments common to the majority upon a given subject, as acting with the force of a law. I conceive, therefore, that there is yet another law which explains, and tends to perpetuate, the present relation of women to the other sex and to society. This is the law of public opinion. The exponents of public opinion upon this subject are the women themselves. ”

“ I think that it is for this reason that frail women, with no knowledge of life, when widowed, often succeed in keeping their families together and providing for them. With the woman who is constantly liable to the demands of a profession, or skilled labor, the maternal affection, anxiety, or care, may intrude at moments when her occupation will demand her highest mental efforts. The manual labor of rearing children the professional woman may delegate to others, but the ceaseless love, care, and forethought, so beautiful in a mother's love, the true woman must assume herself. ”

“ Thus it would be obviously wrong to assert that, because twelve women to one hundred men are convicted of assassination, women represent more than eight times the morality of men in relation to this one offense. This crime is just the one to call into play all those conditions which constitute the moral atmosphere and conditions of sex. Woman's want of opportunity, the nature of her occupations, and the absence of the same degree of temptation, must all be taken into consideration in forming an opinion of the moral equivalent of women in connection with the crime. ”

“ In those cases—and they are not rare—in which the organic appetites affect unduly and too persistently the consciousness, it becomes the source of great unhappiness or of bad health. It would be indeed hard to recognize as love the exhibition of this emotion in the depraved. Among this class it is exhibited as love brutalized. Revolting as it is in this form to all that is elevated in our mental character, I yet believe it to be love in its rudimentary form. It is love stripped of its refinements, of its singleness of object, of its purity. ”

“ This is the ensembled physique, the mental picture we have formed of the bodily man; it is only by long association that we come to speak of one by his mental traits, and can recall him to our minds, not by accidents of size, shape, complexion, but by the tone, manner, and quality, of the mental man. It is curious, however, to reflect that our chief means of mutual identity are the same as those by which we distinguish horse from horse, and dog from dog; and that such is the infinite variety in the merely physical development of men, that this is sufficient for the practical affairs of life. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is this relation which has, in the past, regulated woman's admission into the professions and skilled labor. But we have now to accept the fact that women have entered the professions to contend with man in the struggle for existence. In this struggle, I presume, women expect no favors. In this new field of contest all they ought to ask for is a fair chance to win—the same chances man must take. But, in view of her present relation, and the radical physical differences between the sexes, have they a fair chance, and can they take the chances of man and reach his level in the professions? ”

“ The criminal represents the retrograde tendency of society; the savagism which exists in every community. Order and progress are preserved by an irrepressible conflict waged on the border-land, as it were, of civilization. Many of these crimes grow out of the artificial wants of society. Others are but relative and belong to particular conditions, or orders of men, and at other times and places are without meaning and void of offense. Thus society is ever eager for the warfare, and, at the time it creates the crime, prepares the weapons for its punishment. ”

“ When woman labors either with her hands or head, notwithstanding she reaches the same result as man, she labors in her own way. All this, I believe, points not so much to a womanly habit, as to a womanly brain as well as body. Sex is a law to body as well as brain. Sex pervades all Nature, not for the sake of the individual, but for that of the species. ”

“ In the midst of this toiling mass of humanity phenomenal women have appeared—women who have thrown down the dividing lines of prejudice, and created for themselves places among the most celebrated of the other sex. Those who have thus elevated themselves above the mass have demonstrated the capacity of women not only for the highest culture, but also their ability to equal men in the use of faculties which are their most distinguished attributes. ”

“ In analyzing the circumstances which bear upon infanticide, we are studying the darkest page of woman's criminal history. It proves that under a sufficient motive, and with every opportunity which her peculiar relation to that offense gives, she demonstrates her capacity to equal man in both the degree and number of her criminal acts. It is, however, an offense so characteristically entwined with her sexual life, and with her relations to society, that we must have a due regard for circumstances in contrasting it with any crime or series of crime in men. ”

“ It is the sense that the good opinion of those we know, and whose esteem we value, has been forfeited. When we connect this sense of forfeiture with the fact that the interests in life which women are educated to hold most sacred, await but detection to be lost forever, I think we have found sufficient reason why this crime, which so antagonizes all womanly qualities, should exist to such a degree as to alter nearly one-half the ratio of the sexes in relation to crimes which involve human life. ”

“ This effort of woman to invade all the higher forms of labor is a force battling with the established order of sexual relation. The inertia which it encounters is the universal attendant of established facts in society. If this effort of woman is continued into coming generations, I have no doubt but her relations to society and labor will be in many respects modified. But I believe a long series of generations must pass before women can equal the labor value of men in the professions. ”

“ A defeated love with woman is too often a defeat of her intellectual life. An emotion, the misdirection or disappointment of which is capable of inducing a large per centum of insane in one sex over the other, must surely differ in degree and kind. Certainly we must credit this excess on the part of women with an important physical factor, aside from that of sex proper—being of a less hardy development than man—but these physical peculiarities permit sex to assert its most potent psychical effect to the degree of shaping the actions or destiny of woman. ”

“ In literature and art, woman has maintained her lofty place, separated more widely from man by her mental trait than by her differences in form. It has ever been a theme more of mind than of matter which has inspired the poet to entwine women in his graceful verse. Her truth, her gentleness, her constancy, these are immortal themes ”

“ This is answered by the fact that so gradual is the growth of mind, and the expanding of the intellectual limits, that the closest observer will not detect the dividing line between childhood and womanhood. Look back, if you will, at the young woman who has grown up under your daily notice, and point out the period of her life—be it one of months or a year—in which sex has become, objectively, a part of brain-fibre. For myself it is impossible to perceive the era of this change, so gradually are the various stages of development merged into each other. ”

“ I have entered upon the study of the relations of the sexes to the matters of daily life, with the single purpose of arriving at truth by the use of scientific methods. I believe the field gone over in this and former papers to belong properly to the student of Nature, and not to the so-called social reformer. I cannot bring myself to use the term "woman's sphere;" women have no sphere, except as it is defined by usefulness. ”

“ As the time approaches for its full development, any observing physician can perceive the latent emotion assuming shape and direction to a definite end. Numberless cares and solicitudes, colored by the tenderest of anticipations, become dominant in her volition. Not once, but innumerably, has a star over Bethlehem shed its lucid light in the hearts of watchers, and roused from the depths of latent emotions, half stifled with agony, the infinite possibilities of a mother's love. ”

“ Physiologically, this is the origin of the beautiful emotion called love. In a healthy brain and body, one in which all organic impulses find a reaction in normal consciousness, the emotion of love is allied with all that is pure and noble in the character of the individual. Men find in it an incentive to exertion, and a spur to their ambitions, while women without thought array themselves in all the graces of dress and manner to attract the beloved one. ”

“ The vast systems of railroads, of canals, of mountains pierced by tunnels, of lines of telegraph and cables, the steamships, the vast engines of war, the great emporiums of commerce, the results reached by masterly labors in science which underlie all these grand results, and in which women have been the accessories rather than the collaborators, prove that some factor, other than superior strength of bone and muscle, has led to this vast excess in results reached by man. ”

“ Mentally, I believe woman to be the peer of man; that there is nothing about law, medicine, or theology, that woman cannot learn as well as he; that her mental difference is a sexual difference, just as her bodily differences are sexual. To the question of her mental fitness for this work, other than sexual, I shall give no attention. The physical difference between the sexes will form the first part of our study of woman's future relation to the professions, and brings us naturally to the discussion of the law of anatomical development as modified by sex. ”

“ In spite of the terrible potency of his criminal ideas, a longing for a nobler and higher life existed within him in sufficient force to give direction to considerable self-culture. He stole, and would kill without remorse any one who stood between him and his object, simply to gain money to enable him to follow his studies. His life took the direction of the least resistance. That which existed in the normal man as a sense of right or wrong, and offered itself as an obstacle to wrong-doing, had no place in this man's mental life. ”