This little matter is intended only for very young and inexperienced
criminal justices. There is nothing more exciting or instructive than a
quarrel with clever and trained women concerning worthy subjects; but
this does not happen in court, and ninety per cent. of our woman
witnesses are not to be quarrelled with. There are two occasions on
which a quarrel may arise. The first, when we are trying to show a
denying prisoner that her crime has already been proved and that her
denials are silly, and the second, when we are trying to show a witness
that she must know something although she refuses to know it, or when we
want to show her the incorrectness of her conclusion, or when we want to
lead her to a point where her testimony can have further value. Now a
verbal quarrel will hurt the case. This is a matter of ancient
experience, for whoever quarrels with women is, as Börne says, in the
condition of a man who must unceasingly polish lights.[269]
Women have an obstinacy, and it is no easy matter to be passive against
it. But in the interest of justice, the part of the wise is not to lose
any time by making an exhibition of himself through verbal quarrels with
women witnesses. The judge may be thoroughly convinced that his success
with the woman may help the case, but such success is very rare, and
when he thinks he has it, it is only apparent and momentary, or is
merely naïve self-deception. For women do like, for the sake of a
momentary advantage, to please men and to appear convinced, but the
judge for whom a woman does this is in a state that requires
consideration.
A few more particulars concerning feminine intelligence. They are,
however, only indirectly connected with it, and are as unintelligible as
the fact that left-handedness is more frequent and color-blindness less
frequent among women than among men. If, however, we are to explain
feminine intelligence at all we must do so by conceiving that women’s
intellectual functioning stops at a definite point and can not pass
beyond it.
Consider their attitude toward money. However distasteful Mammon may be
in himself, money is so important a factor in life itself that it is not
unintelligibly spoken of as the “majesty of cold cash.” But to make
incorrect use of an important thing is to be unintelligent. Whoever
wastes money is not intelligent enough to understand what important
pleasures he may provide for himself, and whoever hoards it does not
know its proper use. Now single women are either hoarders or wasters;
they rarely take the middle way and assume the prudence of the
housewife, which generally develops into miserliness. This is best
observable in the foolish bargaining of women at markets, in their
supposing that they have done great things by having reduced the price
of their purchase a few cents. Every dealer confirms the fact that the
first price he quotes a woman is increased in order to give her a chance
to bargain. But she does not bargain down to the proper price, she
bargains down to a sum above the proper price, and she frequently buys
unnecessary, or inferior things, simply because the dealer was smart
enough to captivate her by allowing reductions. This is indicated in a
certain criminal case,[270] in which the huckster-woman asserted that
she immediately suspected a customer of passing counterfeit coins
because she did not bargain.
Now this tendency to hoard is not essentially miserliness, for the chief
purpose of miserliness is to bring together and to own money; to enjoy
merely the look of it. This tendency is an unintelligent attitude toward
money, a failure to judge its value and properties. Now this failure is
one of the principal reasons for numerous crimes. A woman needing money
for her thousand several objects, demands it from her husband, and the
latter has to provide it without her asking whether he honestly can or
not. A wife is said to be uncurious only with regard to the source of
her husband’s money. She knows his income, she knows the necessary
annual expenses; she can immediately count up the fact that the two are
equal--but she calmly asks for more.
Of course, I am not referring to the courageous helpmeet who stands by
her husband in bearing the burdens of life. With her the criminalist has
nothing to do. I mean only those light-headed, pleasure-loving women,
who nowadays make the great majority, and that army of “lovers,” who
have cost the country a countless number of not unworthy men. The love
of women is the key to many a crime, even murder, theft, swindling, and
treachery. First, there is the woman’s unintelligible arithmetic, then
her ceaseless requirements, finally the man’s surrender to the limit of
his powers; then fresh demands, a long period of opposition, then
surrender, and finally one unlawful action. From that it is only a step
to a great crime. This is the simple theme of the countless variations
that are played in the criminal court. There are proverbs enough to show
how thoroughly the public understands this connection between love and
money.[271]
An apparently insignificant feminine quality which is connected with her
intelligence is her notorious, “never quite ready.” The criminalist
meets this when he is looking for an explanation of the failure of some
probably extraordinarily intelligent plan of crime. Or when a crime
occurs which might have been prevented by a step at the right minute,
women are always ten minutes behind the time. But these minutes would
not be gained if things were begun ten minutes earlier, and once a woman
suffers real damage through tardiness, she resolves to be ten minutes
ahead of time. But when she does so she fails in her resolution and this
failure is to be explained by lack of intelligence. The little fact that
women are never quite on time explains many a difficulty.
Feminine conservatism is as insignificant as feminine punctuality.
Lombroso shows how attached women are to old things. Ideas, jewelry,
verses, superstitions, and proverbs are better retained by women than by
men. Nobody would venture to assert that a conservative man must be less
intelligent than a liberal. Yet feminine conservatism indicates a
certain stupidity, less excitability and smaller capacity for accepting
new impressions. Women have a certain difficulty in assimilating and
reconstructing things, and because of this difficulty they do not like
to surrender an object after having received it. Hence, it is well not
to be too free with the more honorable attributes such as piety, love,
loyalty, respect to what they have already learned; closer investigation
discovers altogether too many instances of intellectual rigidity.
In our profession we meet the fact frequently that men pass much more
easily from honesty to dishonesty, and vice versa, that they more easily
change their habits, begin new plans, etc. Generalizations, of course,
can not be made; each case has to be studied on its merits. Yet, even
when questions of fact arise, e.g., in searching houses, it is well to
remember the distinction. Old letters, real corpora delicti, are much
more likely to be found in the woman’s box than in the man’s. The latter
has destroyed the thing long ago, but the former may “out of piety” have
preserved for years even the poison she once used to commit murder with.