We must further inquire what is the part of the proletariat that is guilty of rape upon adults? The answer must be that it is that which forms the lowest stratum of society. As preceding statistics have shown us (see pp. 427–430, 432), the number of illiterates or of those who know only how to read and write, is very great among the authors of sexual crimes. The following table gives us data more detailed and concerned only with rape upon adults.[480]
France, 1875–1884.
| Education. | Absolute Numbers. | % | To 100 Persons upon the Conscription Lists (1880). |
| Unable to read or write | 319 | 28 | 13.8 |
| Able to read and write | 802 | 71 | — |
| With a higher education | 12 | 1 | — |
Upon the basis of this table we have the right to say, then, that this crime is almost never committed by persons having more than a primary education. [[618]]
This fact destroys the theory that the “human beast” exists independent of environment; for if such were the case, this crime would be relatively as frequent among more highly developed persons as among those that are less so. This table proves what is always forgotten by criminal anthropologists, that a man becomes a brute only under certain fixed circumstances, and commits then acts that would be repugnant to him if he lived in a different environment.
Those who commit these acts come from the strata of society in which, in consequence of their living conditions, the sexual life is considered from a purely animal point of view. What is the environment in which the children of the lowest classes grow up, and what is the sexual morality that they derive from it? The simple truth is that there is no sexual morality for them. In consequence of the detestable housing conditions (compare what was said upon this subject in connection with prostitution) and of the bad society with which they are thrown, the children are thoroughly conversant with the sexual life in its most bestial manifestations. Their attention is fixed upon the sexual life at an age at which it is still a closed book to children brought up in a wholesome environment. As Dr. Lux says in his excellent study upon sexual crimes, “Need, misery, and vice are the natural surroundings of the children of the proletariat, and especially of the lower proletariat; they form the environment out of which the child draws his first and most lasting impressions; they are the school from which they derive the lessons of a system of ethics which is in marked contrast with the ethics of progressive humanity. Conceptions of moral restraints can hardly be awakened in the offspring of the lowest ranks of the proletariat; on the contrary, so far as the sexual sphere is concerned, they are suppressed by the undisguised sexual intercourse of parents, other adults, and prostitutes, with whom the children are continually coming into contact.…”[481]
One of the consequences of the lower position of woman in our present society is that man considers women as destined to submit to his sexual will. This is especially the case in the lower strata of the [[619]]population, where the woman is often only a means by which the man may satisfy his desires.
Finally, alcoholism is still to be added as a criminogenous factor. Above (pp. 509 ff.) we have seen that there are many chronic alcoholics among the authors of these crimes; in Germany 23.3% and 20.5%, in France 51.5% and 55.7%, in the Netherlands 10.84%, and in Wurtemberg 36.3%.
There is still another way in which alcoholism figures in the etiology of these crimes. At a certain stage of intoxication the sexual instincts are stimulated, while the moral forces are weakened.[482] So in the cases where a sexual crime has been committed in a state of drunkenness we may be sure that alcohol has been one of the principal factors of it. The following figures give us some information on this point.
England.