Morning journal and courier., 1888-10-11
PHILOSOPHY OF MURDER.
How 1t Differs fin Motive ana Qualit From Other Crimes.

How 1t Differs in Motive ana o ua1tty From Other Crimes.
 Some crimes, like forgery, burglary and ! the like, are in the nature of professions, | says the New Orleans Picayune. In order to ! succeed in them a certain technical training ! and a necessary skill are requisite. They \ may be classed as mechanical useful arts. ! Murder, on the other hand, is usually the re-
 suit of some profound and powerful motive | operating not only on the passions, but upon I the reason and the imagination, and acting | with the force and energy of an impulse born of inspiration. Murder often rises to | the height of fine art and has been so des- | ignated by eminent essayists like De Quincy Thus it may be that the most red handed and inexcusable slayer of his fellow man is, so far from being physical monster, often gifted with exceptional good looks. As to ! the female nurderers, they are often sx- tremely beautiful. Any person who has happened to have noticed in the September | issue of the Century Magazine the portrait | of Vera Figner, one of the most daring and desperate of the Russian Nihilists, will req ! liZe this. Her sweet, earnest, ingenious, \ girlish face suggests anything devoted, ten | der and pious, but not a hint of bloodshed. | Nevertheless she organized and managed in | Odessa, in 1882, @ revolutionary movement \ which resulted in the assassination of Gene \ ral Strelmkoff. Take the beautiful Charlotte ! Corday, who assassinated the monster Marat. l She was almost angelic in her purity and iloveliness, and neither before nor after her | long contemplated, carefully planned and bloody prime did she bear the external i'm press of aught save extreme beauty.
 1 Murder is not an end, but means. There are human tigers who delight in bloodshed, but apart from these murder belongs to no sex, class or condition of life. Any one who may become possessed of supreme
 passion, such as jealousy, ambition, love or revenge, or even patriotism and religious fervor, may suddenly be betrayed into the | commission of this capital crime. The most delicste physical constitution, the most re- | fined mental development and the most ten- | der, devoted and affectionate disposition, and ! the incest sense of honor, do not exempt the possessor from temptation to shed blood on occasion. The more delicately organized mentally, the more high spirited morally, are \ no more free from murderous suggestion than \ are the most brutal and ignorant.
 The greatest safeguard against murder is a | strong development of the reasoning powers
 along with a proper moral training. Those | refined and sensitive people who are sctuated by impulse rather than reason make the
 small featured and handsome murderers.
 Men with great noses, small chins and broad forsheads often make great soldiers, delight ing in battle and slaughtering their foes I without pity in order to accomplish a great public object; but they are seldom murder CTS. They have too much good aer1se and
 directness of purpose, even where moral
 qualities are lacking, to be guilty of assassi' nation. The habitually criminal classes, de-
 prayed by association, weakened by evil
 heredity and brutslized by drink, are Jeff ont of this discussion for obvious reasons,