I will now give, in some detail, the history of a more decisive and
significant example of this same moral insensibility. It is in a child,
and I take it from German records. Marie Schneider, a school-girl, twelve
years of age, was brought before the Berlin Criminal Court in 1886. She
was well developed for her age, of ordinary facial expression, not pretty,
nor yet ugly. Her head was round, the forehead receding slightly, the nose
rather small, the eyes brown and lively, the smooth, rather fair hair
combed back. With an intellectual clearness and precision very remarkable
for her age, she answered all the searching questions put by the President
of the Court without hesitation or shrinking. There was not the slightest
trace of any inner emotion or deep excitement. She spoke in the same quiet
equable tone in which a school-girl speaks to her teacher or repeats her
lesson. And when the questions put to her became of so serious a character
that the judge himself involuntarily altered his voice and tone, the
little girl still remained self-possessed, lucid, childlike. She was by no
means bold, but she knew that she had to answer as when her teacher spoke
to her, and what she said bore the impress of perfect truth, and agreed at
every point with the evidence already placed before the court. Her
statement was substantially as follows:--“My name is Marie Schneider. I
was born on the 1st of May 1874, in Berlin. My father died long ago, I do
not know when; I never knew him. My mother is still living; she is a
machinist. I also have a younger brother. I lost a sister a year ago. I
did not much like her, because she was better than I, and my mother
treated her better. My mother has several times whipped me for
naughtiness, and it is right that I should take away the stick with which
she beat me, and to beat her. I have gone to school since I was six years
old. I have been in the third class for two years. I stayed there from
idleness. I have been taught reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, and
history, and also religion. I know the ten commandments. I know the sixth:
it is, ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ I have some playfellows at school and in the
neighbourhood, and I am often with a young lady [believed to be of immoral
life] who is twenty years old and lives in the same house. She has told
me about her childhood, and that she was just as naughty as I am, and that
she struck the teacher who was going to punish her. Some time ago, in
playing in the yard, I came behind a child, held his eyes, and asked him
who I was. I pressed my thumbs deep in his eyes, so that he cried out and
had inflamed eyes. I knew that I hurt him, and, in spite of his crying, I
did not let go until I was made to. It did not give me special pleasure,
but I have not felt sorry. When I was a little child I have stuck forks in
the eyes of rabbits, and afterwards slit open the belly. At least so my
mother has often said; I do not remember it. I know that Conrad murdered
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