MURDER FOR MURDER'S SAKE.
THERE is one possibility connected with the late attempt upon a train at Bushey (no satisfactory motive for which has, up to the time of this writing, been discovered) that does not seem to have been considered, and that is, the possibility of there having been no motive for it at all. We mean, of course, no motive of the ordinary kind, such as revenge or profit ; but the chance of the crime's having been plotted for the mere pleasure of destruction, just as a child might kill a caterpillar. Undoubt- edly, the odds arc immensely against the correctness of such a solution ; yet they are, perhaps, not so much so as they appear to be. For it should not be forgotten to begin with, that in pro- portion as there is absence of motive in crime, and especially in the crime of murder, there is probability of safety for the crimi- nal. Crimes are offences against the established order of human society, and they resolve themselves into three main divi- sions,—thievish acts, adulterous acts, and murderous acts. The law has provided specific penalties for each of these, and in so doing it has proceeded upon a fixed theory, namely, that the crime will be contemplated only for certain definite ends, and that it will be committed only when the desire for the realisation of those ends is great enough to outweigh the deterrent effect of the legal penalty. Granting this theory to be always correct, it follows that the mere fact of a crime having been committed tends in a greater or less degree to designate the person who has committed it. In the case of a robbery, for example, the immediate assumption is that it was carried out for the purpose of enriching the robber ; and acting upon this assumption, the police will set themselves to find out what persons likely to adopt such means for enrich- ing themselves can be proved to have been in the neighbour- hood at the time. They will not trouble themselves about the persons in the neighbourhood who could have had no motive for robbery ; they will not think of arresting the Duke of Cranium for picking a lady's pocket, though the Duke may have been talking to the lady at the moment ; they will arrest the ill-looking, shabbily-dressed fellow whose " movements have excited their suspicion." The chances are a thousand to one that the result will justify them ; but then there will always be the off-chance that his Grace may be what is called a kleptomaniac,—that is, that he may have stolen the hand- kerchief, not with the intention of getting sixpence for it at the pawnshop, or because he had not plenty of better hand- kerchiefs of his own, but solely for the pleasure of possess- ing something that did not belong to him. Such a motive is too subtle for the practical sagacity of the police ; they will not suspect the Duke, and because they do not suspect him, he pursues his nefarious career rejoicing. If he stood in as much peril of discovery as the shabby-coated thief, he would probably let ladies' pockets alone. In his case, therefore, the motive theory, so far from standing in his way, is his chief assistance and safeguard. We may go further, and say that it would be impossible for the Duke to establish his claim to being a thief, even if he were caught in the act, or gave evidence against himself. He would be called, not a thief, but a klepto- maniac,—an unfortunate gentleman with a mania for appro- priating other people's property,—not a criminal, therefore, for mania relieves its subject of moral responsibility. In other words, the Duke cannot persuade us that he was in his right mind when he picked that pocket; we insist upon regarding the act as unconscious or involuntary, because we refuse to believe that he can voluntarily and rationally allow himself to steal for stealing's sake. We refuse to believe that human nature is wicked enough to enjoy wickedness per se, or solely because it is wicked.
As regards crimes of an adulterous character, they need not be considered here, because the temptation to commit them is of a nature widely different from other temptations, insomuch that no one, be his character or position what it may, can ever be wholly above the suspicion of being open to it. We do not need to search for motives here ; the germ of the motive lurks in the heart of every human being, and no one can hope to escape the penalty of yielding to it on any plea analogous to that of kleptomania. Here, at all events, the wickedness is done, if not actually for its own sake, then because of the imme- diate selfish gratification it affords ; and the results or con- sequences of it, instead of entering into the causes which bring it about, are precisely what tend most powerfully to restrain it. For the legal penalties inflicted upon the adulterer are trifling compared with the inherent penalty of discovery which the former involve. The most catholic of all crimes (by which we do not mean the most prevalent), adultery is the only one in which the criminal seeks his justification in the nature of the temptation ; and so strongly is this justification coveted, that from the earliest times there have been men who have endeav- oured to put the unrestrained intercourse of the sexes upon a philosophical or religious basis, as an examination of the schemes of " advanced " communities, from Plato's " Republic " to Joe Smith's Mormonism, will sufficiently indicate.
But with murder the case is—or is generally assumed to be— quite otherwise. If A murders B, we are accustomed to say that it was either because A hated B, or because he wished to get possession of some of B's property, or else because B stood in the way of the realisation of some ulterior purpose of A's. These three motives cover the whole ground of A's guilt, and if none of them are found to apply, then we are driven to conclude that A must be insane. Homicidal mania is the murderous parallel of kleptomania, and no doubt plenty of genuine instances of both exist. Murder is supposed to be a thing so disagreeable and objectionable in itself, that—all question of legal punishments aside—no one will commit a murder if he can attain in any other way the object to which the murder is instrumental. Even the murder done in a sudden outburst of passionate hatred, is not to be considered as intrinsically pleasurable ; the murderer kills his victim because the latter is his enemy, not because he enjoys killing in the abstract.
Insomuch, however, as it is allowable to suppose anything, let us for a moment suppose the existence of a man who commits a murder, not from any of the vulgar motives above mentioned, nor in obedience to any insane impulse, but purely and entirely because murder suits his humour. We will suppose him to be a man of education and refine- ment, and of a curiously and boldly experimental turn of mind. He is a man of originality, of fastidiousness, and of sound nerves. He is in search of a new sensation, and it occurs to him that—instead of taking a trip to the Alps, or a voyage across the Atlantic in a ten-foot canoe, or a dose of hasheesh—he will commit a murder. In turning this project over in his mind, the first question to suggest itself is that of the chances of impunity, and it immediately becomes evident that, as regards these, he is in an unapproachably favourable position. The ordinary murderer, no matter how carefully he may conceal the palpable traces of his crime, and no matter how privately he may commit it, is always in danger of being discovered through his motives, which are unconcealable; more- over, the nervousness and agitation consequent upon a recogni- tion of this fact are apt to render his precautions incomplete or clumsy. But the unimpassioned and disinterested murderer is free from this kind of peril. Let him only select as his victim a per- son who is an entire stranger to him, one with whom he has absolutely no relations, business, sentimental, or other, and, as regards the capital penalty at all events, he may discharge his mind of all anxiety. Civilisation would not furnish a jury which would hang a man for a genuinely motiveless murder ; not because such a man would not be the wickedest of murderers, but because the jury would hold that the absence of motive indi- cated absence of rationality ; in other words, that the man must be mad, because it was incredible that he should be wicked enough to be sane. They would neither hang him, therefore, nor imprison him for manslaughter ; but they would send him to an asylum, and then it would depend in large measure upon himself how soon he was liberated. Such, consequently, would be the worst prospect which our supposed murder-fancier would have to look forward to in case of discovery.
But he would not be discovered. In the first place, his choice of a " subject " being entirely unhampered by the ordinary limitations (so that, instead of being obliged to make his selec- tion from the narrow circle of his own acquaintances, that circle would comprise the only individuals out of the whole human race whom he must not select), his facilities and advantages as regards place, time, and means would be incalculable. In the second place, none of the common-place evidences of guilt, such as blood-stains on the clothes, the possession of questionable weapons, or even proof of having been in the vicinity of the spot at the fatal moment, would be sufficient to convict ; for the in- controvertible answer would be always ready :—" I am so-and-so; my habits and means are so-and-so ; I never knew or saw the murdered man in my life ; and I could have no motive, real or imaginary, for doing him an injury. Appearances may be against me, but you cannot avoid the conclusion that in this
case they are deceptive." Beyond question, the man who had such a defence available would be either held insane or allowed b leave the court " without a stain upon his character."
Practically, then, the only thing he would have to guard against would be being caught flagrante della°, and that danger he could safely discount as improbable to the verge of impossibility. We will suppose him, therefore, to have decided to undertake his murder, to have fixed upon his victim, and to have arranged the circumstances in the way most convenient or agreeable to himself. Now it is time to ask the question on which all the rest depends,—Is murder for murder's sake really a temptation to any sane natures ? Will it afford to the murderer a pleasure at all commensurate with the sacrifices in- volved in its commission ?
The testimony of history seems to indicate that it might do so. The unregenerate or selfish impulses of human nature resolve themselves into one,—the delight of personal aggran- disement or ascendancy. Now, certainly, no ascendancy can be more complete and final than that of the mur- derer over his victim. The heart must expand with a satanic but intensely vital pride. The Polynesian canni- bals devoured their slain enemies in the belief, it is said, that the souls of the latter were thereby made incorporate with their own. Civilised enlightenment relieves our murderer from the obligation of cannibalism, but none the less might he please himself with the fancy that the spiritual as well as the physical part of his victim had become subject to him. To the murdered, the murderer stands in the relation of Fate. The former may have entertained what projects, been flattered by what hopes, been inspired by what ideas he will; the murderer steps in, and .at the wave of his hand all this is annihilated. What magician of romance could boast of mightier power than that? But apart from these considerations, there might be also a plea- sure in the mere taking of life. As an excitement, as a stimu- lant to the sensual side of the mind, there may be nothing com- parable with it. The enormous secrecy of the enjoyment would snake it all the keener, and the sense of supreme freedom which the breaking of a fundamental moral law occasions might be- come irresistibly seductive. In short, the man who was in the _habit of systematic and undiscoverable murder would look upon himself as in a manner distinct from and superior to the rest of mankind, and this feeling of superiority would seem to him to he founded on a basis more secure than that of intellectual eminence, and broader and deeper than that of individual char- acter. Who else, he might ask, is so nearly a God as I am ? for though to God alone belongs the power of creating life, it belongs to me to destroy that life, or at least (admitting the truth of the dogma of immortality) to alter the mode and .circumstance of its manifestation. This is the true logic of hell, which, from its own point of view, is more easily denounced than upset.
But if murder for murder's sake could be tempting, have we any reason to suppose that for its own sake it is ever practised ? There is a good deal in the history of poisoners in favour of such .au idea. Some one has observed that a man seldom commits his first murder after the age of twenty-eight years, but that if he begins to murder before that age, he is liable to go on doing so indefinitely. This seems to show that the impulsiveness of youth is needed to precipitate criminals into making a first murderous essay, but that, having made it, they discover it to be not Sc horrible as they had been taught to suppose. If it were otherwise, surely no man would be so unlikely to kill .another as he who had already done so at some past time. His experience of its effects would be a deterrent .stronger than the ignorance of one who had never tried it. Granting, then, that even the murderer who begins to murder with a motive learns to like his trade, what is :there to prevent his ultimately cultivating it on its own merits ? A great many murders—far more than is generally supposed—are committed every year, the authors of which -are never discovered. This fact, if taken in connection with the facilities towards discovery which motives supply, is all but inexplicable ; but as soon as we entertain the possibility of their having been committed without a motive, it becomes com- prehensible enough. As for the late attempt at Bushey, to which we began by referring, that belongs to the class of wholesale murders, which probably differ from single murders in the effect which they produce upon the agents of them. They are the outcome of a coarser type of mind, and most „likely the authors of them seek to disguise their guilt to themselves by pleading the absence of any personal hostility to the sufferers. This, of course, would only apply where the slaughter had a motive; and a motive is, perhaps, more apt to exist in these cases than in the others. Yet Thomassen, the " Bremen fiend," stood to win so little on his ventures, that he might almost be considered to have risked them for their own sake ; and we are informed by one who used to know him that he was outwardly a most genial and naive personage, who was patronised and slapped on the shoulder by his friends, who was henpecked by his wife, and who achieved great social popularity by his hearty and artless manners. So far as is known, however, Thomassen had no partner in his massacres ; and the most promising argument against the inference that the Bushey attempt was a mere philosophic experiment iu slaughter, is to be found in the fact that it appears to have been concocted by more persons than one. But after all, our best safeguard against such devilish refinements of wickedness as we have suggested lies in the in- ward workings of a Divine determination towards good, which prevent evil from attaining its barely logical development. We should be curious to hear what reasons the modern Agnostic school could adduce to show why murder for murder's sake should not be an every-day occurrence.
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