\
It is the universal passivity of woman's nature which makes her accept and assume man's valuations of things, although these are utterly at variance with her nature.
It is the universal passivity of woman's nature which makes her accept and assume man's valuations of things, although these are utterly at variance with her nature.
Weininger - 1903 - Sex and Character
A
/I have already partly explained why man takes this burden on himself. Just as hatred is a projection of our own evil qualities on other persons in order that we may stand apart from them and hate them ; just as the devil was invented to serve as a vehicle of all the evil impulses in man ; so love has the purpose of helping man in his battle for good, when he feels that he himself is not strong enough. Loveandhatearealikeformsofcowardice. In hate we picture to ourselves that our own hateful qualities exist in another, and by so doing we feel ourselves partly freed from them. In love we project what is good in us, and so having created a good and an evil image we are more able to compare and value themy
Lovers seek their own souls in the loved ones, and so love is free from the limits I described in the first part of this book, not being bound down by the conditions of merely sexual attraction. In spite of their real opposition, thereisananalogybetweeneroticsandsexuality. Sexuality uses the woman as the means to produce pleasure and
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children of the body ; -erotics use her as the means to create worth and children of the soul. A little understood con- ception of Plato is full of the deepest meaning : that love is not directed towards beauty, but towards the procreation of beauty ; that it seeks to win immortality for the things of the mind, just as the lower sexual impulse is directed towards the perpetuation of the species/
It is more than a merely formal analogy, a superficial, verbal resemblance, to speak of the fruitfulness of the mind, of its conception and reproduction, or, in the words of Plato, to speak of the children of the soul. As bodily sexu- ality is the effort of an organic being to perpetuate its own form, so love is the attempt to make permanent one's own soul or individuality. Sexuality and love are alike the effort to realise oneself, the one by a bodily image, the other by an image of the soul. <But it is only the man of genius who can approach this entirely unsensuous love, and it is only he who seeks to produce eternal children in whom his deepest nature shall live for eve^'^
The parallel may be carried further. Since Novalis first called attention to it, many have insisted on the association between sexual desire and cruelty. All that" is born of womanmustdie. Reproduction,birth,anddeathareindis- solubly associated ; the thought of untimely death awakens sexual desire in its fiercest form, as the determination to reproduce oneself. And so sexual union, considered ethi- cally, psychologically, and biologically, is allied to murder
;
it is the negation of the woman and the man ; in its extreme case it robs them of their consciousness to give life to the child. Thehighestformoferoticism,asmuchasthelowest form of sexuality, uses the woman not for herself but as means to an end--to preserve the individuality of the artist.
(ij'he artist has used the woman merely as the screen on which to project his own idea\
The real psychology of the loved woman is always a matter of indifference. In the moment when a man loves a woman, he neither understands her nor wishes to under- stand her, although understanding is the only moral basis
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of association in mankind. A human being cannot love another that he fully understands, because he would then necessarily see the imperfections which are an inevitable part of the human individual, and love can attach itself only to perfection/) Love of a woman is possible only when it does not consider her real qualities, and so is able to replace the actual psychical reality by a different and quite imaginary reality, ^he attempt to realise one's ideal in a woman, instead of the woman herself, is a necessary destruction of the empirical personality of the woman. And so the attempt is cruel to the woman ; it is the egoism of love that disregards the woman, and cares nothing for her
real inner life^>
Thus the parallel between sexuality and love is complete.
Love is murder. The sexual impulse destroys the body and mind of the woman, and the psychical eroticism destroys her psychical existence. Ordinary sexuality regards the woman only as a means of gratifying passion or of begetting children. The higher eroticism is merciless to the woman, requiring her to be merely the vehicle of a projected per- sonaHty, or the mother of psychical children. Love is not only anti-logical, as it denies the objective truth of the woman and requires only an illusory image of her, but it is anti-ethical with regard to her.
I am far from despising the heights to which this eroticism may reach, as, for instance, in Madonna worship. Who could blind his eyes to the amazing phenomenon presented by Dante ? It was an extraordinary transference of his own ideal to the person of a concrete woman whom the artist had seen only once and when she was a young girl, and who for all he knew might have grown up into a Xantippe. (The complete neglect of whatever worth the woman herself might have had, in order that she might better serve as the vehicle of his projected conception of worthiness, was never more clearly exhibitecjf^ And the three-fold immorality of this higher eroticism becomes more plain than ever. It is an unlimited selfishness with regard to the actual woman, as she is wholly" rejected for the ideal
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woman. It is a felony towards the lover himself, inasmuch as he detaches virtue and worthiness from himself ; and it is a deliberate turning away from the truth, a preferring of sham to reality.
The last form in which the immorality reveals itself is that love prevents the worthlessness of woman from being realised, inasmuch as it always replaced her by an imaginary projection. Madonna worship itself is fundamentally im- moral, inasmuch as it is a shutting of the eyes to truth. The Madonna worship of the great artists is a destruction of woman, and is possible only by a complete neglect of the women as they exist in experience, a replacement of actuality by a symbol, a re-creation of woman to serve the purposes of man, and a murder of woman as she exists.
^' Whenaparticularmanattractsaparticularwomanthe ir^fluence is not his beauty. Only man has an instinct for beauty, and the ideals of both manly beauty and of womanly beauty have been created by man, not by woman. N The qualities that appeal to a woman are the signs of developed sexuality; those that repel her are the qualities of the higher mind. Woman is essentially a phallus worshipper, and her worship is permeated with a fear like that of a bird for a snake, of a man for the fabled Medusa head, as she feels that the object of her adoration is the power that will destroy herj
The course of my argument is now apparent. As logic and ethics have a relation only to man, it was not to be expected that woman would stand in any better position with regard to aesthetics. Esthetics and logic are closely interconnected, as is apparent in philosophy, in mathe- matics, in artistic work, and in music. I have now shown the intimate relation of aesthetics to ethics. As Kant showed, aesthetics, just as much as ethics and logic, depend on the free will of the subject. As the woman has not free will, she cannot have the faculty of projecting beauty outside herself.
The foregoing involves the proposition that woman cannot love. Women have made no ideal of man to
? EROTICS AND iESTHETICS 251
correspond with the male conception of the Madonna. What woman requires from man is not purity, chastity, morahty, but something else, -d^oman is incapable of desiring virtue in a man^
It is almost an insoluble riddle that woman, herself incapable of love, should attract the love of man. It has seemed to me a possible myth or parable, that in the begin- ning, when men became men by some miraculous act of God,asoulwasbestowedonlyonthem. Men,whenthey love, are partly conscious of this deep injustice to woman, and make the fruitless but heroic effort to give her their own soul. But such a speculation is outside the limits of either science or philosophy.
[l have now shown what woman does not wish ; there remains to show what she does wish, and how this wi^h is diametrically opposed to the will of man}
? CHAPTER XII
The nature of woman and her significance in the universe
** Erst Mann und Weib zusammen Machen den Menschen aus,"--Kant.
The further we go in the analysis of woman's claim to esteem the more we must deny her of what is lofty and noble, great and beautiful. As this chapter is about to take the deciding and most extreme step in that direction, I should like to make a few remarks as to my position. The last thing I wish to advocate is the Asiatic standpoint with regard to the treatment of women. Those who have care- fully followed my remarks as to the injustice that all forms of sexuality and erotics visit on woman will surely see that this work is not meant to plead for the harem. But it is quite possible to desire the legal equality of men and women without believing in their moral and intellectual equality, just as in condemning to the utmost any harsh- ness in the male treatment of the female sex, one does not overlook the tremendous, cosmic, contrast and organic differences between them. There are no men in whom there is no trace of the transcendent, who are altogether bad ; and there is no woman of whom that could truly be said. However degraded a man may be, he is immeasur- ably above the most superior woman, so much so that comparison and classification of the two are impossible
; but even so, no one has any right to denounce or defame
woman, however inferior she must be considered. A true adjustment of the claims for legal equality can be
? WOMAN AND HER SIGNIFICANCE
undertaken on no other basis than the recognition of a complete, deep-seated polar opposition of the sexes. I trust that I may escape confusion of my views as to woman with the superficial doctrine of P. J. Mo? bius--a doctrine only interesting as a brave reaction against the general tendency. Women are not " physiologically weak-minded," and I cannot share the view that women of conspicuous ability are to be regarded as morbid specimens.
From a moral point of view one should only be glad to recognise in these women (who are always more masculine than the rest) the exact opposite of degeneration, that is to say, it must be acknowledged that they have made a step forward and gained a victory over themselves ; from the biological standpoint they are just as little or as much phenomena of degeneration as are womanish men (unethi- cally considered). Intermediate sexual forms are normal, not pathological phenomena, in all classes of organisms, and their appearance is no proof of physical decadence.
/Woman is neither high-minded nor low-minded, strong- minded nor weak-minded. She is the opposite of all these. Mind cannot be predicated of her at all ; she is mindless. That, however, does not imply weak-mmdedness in the ordinary sense of the term, the absence of the capacity to "get her bearings" in ordinary everyday life. Cunning, calculation, "cleverness," are much more usual and con- stant in the woman than in the man, if there be a personal selfishendinview. Awomanisneversostupidasaman can be. \
But has woman no meaning at all ? Has she no general
purpose in the scheme of the world ? Has she not a
destiny and,inspiteofallhersenselessnessandemptiness, ;
a significance in the universe ?
Has she a mission, or is her existence an accident and
an absurdity ?
In order to understand her meaning, it is necessary to
start from a phenomenon which, although old and well recognised, has never received its proper meed of con- sideration. It is from nothing more nor less than the
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phenomenon of match-making from which we may be able to infer most correctly the real nature of woman.
Its analysis shows it to be the force which brings together and helps forward two people in their knowledge of one another, which helps them to a sexual union, whether in the form of marriage or not. This desire to brmg about an understanding between two people is possessed by all women from their earliest childhood ; the very youngest girls are always ready to act as messengers for their sisters' lovers. And if tlie instinct of match-making can be indulged in only after the particular woman in question has brought about her own consummation in marriage, it is none the less present before that time, and the only things which are at work against it are her jealousy of her contemporaries, and her anxiety about their chances with regard to her lover, until she has finally secured him by reason of her money,, her social position, and so forth.
As soon as women have got rid of their own case by their own marriage, they hasten to help the sons and daughters of their acquaintances to marry. The fact that older women, in whom the desire for sexual satisfaction has died out, are such match-makers is so fully recog- nised that the idea has wrongly spread that they are the only real match-makers.
They urge not only women but men to marry, a man's own mother often being the most active and persistent advocate of his marriage. It is the desire and purpose of every mother to see her son married, without any thought of his individual taste ; a wish which some have been blind enough to regard as another charm in maternal love, of which such a poor account was given in an earlier chapter. It is possible that many mothers may hope that their sons should obtain permanent happiness through marriage, however unfit they may be for it ; but un- doubtedly this hope is absent with the majority, and in any case it is the match-making instinct, the sheer objection to bachelordom, which is the strongest motive of all.
254
It is clear that women obey a purely instinctive,
? !
WOMANANDHERSIGNIFICANCE 255
inherent impulse, when they try to get their daughters married.
It is certainly not for logical, and only in a small degree for material reasons, that they go to such lengths to attain their ends, and it is certainly not because of any desire ex- pressed by their daughters (very often it is in direct opposi- tion to the girl's choice) ; and since the match-making instinct is not confined to the members of a woman's own family, it is impossible to speak of it as being part of the '* altruistic " or " moral " attitude of maternal love ; although most women if they were charged with match-making projects wouldundoubtedlyanswer"thatit istheirdutytothink of the future welfare of their dear children. "
A mother makes no difference in arranging a marriage for her own daughter and for any other girl, and is just as glad to do it for the latter if it does not mterfere with the interests of her own family ; it is the same thing, match- making throughout, and there is no psychological difference in making a match for her own daughter and doing the same thing for a stranger. I would even go so far as to say that a mother is not inconsolable if a <<stranger, however common and undesirable, desires and seduces her daughter.
The attitude of one sex to certain traits of the other can often be applied as a criterion as to how far certain pecu- liarities of character are exclusively the property of the one sex or are shared by the other. So far, we have had to deny to women many characters which they would gladly claim, but which are exclusively masculine ; in match-making^ however, we have a characteristic which is really and ex- clusively feminine, the exceptions being either in the case of very womanish men or else special instances which will be fully dealt with later on, in chap. xiii. Every real man will have nothing to do with this instinct in his wife, even when his own daughters, whom he would gladly see settled in life, are concerned ; he dislikes and despises the whole business, and leaves it entirely to his wife, as being altogether in her province. This is a striking instance of a purely feminine psychical characteristic, being not only unattractive
? SEX AND CHARACTER
to a man, but even repulsive to him when he is aware of it : while the male characteristics in themselves are sufficient to please the female, man has to denude woman of hers before he can love her.
But the match-making instinct exerts a much deeper and more important influence on the nature of woman than can be gathered from the little I have said on this subject. I wish now to draw attention to woman's attitude at a play : she is always waiting to see if the hero and heroine, the lovers in the piece, will quarrel. This is nothing but match- making, and psychologically does not differ a hair from it : it is the ever present desire to see the man and woman united. But that is not all ; the tremendous excitement with which women await the crucial point in a decent or indecent book is due to nothing less than the desire to see the sexual union of the principal characters, and is coupled with an actual excitation at the thought, and positive appreciation of the force which is behind sexual union. It is not possible to state this formally and logically, the only thing is to try and understand how it is that the two things are psychologically one with women. The mother's ex- citement on her daughter's wedding-day is of the same quality as that engendered by reading a story by Prevost, or Sudermann's ** Katzensteg. " It is quite true that men are very interested by novels which end in sexual union, but in quite a different way from women ; they thoroughly appreciate the sexual act in imagination, but they do not follow the gradual approach of the two people concerned from the very beginning ; and their interest does not grow, as woman's does, in constant proportion to the reciprocal value which the two people have for one another.
The breathless pleasure with which the various obstacles are overcome, the feeling of disappointment at each thwarting of the sexual purpose, is altogether womanish and unmanly ; but it is always present with woman. She is continually on the watch for sexual developments, whether in real life or in literature. Has no one ever wondered why women are so keen and " disinterested " about bringing
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? WOMAN AND HER SIGNIFICANCE
other men and women together ? 'QThe satisfaction they derive from it arises from a personal stimulus at the thought of the sexual union of others>
But the full extent to which match-making influences the point of view of all women is not yet fully grasped. On a summer evening when lovers may be seen in dark corners of public places, or on the seats and banks round about, it is always the women who wilfully and curiously try to see what is happening, whilst men who have to pass that way do so unwillingly, looking the other way, because of a sense of intrusion. Just in the same way it is women who turn in the streets to look at nearly every couple they meet, and gaze after them. This espionage and turning round are none the less " match-making," because they are sub-conscious acts. If a man does not want to see a thing he turns his back on it, and does not look round ; but women are glad to see two people in love with one another, and take pleasure in surprising them in their love-making, because of their innate and super-personal desire that sexual union should occur.
But man, as was seen much further back, only cares for that which has a positive value. A woman when she sees two lovers together is always awaiting developments, that is to say, she expects, anticipates, hopes, and desires an outcome. I know an elderly married woman who listened expectantly at the door for some time, when a servant of hers had allowed her sweetheart to come into her room, before ? he walked in and gave her notice.
The idea of union is always eagerly grasped and never repelled whatever form it may take (even where animals are concerned). * Sheexperiencesnodisgustatthenauseating details of the subject, and makes no attempt to think of anything pleasanter. This accounts for a great deal of what is so apparently mysterious in the psychic life of woman. Her wish for the activity of her own sexual life is her strongest impulse, but it is only a special case of her
* The one apparent exception to this rule is fully discussed in this chapter.
R
257
;
? 258 SEX AND CHARACTER
deep, her only vital interest, the interest that sexual unions shall take place ; the wish that as much of it as possible shall occur, in all cases, places, and times.
This universal desire may either be concentrated on the act itself or on the (possible) child ; in the first case, the woman is of the prostitute type and participates merely for the sake of the act ; in the second, she is of the mother type, but not merely with the idea of bearing children herself
;
she desires that every marriage she knows of or has helped
to bring about should be fruitful, and the nearer she is to
theabsolutemotherthemoreconspicuousisthisidea; the
real mother is also the real grandmother (even if she remains
avirgin JohannTesman'smarvellousportrayalof"Tante ;
Jule" in Ibsen's " Hedda Gabler" is an example of what I mean). Every real mother has the same purpose, that of helping on matrimony ; she is the mother of all mankind she welcomes every pregnancy.
The prostitute does not want other women to be with child, but to be prostitutes like herself.
A woman's relations with married men show how she subordinates her own sexuality to her match-making in- stinct, the latter being the dominant power.
Woman objects more strongly to bachelordom than any- thing else, because she is altogether a match-maker, and this makes her try to get men to marry ; but if a man is already married she at once loses most of her interest in him, how- ever much she liked him before. If the woman herself is already married, that is to say, when each man she meets is not a possible solution to her own fate, one would not imagine that a married man would find less favour with her because he was married than when he was a bachelor if the woman herself is unfaithful ; but women seldom carry on an intrigue with another woman's husband, except when they wish to triumph over her by making him neglect her. Thisshowsthatthedispositionofwomanistowards
the fact of pairing ; when men are already paired she seldom attempts to make them unfaithful, for the fact of their being paired has satisfied her instinct.
? WOMAN AND HER SIGNIFICANCE
V^This match-making is the most common characteristic of the human female ; the wish to become a mother-in-law is much more general than even the desire to become a mother, the intensity and extent of which is usually over-rate(5i
My readers may possibly not understand the emphasis I have laid on a phenomenon which is usually looked upon as amusing as it is disgusting ; and it may be thought that I have given undue importance to it.
But let us see why I have done so. Match-making is essentially the phenomenon of all others which gives us the key to the nature of woman, and we must not, as has always been the case, merely acknowledge the fact and pass on, but we should try to analyse and explain it. One of our commonest phrases runs : " Every woman is a bit of a match-maker. "
But we must remember that in this, and nothing else, lies the actual essence of woman. After mature consideration of the most varied types of women and with due regard to the special classes besides those which I have dis- cussed, I am of opinion that the only positively general female characteristic is that of match-making,<^that is, her uniform willingness to further the idea of sexual unior^.
Any definition of the nature of woman which goes no further than to declare that she has the strong instinct for her own union would be too narrow ; any definition that would link her instincts to the child or to the husband, or toboth,wouldbetoowide. Themostgeneralandcom- prehensive statement of the nature of woman is that it is completely adapted and disposed for the special mission of aiding and abetting the bodily union of the sexes. All women are match-makers, and this property of the woman to be the advocate of the idea of pairing is the only one which is found in women of all ages, in youn^ girls, in adults, and in the aged. The old woman is no longer interested in her own union, but she devotes herself to the pairing of others. This habit of the old woman is nothing new, it is only the continuance of her enduring instinct surviving the complications that were caused when her
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personal interests came into conflict with her general desire ;
it is the now unselfish pursuit of the impersonal idea.
It is convenient to recapitulate at this point what my investigation has shown as to the sexuality of women. /I have shown that woman is engrossed exclusively by sexuality, not intermittently, but throughout her life ; that her whole being, bodily and mental, is nothing but sexu- ality itself. I added, moreover, that she was so constituted that her whole body and being continually were in sexual relations with her environment, and that just as the sexual organs were the centre of woman physically, so the sexual idea was the centre of her mental nature^ The idea of pairing is the only conception which has positive worth for women. The woman is the bearer of the thought of the continuity of the species. The high value which she attaches to the idea of pairing is not selfish and individual, it is super- individual, and, if I may be forgiven the desecration of the phrase, it is the transcendental function of woman. And just as femaleness is no more than the embodiment of the idea of pairing, so is it sexuality in the abstract. Pairing is the supreme good for the woman ; she seeks to effect it always and everywhere. Her personal sexuality is only a special case of this universal, generalised, impersonal
instinct.
The effort of woman to realise this idea of pairing is so
fundamentally opposed to that conception of innocence and purity, the higher virginity which man's erotic nature has demanded from women, that not all his erotic incense would have obscured her real nature but for one factor. I have now to explain this factor which has veiled from man the true nature of woman, and which in itself is one of the deepest problems of woman, I mean her absolute duplicity. Her pairing instinct and her duplicity, the latter so great as to conceal even from woman herself what is the real essence of her nature, must be explained together.
All that may have seemed like clear gain is now again called into question. Self-observation was found lacking in women, and yet there certainly are women who observe
? WOMAN AND HER SIGNIFICANCE
very closely all that happens to them. They were denied the love of truth, and yet one knows many women who would not tell a lie for anything. It has been said that they are lacking in consciousness of guilt ; but there are many women who reproach themselves bitterly for most trifling matters, besides " penitents " who mortify their flesh. Modesty was left to man, but what is to be said of the womanly modesty, that bashfulness, which, according to Hamerling, only women have ? Is there no foundation for the way in which the idea has grown and found such acceptance ? And then again : Can religion be absent, in spite ot so many " professing " women ? Are we to exclude all women from the moral purity, all the womanly virtues, which poets and historians have ascribed to her ? Are we to say that woman is merely sexual, that sexuality only receives its proper due from her when it is so well known that women are shocked at the slightest allusion to sexual matters, that instead of giving way to it they are often irritated and disgusted at the idea of impurity, and quite often detest sexual union for themselves and regard it just as many men do ?
It is, of course, manifest that one and the same point is bound up in all these antitheses, and on the answer given to them depends the finai and decisive judgment on woman. And it is clear that if only one single female creature were really asexual, or could be shown to have a real relationship to the idea of personal moral worth, every- thing that I have said about woman, its general value as psychically characteristic of the sex, would be irretrievably demolished, and the whole position which this book has taken up would be shattered at one blow.
These apparently contradictory phenomena must be satisfactorily explained, and it must be shown that what is at the bottom ot it ail and makes it seem so equivocal arises from the very nature of woman whicti 1 have been trying to explain all along.
In order to understand these fallacious contradictions one must first of all remember the tremendous " accessi-
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bility," to use another word, the " impressionability," of women, -^heir extraordinary aptitude for anything new, and their easy acceptance of other people's views have not yet been sufficiently emphasised in this bool^
/As a rule, the woman adapts herself to the man, his views become hers, his likes and dislikes are shared by her, every word he says is an incentive to her, and the stronger his sexual influence on her the more this is so. Woman does not perceive that this influence which man has on her causes her to deviate from the line of her own development ; she does not look upon it as a sort of unwarrantable intrusion ; she does not try to shake off what is really an invasion of her private life ; she is not ashamed of being receptive ; on the contrary, she is really pleased when she can be so, and prefer^ man to mould her mentally. She rejoices in being dependent, and her expectatioiis-fr? )m. m. an resolve themselves i nto the moment when she may_bg_p? if? cily43assi-ve.
But it is not only from her lover (although she would like that best), but also from her father and mother, uncles and aunts, brothers and sisters, near relations and distant ac- quaintances, that a woman takes what she thinks and believes, being only too glad to get her opinions " ready made. "
It is not only inexperienced girls but even elderly and married women who copy each other in everj'thing, from the nice new dress or pretty coiffure down to the places where they get their things, and the very recipes by which they cook.
And it never seems to occur to them that they are doing something derogatory on their part, as it ought to do if they possessed an individuality of their own and strove to work out their own salvation. A woman's thoughts and actions have no definite, independent relations to things in themselves ; they are not the result of the reaction of her individuality to the world. They accept what is imposed onthemgladly,andadheretoit withthegreatestfirmness. That is why woman is so intolerant when there has been a breach of conventional laws. I must guote an amusing
;
? WOMANANDHERSIGNIFICANCE 263
instance, bearing on this side of woman's character, from Herbert Spencer. It is the custom in various tribes of Indians in North and South America for the men to hunt and fight and leave all the laborious and menial tasks to theirwives. TheDakotanwomenaresoimbuedwiththe idea of the reasonableness and fitness of this arrangement that, instead of feeling injured by it, the greatest insult that one of these women can offer to another would be implied
in some such words as follows ; " You disgraceful creature. . . . I saw your husband carrying home wood for the fires. What was his wife doing that he had to demean himself by
"
doing woman's work ?
<^ The extraordinary way in which woman can be influenced
b^ external agencies is similar in its nature to her suggesti- bility, which is far greater and more general than man's they are both in accordance with woman's desire to play the passive and never the active part in the sexual act and all that leads to it. *.
\
It is the universal passivity of woman's nature which makes her accept and assume man's valuations of things, although these are utterly at variance with her nature. The way in which woman can be impregnated with the masculine point of view, the saturation of her innermost thoughts with a foreign element, her false recognition of morahty, which cannot be called hypocrisy because it does not conceal anything anti-moral, her assumption and prac- tise of things which in themselves are not in her realm, are all very well if the woman does not try to use her own
judgment, and they succeed in keeping up the fiction of her superior morality. Complications first arise when these acquired valuations come into collision with the only inborn, genuine, and universally feminine valuation, the supreme value she sets on pairing.
Woman's acceptance of pairing as the supreme good is quite unconscious on her part. As she has no sense of
* The quiescent, inactive, large egg-cells are sought out by the mobile, active, and slender spermatozoa.
? 264 SEX AND CHARACTER
individuality she has nothing to contrast with oairing ; and so, unlike man, she cannot realise its significance, or even notice the presence in herself of this instinct.
No woman knows, or ever has known, or ever will know, what she does when she enters into association with man. Femaleness is identical with pairing, and a woman would have to get outside herself in order to see and under- stand that she pairs. Thus it is that the deepest desire of woman, all that she means, and all that she is, remain unrecognised by her. There is nothing, then, to prevent the male negative valuation of pairing overshadowing the female positive valuation of it in the consciousness of the woman. The susceptibility of woman is so great that she can even act in opposition to what she is, to the one thing on which she really sets a positive value !
But the imposture which she enacts when she allows herself to be incorporated with man's opinions of sexuality and shamelessness, even of the miposture itself, and when she uses the masculine standard for her actions, is such a colossal fraud that she is never conscious of it ; she has acquired a second nature, without even guessing that it is not her real one ; she takes herself seriously, believes she is something and that she believes in something ; she is con- vinced of the sincerity and originality of her moralisings and opinions; the lie is as deeply rooted as that; it is organic. I cannot do better than speak of the ontological untruthfulness of woman.
Wolfram von Eschenbach says of his hero :
" . . . So keusch und rein Ruht' er bei seiner Ko? nigin,
Dass kein Genu? gen fand' darin
So manches Weib beim lieben Mann. Dass doch so manche in Gedanken Zur U? ppigkeit will u? berschwanken, Die sonst sich spro? de zeigen kann ! Vor Fremden zu? chtig sie erscheinen. Doch ist des Herzens tiefstes Meinen Das Widerspiel vom a? ussern Schein. "
Wolfram indicates clearly enough what is at the bottom
WOMAN AND HER SIGNIFICANCE
265
of woman's heart, but he does not say all that is to be said. Women deceive themselves as well as others on this point. One cannot artificially suppress and supplant one's real nature, the physical as well as the other side, without some- thing happening. The hygienic penalty that must be paid for woman's denial of her real nature is hysteria.
Of all the neurotic and psychic phenomena, those of hysteria are the most fascinating for psychologists ; they represent a far more difficult and, therefore, a more interest- ing study than those observed in melancholia or in simple paranoia.
The majority of psychiatrists have a distrust of psycho- logical analyses which it is not easy for them to shake off every statement of pathological alteration of tissues or intoxication by certain means is for them a limine credible
;
it is only in psychical matters that they refuse to recognise a primary cause. But since no reason has so far been given why psychical phenomena should be of importance secondary to physical phenomena, it is quite justifiable to disregard such prejudices.
It is quite possible--there is nothing to prevent it being so--that a very great deal, perhaps everything, may depend on the proper interpretation of the " psychical mechanism " of hysteria. That this is so is proved by the fact that the few conclusions of any value with reference to hysteria so far discovered have been arrived at in this way ; the inves- tigations carried out by Pierre Janet, Oskar Vogt, and particularly by Breuer and S. Freud, show what I mean.
J.
All good work on hysteria will undoubtedly follow the lines
these men have worked on ; that is to say, by investigation of the psychological processes which led up to the disease.
I believe myself that what may be called a psycho- logical sexual traumatism is at the root of hysteria. The typical picture of a hysterical case is not very different from the following : A woman has always accepted the male views on sexual matters ; they are in reality totally foreign to her nature, and sometime, by some chance, out of the conflict between what her nature asserts to be true and
;
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what she has always accepted as true and beUeved to be true, there comes what may be called a " wounding of the mind. " It is thus possible for the person affected to declare a sexual desire to be an " extraneous body in her conscious- ness," a sensation which she thinks she detests, but which inrealityhasitsorigininherownnature. Thetremendous intensity with which she endeavours to suppress the desire (and which only serves to increase it) so that she may the more vehemently and indignantly reject the thought--these are the alternations which are seen in hysteria. And the chronic untruthfulness of woman becomes acute if the woman has ever allowed herself to be imbued with man's ethically negative valuation of sexuality. It is well known that hysterical women manifest the strongest suggestibility with men. Hysteria is the organic crisis of the organic
untruthfulness of woman.
I do not deny that there are hysterical men, but these are
comparatively few ; and since man's psychic possibilities are endless, that of becoming "female " is amongst them, and,therefore,hecanbehysterical. Thereareundoubtedly many untruthful men, but in them the crisis takes a different form, man's untruthfulness being of a different kind and never so hopeless in character as woman's.
This examination mto the organic untruthfulness of woman, into her inability to be honest about herself which alone makes it possible for her to think that she thinks what is really totally opposed to her nature, appears to me to offer a satisfactory explanation of those difficulties which the aetiology of hysteria present.
Hysteria shows that untruthfulness, however far it may reach,cannotsuppresseverything. Byeducationorenviron- ment woman adopts a whole system of ideas and valuations which are foreign to her, or, rather, has patiently submitted to have them impressed on her ; and it would need a tremendous shock to get rid of this strongly-rooted psychical complexity, and to transplant woman to that condition of intellectual helplessness which is so characteristic of hysteria.
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An extraordinary shock suffices to destroy the artificial structure, and to place woman in the arena to undertake a fight between her unconscious, oppressed nature, and her certainly conscious but unnatural mind. The see-sawing which now begins between the two explains the unusual psychic discontinuity during the hysterical phase, the con- tinual changes of mood, none of which are subject to the control of a dominant, central, controlling nucleus of indi- viduality. It is extraordinary how many contradictions can co-exist in the hysterical. Sometimes they are highly intelligent and able to judge correctly and keenly oppose hypnotism and so forth. Then, again, they are excited by most trivial causes, and are most subject to hypnotic trances. Sometimes they are abnormally chaste, at other times extremely sensual.
All this is no longer difficult to explain. The absolute sincerity, the painful love of truth, the avoidance of every- thing sexual, the careful judgment, and the strength of will--all these form part of that spurious personality which woman in her passivity has taken upon herself to exhibit to herself and to the world at large. Everything that belongs to her original temperament and her real sense form that " other self," that " unconscious mind " which can delight in obscurities and which is so open to suggestion.
It has been endeavoured to show that in what is known as the " duplex " and " multiplex personality," the " double conscience," the " dual ego," lies one of the strongest arguments against the belief in the soul. As a matter of fact, these phenomena are the very reasons why we ought to believe in a soul. The " dividing up of the personality " is only possible when there never has been a personality, as with woman. All the celebrated cases which Janet has described in his book, " L'Automatisme Psychologique," concern women, not in a single instance man. It is only woman who, minus soul or an intelligible ego, has not the power to become conscious of what is in her ; who cannot throw the light of truth on her inmost self ; who can by her completely passive inundation by a
268 SEX AND CHARACTER
consciousness belonging to another, allow what is in her own nature to be suppressed by an extraneous element who can display the hysterical phenomena described by
Hysteria is the bankruptcy of this superficial sham self which has been put on, and the woman becomes for the time being a tabula rasa, whilst the working in her of her own genuine nature appears to her as something coming fromwithout. Thisapparent"secondarypersonality,"this " foreign body in the consciousness," this false self, is, in reality, the true female nature, sexuality itself appearing, and a proper understanding of this fact, and of the com- plications that must ensue from the ebbings and fiowings of the false, supposed to be true, and the true supposed to be false, lie at the root of the most difficult phenomena of hysteria.
Woman's incapacity for truth--which I hold to be con- sequent on her lack of free will with regard to the truth, in accordance with Kant's " Indetermmism "--conditions her falsity. Any one who has had anything to do with women knows how often they give offhand quite patently untrue reasons for what they have said or done, under the momen- tary necessity of answering a question. It is, however, hysterical subjects who are most careful to avoid unveracity (in a most marked and premeditated way before strangers)
;
but however paradoxical it may sound it is exactly in this that their untruthfulness lies ! They do not know that this desire for truth has come to them from outside and is no part of their real nature.
They have slavishly accepted the postulate of morality, and, therefore, wish to show at every opportunity, like a good servant, how faithfully they follow instructions.
It is always suspicious when a man is frequently spoken of as exceptionally trustworthy : he must have gone out of his way to let people know it, and it would be safe to wager that in reahty he is a rogue. No confidence must be placed in the genuineness of hysterical morality, which doctors (no doubt in good faith) often emphasise by remarks as to the high moral position of their patients.
Janet.
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I repeat : hysterical patients do not consciously simulate. It can only be made clear to them by suggestion that they actually have been simulating, and all the " confessions" of the dissimulation can only be explained in the same way.
Otherwise they believe in their own natural honesty and morality. Neither are the various things which torture them imaginary; it is much more likely that in the fact that they feel them, and that the symptoms first disappear with what Breuer calls "catharsis " (the successive bringing to their consciousness of the true causes of their illness by hypnotism), lies the proof of their organic untruthfulness.
The self-accusations which hysterical people are so full of are nothing but unconscious dissimulation. The sense of guilt, which is equally poignant in great and most trifling things, cannot be genuine ; if the hysterical self- torturers possessed a standard of morality for themselves and others they would not be so indiscriminate in their self-accusations, and not cast as much blame on themselves for a slight error as for real wrong-doing.
The most distingishing character of the unconscious un- truthfulness of their self-reproaches is their habit of telling others how wicked they are, what terrible things they have done, and then they ask if they (the hysterical) are not hope- lessly abandoned sort of people. No one who really feels remorse could talk in such a way. The fallacy of repre- senting the hysterical as being eminently moral is one which evenBreuerandFreudhaveshared. Theh^^stericalsimply become imbued with moral ideas which are foreign to them in their normal state. They subordinate themselves to this code, they cease to prove things for themselves, they no longer exercise their own judgment.
Probably these hysterical subjects approach more closely than any other natures to the moral ideal of the social and utilitarian ethics which regard a lie as moral if it is for the good of society or of the race. Hysterical women realise that ideal ontogenetically inasmuch as their standard of morality comes from without, not from within, and prac- tically as they appear to act most readily from altruistic
? SEX AND CHARACTER
motives. For them duty towards others is not merely a special application of duty towards oneself.
The untruthfulness of the hysterical is proportional to their belief in their own accuracy. From their complete inability to attain personal truth, to be honest about them- selves--the hysterical never think for themselves, they want other people to think about them, they want to arouse the interest of others--it follows that the hysterical are the best mediums for hypnotic purposes. But any one who allows him or herself to be hypnotised is doing the most immoralthingpossible. Itisyieldingtocompleteslavery
;
it is a renunciation of the will and consciousness ; it means allowing another person to do what he likes with the sub- ject. Hypnosis shows how all possibility of truth depends upon the wish to be truthful, but it must be the real wish of the person concerned : when a hypnotised person is told to do something, he does it when he comes out of the trance, and if asked his reasons will give a plausible motive on the spot, not only before others, but he will justify his action to himself by quite fanciful reasons. In this we have, so to speak, an experimental proof of Kant's " Ethical Code. "
All women can be hypnotised and like being hypnotised, but this proclivity is exaggerated in hysterical women. Even the memory of definite events in their life can be destroyed by the mere suggestion of the hypnotiser. Breuer's experiments on hypnotised patients show clearly that the consciousness of guilt in them is not deeply seated, as otherwise it could not be got rid of at the mere sugges- tion of the hypnotiser. But the sham conviction of responsibility, so readily exhibited by women of hysterical constitution, rapidly disappears at the moment when nature, the sexual impulse, appears to drive through the superficial restraints. Inthehystericalparoxysmwhathappensisthat the woman, while no longer believing it altogether herself, asseverates more and more loudly : "I do not want that at all, some one not really me is forcing it on me, but I do not want it at all. " Every stimulation from outside will now be brought into relation with that demand, which.
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WOMANANDHERSIGNIFICANCE 271
as she partly believes, is being forced on her, but which, in reality, corresponds with the deepest wish of her nature. That is why women in a hysterical attack are so easily seduced. The " attitudes passionelles " of the hysterical are merely passionate repudiations of sexual desire, which are loud merely because they are not real, and are more plaintive than at other times because the danger is greater. It is easy to understand why the sexual experiences of the time preceding puberty play so large a part in acute hysteria.
The influence of extraneous moral views can be imposed comparatively easily on the child, as they have little to overcome in the almost unawakened state of the sexual incli- nations. But, later on, the suppressed, although not wholly vanquished, nature lays hold of these old experiences, rein- terprets them in the light of the new contents of conscious-
ness, and the crisis takes place. The different forms that the paroxysms assume and their shifting nature are due very largely to the fact that the subject does not admit the true cause, the presence of a sexual desire, any consciousness of it being attributed by her to some extraneous influence, some self that is not her " real self. "
Medical observation or interpretation of hysteria is wrong it allows itself to be deceived by the patients, who in turn deceive themselves. It is not the rejecting ego but the rejected which is the true and original nature of the hysterical patients, however much they pretend to themselves and others that it is foreign to them.
If the rejecting ego were really their natural ego they could act in opposition to the disturbing element which they say is foreign to them, and be fully conscious of it, and differentiate and recognise it in their memory. But the fraud is evident, because the rejecting ego is only borrowed, and they lack the courage to look their own desire in the face, although something seems to say that it is the real, inborn,andonlypowerfulonetheyhave. Eventhedesire itself has no real identity, for it is not seated in a real indi- vidual, and, as it is suppressed, leaps, so to speak, from one
part of the body to the other. It may be that my attempt
;
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? SEX AND CHARACTER
at an explanation will be thought fanciful, but at least it appears to be true that the various forms of hysteria are one and the same thing. This one thing is what the hysterical patient will not admit is part of hei, although it is what is pressing on her. If she were able to ascribe it to herself and criticise it in the way in which she admits trivial matters of another kind, she would be in a measure outside andaboveherownexperiences. Thefranticrageofhys- terical women at what they say is imposed on them by some strange will, whilst it in reality is their own will, shows that theyare just as much under the domination of sexuality as are non-hysterical women, are just as subject to their destiny and incapable of avertmg it, since they, too, are without any intelligible, free ego.
But it may be asked, with reason, why all women are not hysterical, since all women are liars ? This brings us to a necessary inquiry as to the hysterical constitution. If my theory has been on the right lines, it ought to be able to give an answer in accordance with facts. According to it, the hysterical woman is one who has passively accepted in entirety the masculine and conventional valuations instead ofallowingherownmentalcharacteritsproperplay. The woman who is not to be led is the antithesis of the hysterical woman. I must not delay over this point ; it really belongs tospecialfemalecharacterology. Thehystericalwomanis hysterical because she is servile ; mentally she is identical with the maid-servant. Her opposite (who does not really exist)istheshrewishdame. Sothatwomenmaybesub- divided into the maid who serves, and the woman who commands. *
The servant is born and not made, and there are many women in good circumstances who are *' born servants," although they never need to put their rightful position to
* We may find the analogy to this in men : there are masculine " servants " who are so by nature, and there is the masculine form of the shrew e. g. , the policeman. It is a noticeable fact that a policeman usually finds his sexual complement in the housemaid.
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? WOMANANDHERSIGNIFICANCE 273
The servant and the mistress are a sort of " com- plete woman " when considered as a "whole. "*
The consequences of this theory are fully borne out by experience. The Xanthippe is the woman who has the least resemblance to the hysterical type. She vents her spleen (which is really the outcome of unsatisfied sexual desires) on others, whereas the hysterical woman visits hers on herself. The " shrew " detests other women, the " servant " detests herself. The drudge weeps out her woes alone, without really feeling lonely--loneliness is identical with morality, and a condition which implies true duality or manifoldness ; the shrew hates to be alone because she must have some one to scold, whilst hysterical women vent their passion on themselves. The shrew lies openly and boldly but without knowing it, because it is her nature to think herself always in the right, and she insults those who contradict her. The servant submits wonderingly to the demands made of her which are so foreign to her nature :
the hypocrisy of this pliant acquiescence is apparent in her hysterical attacks when the conflict with her own sexual emotions begins. It is because of this receptivity and sus- ceptibility that hysteria and the hysterical type of woman are so leniently dealt with : it is this type, and not the shrewish type, that will be cited in opposition to my views. f
Untruthfulness, organic untruthfulness, characterises both types, and accordingly all women. It is quite wrong to say
* A real dame would never dream of asking her husband what she was to do, what she is to give him for dinner, &c. ; the hysteri- cal woman, on the contrary, is always lacking in ideas, and wants suggestions from others. This is a rough way of indicating the two types.
f It is the " yielding type " and not the virago type of woman that men think capable of love. Such a woman's love is only the mental sense of satisfaction aroused by the maleness of some parti- cular man, and, therefore, it is only possible with the hysterical ; it has nothing to do with her individual power of loving, and can have nothing to do with it. The bashfulness of woman is also due to her " obsession " by one man ; this also causes her neglect of all other men.
the test !
SEX AND CHARACTER
274
that women lie. That would imply that they sometimes speak the truth. Sincerity, pro foro interno et externo, is the virtue of all others of which women are absolutely incapable, which is impossible for them !
The point I am urging is that woman is never genuine at any period of her life, not even when she, in hysteria, slavishly accepts the aspect of truth laid on her by another, and apparently speaks in accordance with those demands.
A woman can laugh, cry, blush, or even look wicked at will : the shrew, when she has some object in view ; the " maid," when she has to make a decision for herself. Men have not the organic and physiological qualifications for such dissimulation.
If we are able to show that the supposed love of truth in these types of woman is no more than their natural hypocrisy in a mask, it is only to be expected that all the other qualities for which woman has been praised will suffer under analysis. Her modesty, her self-respect, and her religiousfervourareloudlyacclaimed. Womanlymodesty, none the less, is nothing but prudery, i. e. , an extravagant denial and rejection of her natural immodesty. Whenever a woman evinces any trace of what could really be called modesty, hysteria is certainly answerable for it. The woman who is absolutely unhysterical and not to be influenced, i. e. , the absolute shrew, will not be ashamed of any re- proaches her husband may shower on her, however just incipient hysteria is present when a woman blushes under her husband's direct censure ; but hysteria in its most marked form is present when a woman blushes when she is quite alone : it is only then that she may be said to be fully impregnated with the masculine standard of values.
The women who most nearly approximate to what has been called sexual anaethesia or frigidity are always hysterical, as Paul Solliers, with whom I entirely agree, discovered. Sexual anaesthesia is merely one of the many hysterical, that is to say, unreal, simulated forms of anaesthesia. Oskar Vogt, in particular (and general obser- vation has confirmed him), proved that such anaesthesia
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? WOMANANDHERSIGNIFICANCE 275
does not involve a real lack of sensation, but is simply due to an inhibition which keeps certain sensations in check, and excludes them from the consciousness.
If the anaesthetised arm of a hypnotised subject is pricked a certain number of times, and the medium is told to say how many times he has been pricked, he is able to do so, althoughotherwisehewouldnothaveperceivedthem. So also with sexual frigidity ; it is an order given by the con- trolling force of the super-imposed asexual ideas; but this, like all other forms of anaesthesia, can be counteracted by a sufficiently strong " order. "
The repulsion to sexuality in general shown by the hysterical woman corresponds in its nature with her insensibility to sexual matters in her own case. Such a repulsion, an intense disinclination for everything sexual, is really present in many women, and this may be urged as an exception to my generalisation as to the universality in woman of the match-making tendency. But women
who are made ill by discovering two people in sexual inter- course are always hysterical. In this we have a special justification of the theory which holds match-making to be the true nature of woman, and which looks upon her own sexuality as merely a special case of it. A woman may be made hysterical not only by a sexual suggestion to herself which she outwardly resists whilst inwardly assenting to it, but may be just as much so by the sight of two people in sexual intercourse, for, though she thinks the matter has no value for her, her inborn assent to it forces itself through all outward and artificial barriers, and overcomes the super-
imposed and incorporated method of thought in which she usually lives. That is to say, she feels herself involved in the sexual union of others.
Something similar takes place in the hysterical " conscious- ness of guilt," which has already been spoken about. The absolute shrew never feels herself really in the wrong the woman who is slightly hysterical only feels so in the presence of men ; the woman who is thoroughly hysterical feels it in the presence of the particular man who dominates
? SEX AND CHARACTER
her. One cannot prove the existence of a sense of guilt in woman by the mortifications to which " devotees " and " penitents" subject themselves. It is these extreme cases of self-discipline which make one suspicious. Doing penance proves, in most cases, that the doer has not over- come his fault, that the sense of guilt has not really entered consciousness ; it appears really to be much rather an attempt to force repentance from the outside, to make up for not really feeling it.
The difference between the conviction of guilt in hysterical women and in men, and the origin of the self-reproaches of the former, are of some importance. When the hysterical woman realises that she has done or thought something immoral, she tries to rectify it by some code which she seeks to obey and to substitute in her mind in place of the immoral thought. She does not really get rid of the thought which is too deeply rooted in her nature ; she does not really face it, try to understand it, and so purge herself of it. She simply, from point to point, case by case, tries to adhere to the moral code without ever transforming herself, reforming her idea. The moral character in the woman is elaborated bit by bit ; in the male rightconductcomesfrommoralcharacter. Thevowre- models the whole man ; the change takes place in the only possible way, from within outwards, and leads to a real morality which is not only a justification by works. The morality of the woman is merely superficial and is not real morality.
The current opinion that woman is religious is equally erroneous. Female mysticism, when it is anything more than mere superstition, is either thinly veiled sexuality (the identification of the Deity and the lover has been frequently discussed, as, for instance, in Maupassant's " Bel-Ami," or in Hauptmann's " Hannele's Himmelfahrt") as in numberless spiritualists and theosophists, or it is a mere passive and unconscious acceptance of man's religious views which are clung to the more firmly because of woman's natural disinclination for them. The lover is readily transformed
276
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? WOMANANDHERSIGNIFICANCE 277
into a Saviour ; very readily (as is well known to be the case with many nuns) the Saviour becomes the lover.
/I have already partly explained why man takes this burden on himself. Just as hatred is a projection of our own evil qualities on other persons in order that we may stand apart from them and hate them ; just as the devil was invented to serve as a vehicle of all the evil impulses in man ; so love has the purpose of helping man in his battle for good, when he feels that he himself is not strong enough. Loveandhatearealikeformsofcowardice. In hate we picture to ourselves that our own hateful qualities exist in another, and by so doing we feel ourselves partly freed from them. In love we project what is good in us, and so having created a good and an evil image we are more able to compare and value themy
Lovers seek their own souls in the loved ones, and so love is free from the limits I described in the first part of this book, not being bound down by the conditions of merely sexual attraction. In spite of their real opposition, thereisananalogybetweeneroticsandsexuality. Sexuality uses the woman as the means to produce pleasure and
247
? SEX AND CHARACTER
children of the body ; -erotics use her as the means to create worth and children of the soul. A little understood con- ception of Plato is full of the deepest meaning : that love is not directed towards beauty, but towards the procreation of beauty ; that it seeks to win immortality for the things of the mind, just as the lower sexual impulse is directed towards the perpetuation of the species/
It is more than a merely formal analogy, a superficial, verbal resemblance, to speak of the fruitfulness of the mind, of its conception and reproduction, or, in the words of Plato, to speak of the children of the soul. As bodily sexu- ality is the effort of an organic being to perpetuate its own form, so love is the attempt to make permanent one's own soul or individuality. Sexuality and love are alike the effort to realise oneself, the one by a bodily image, the other by an image of the soul. <But it is only the man of genius who can approach this entirely unsensuous love, and it is only he who seeks to produce eternal children in whom his deepest nature shall live for eve^'^
The parallel may be carried further. Since Novalis first called attention to it, many have insisted on the association between sexual desire and cruelty. All that" is born of womanmustdie. Reproduction,birth,anddeathareindis- solubly associated ; the thought of untimely death awakens sexual desire in its fiercest form, as the determination to reproduce oneself. And so sexual union, considered ethi- cally, psychologically, and biologically, is allied to murder
;
it is the negation of the woman and the man ; in its extreme case it robs them of their consciousness to give life to the child. Thehighestformoferoticism,asmuchasthelowest form of sexuality, uses the woman not for herself but as means to an end--to preserve the individuality of the artist.
(ij'he artist has used the woman merely as the screen on which to project his own idea\
The real psychology of the loved woman is always a matter of indifference. In the moment when a man loves a woman, he neither understands her nor wishes to under- stand her, although understanding is the only moral basis
248
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of association in mankind. A human being cannot love another that he fully understands, because he would then necessarily see the imperfections which are an inevitable part of the human individual, and love can attach itself only to perfection/) Love of a woman is possible only when it does not consider her real qualities, and so is able to replace the actual psychical reality by a different and quite imaginary reality, ^he attempt to realise one's ideal in a woman, instead of the woman herself, is a necessary destruction of the empirical personality of the woman. And so the attempt is cruel to the woman ; it is the egoism of love that disregards the woman, and cares nothing for her
real inner life^>
Thus the parallel between sexuality and love is complete.
Love is murder. The sexual impulse destroys the body and mind of the woman, and the psychical eroticism destroys her psychical existence. Ordinary sexuality regards the woman only as a means of gratifying passion or of begetting children. The higher eroticism is merciless to the woman, requiring her to be merely the vehicle of a projected per- sonaHty, or the mother of psychical children. Love is not only anti-logical, as it denies the objective truth of the woman and requires only an illusory image of her, but it is anti-ethical with regard to her.
I am far from despising the heights to which this eroticism may reach, as, for instance, in Madonna worship. Who could blind his eyes to the amazing phenomenon presented by Dante ? It was an extraordinary transference of his own ideal to the person of a concrete woman whom the artist had seen only once and when she was a young girl, and who for all he knew might have grown up into a Xantippe. (The complete neglect of whatever worth the woman herself might have had, in order that she might better serve as the vehicle of his projected conception of worthiness, was never more clearly exhibitecjf^ And the three-fold immorality of this higher eroticism becomes more plain than ever. It is an unlimited selfishness with regard to the actual woman, as she is wholly" rejected for the ideal
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? 250 SEX AND CHARACTER
woman. It is a felony towards the lover himself, inasmuch as he detaches virtue and worthiness from himself ; and it is a deliberate turning away from the truth, a preferring of sham to reality.
The last form in which the immorality reveals itself is that love prevents the worthlessness of woman from being realised, inasmuch as it always replaced her by an imaginary projection. Madonna worship itself is fundamentally im- moral, inasmuch as it is a shutting of the eyes to truth. The Madonna worship of the great artists is a destruction of woman, and is possible only by a complete neglect of the women as they exist in experience, a replacement of actuality by a symbol, a re-creation of woman to serve the purposes of man, and a murder of woman as she exists.
^' Whenaparticularmanattractsaparticularwomanthe ir^fluence is not his beauty. Only man has an instinct for beauty, and the ideals of both manly beauty and of womanly beauty have been created by man, not by woman. N The qualities that appeal to a woman are the signs of developed sexuality; those that repel her are the qualities of the higher mind. Woman is essentially a phallus worshipper, and her worship is permeated with a fear like that of a bird for a snake, of a man for the fabled Medusa head, as she feels that the object of her adoration is the power that will destroy herj
The course of my argument is now apparent. As logic and ethics have a relation only to man, it was not to be expected that woman would stand in any better position with regard to aesthetics. Esthetics and logic are closely interconnected, as is apparent in philosophy, in mathe- matics, in artistic work, and in music. I have now shown the intimate relation of aesthetics to ethics. As Kant showed, aesthetics, just as much as ethics and logic, depend on the free will of the subject. As the woman has not free will, she cannot have the faculty of projecting beauty outside herself.
The foregoing involves the proposition that woman cannot love. Women have made no ideal of man to
? EROTICS AND iESTHETICS 251
correspond with the male conception of the Madonna. What woman requires from man is not purity, chastity, morahty, but something else, -d^oman is incapable of desiring virtue in a man^
It is almost an insoluble riddle that woman, herself incapable of love, should attract the love of man. It has seemed to me a possible myth or parable, that in the begin- ning, when men became men by some miraculous act of God,asoulwasbestowedonlyonthem. Men,whenthey love, are partly conscious of this deep injustice to woman, and make the fruitless but heroic effort to give her their own soul. But such a speculation is outside the limits of either science or philosophy.
[l have now shown what woman does not wish ; there remains to show what she does wish, and how this wi^h is diametrically opposed to the will of man}
? CHAPTER XII
The nature of woman and her significance in the universe
** Erst Mann und Weib zusammen Machen den Menschen aus,"--Kant.
The further we go in the analysis of woman's claim to esteem the more we must deny her of what is lofty and noble, great and beautiful. As this chapter is about to take the deciding and most extreme step in that direction, I should like to make a few remarks as to my position. The last thing I wish to advocate is the Asiatic standpoint with regard to the treatment of women. Those who have care- fully followed my remarks as to the injustice that all forms of sexuality and erotics visit on woman will surely see that this work is not meant to plead for the harem. But it is quite possible to desire the legal equality of men and women without believing in their moral and intellectual equality, just as in condemning to the utmost any harsh- ness in the male treatment of the female sex, one does not overlook the tremendous, cosmic, contrast and organic differences between them. There are no men in whom there is no trace of the transcendent, who are altogether bad ; and there is no woman of whom that could truly be said. However degraded a man may be, he is immeasur- ably above the most superior woman, so much so that comparison and classification of the two are impossible
; but even so, no one has any right to denounce or defame
woman, however inferior she must be considered. A true adjustment of the claims for legal equality can be
? WOMAN AND HER SIGNIFICANCE
undertaken on no other basis than the recognition of a complete, deep-seated polar opposition of the sexes. I trust that I may escape confusion of my views as to woman with the superficial doctrine of P. J. Mo? bius--a doctrine only interesting as a brave reaction against the general tendency. Women are not " physiologically weak-minded," and I cannot share the view that women of conspicuous ability are to be regarded as morbid specimens.
From a moral point of view one should only be glad to recognise in these women (who are always more masculine than the rest) the exact opposite of degeneration, that is to say, it must be acknowledged that they have made a step forward and gained a victory over themselves ; from the biological standpoint they are just as little or as much phenomena of degeneration as are womanish men (unethi- cally considered). Intermediate sexual forms are normal, not pathological phenomena, in all classes of organisms, and their appearance is no proof of physical decadence.
/Woman is neither high-minded nor low-minded, strong- minded nor weak-minded. She is the opposite of all these. Mind cannot be predicated of her at all ; she is mindless. That, however, does not imply weak-mmdedness in the ordinary sense of the term, the absence of the capacity to "get her bearings" in ordinary everyday life. Cunning, calculation, "cleverness," are much more usual and con- stant in the woman than in the man, if there be a personal selfishendinview. Awomanisneversostupidasaman can be. \
But has woman no meaning at all ? Has she no general
purpose in the scheme of the world ? Has she not a
destiny and,inspiteofallhersenselessnessandemptiness, ;
a significance in the universe ?
Has she a mission, or is her existence an accident and
an absurdity ?
In order to understand her meaning, it is necessary to
start from a phenomenon which, although old and well recognised, has never received its proper meed of con- sideration. It is from nothing more nor less than the
253
? SEX AND CHARACTER
phenomenon of match-making from which we may be able to infer most correctly the real nature of woman.
Its analysis shows it to be the force which brings together and helps forward two people in their knowledge of one another, which helps them to a sexual union, whether in the form of marriage or not. This desire to brmg about an understanding between two people is possessed by all women from their earliest childhood ; the very youngest girls are always ready to act as messengers for their sisters' lovers. And if tlie instinct of match-making can be indulged in only after the particular woman in question has brought about her own consummation in marriage, it is none the less present before that time, and the only things which are at work against it are her jealousy of her contemporaries, and her anxiety about their chances with regard to her lover, until she has finally secured him by reason of her money,, her social position, and so forth.
As soon as women have got rid of their own case by their own marriage, they hasten to help the sons and daughters of their acquaintances to marry. The fact that older women, in whom the desire for sexual satisfaction has died out, are such match-makers is so fully recog- nised that the idea has wrongly spread that they are the only real match-makers.
They urge not only women but men to marry, a man's own mother often being the most active and persistent advocate of his marriage. It is the desire and purpose of every mother to see her son married, without any thought of his individual taste ; a wish which some have been blind enough to regard as another charm in maternal love, of which such a poor account was given in an earlier chapter. It is possible that many mothers may hope that their sons should obtain permanent happiness through marriage, however unfit they may be for it ; but un- doubtedly this hope is absent with the majority, and in any case it is the match-making instinct, the sheer objection to bachelordom, which is the strongest motive of all.
254
It is clear that women obey a purely instinctive,
? !
WOMANANDHERSIGNIFICANCE 255
inherent impulse, when they try to get their daughters married.
It is certainly not for logical, and only in a small degree for material reasons, that they go to such lengths to attain their ends, and it is certainly not because of any desire ex- pressed by their daughters (very often it is in direct opposi- tion to the girl's choice) ; and since the match-making instinct is not confined to the members of a woman's own family, it is impossible to speak of it as being part of the '* altruistic " or " moral " attitude of maternal love ; although most women if they were charged with match-making projects wouldundoubtedlyanswer"thatit istheirdutytothink of the future welfare of their dear children. "
A mother makes no difference in arranging a marriage for her own daughter and for any other girl, and is just as glad to do it for the latter if it does not mterfere with the interests of her own family ; it is the same thing, match- making throughout, and there is no psychological difference in making a match for her own daughter and doing the same thing for a stranger. I would even go so far as to say that a mother is not inconsolable if a <<stranger, however common and undesirable, desires and seduces her daughter.
The attitude of one sex to certain traits of the other can often be applied as a criterion as to how far certain pecu- liarities of character are exclusively the property of the one sex or are shared by the other. So far, we have had to deny to women many characters which they would gladly claim, but which are exclusively masculine ; in match-making^ however, we have a characteristic which is really and ex- clusively feminine, the exceptions being either in the case of very womanish men or else special instances which will be fully dealt with later on, in chap. xiii. Every real man will have nothing to do with this instinct in his wife, even when his own daughters, whom he would gladly see settled in life, are concerned ; he dislikes and despises the whole business, and leaves it entirely to his wife, as being altogether in her province. This is a striking instance of a purely feminine psychical characteristic, being not only unattractive
? SEX AND CHARACTER
to a man, but even repulsive to him when he is aware of it : while the male characteristics in themselves are sufficient to please the female, man has to denude woman of hers before he can love her.
But the match-making instinct exerts a much deeper and more important influence on the nature of woman than can be gathered from the little I have said on this subject. I wish now to draw attention to woman's attitude at a play : she is always waiting to see if the hero and heroine, the lovers in the piece, will quarrel. This is nothing but match- making, and psychologically does not differ a hair from it : it is the ever present desire to see the man and woman united. But that is not all ; the tremendous excitement with which women await the crucial point in a decent or indecent book is due to nothing less than the desire to see the sexual union of the principal characters, and is coupled with an actual excitation at the thought, and positive appreciation of the force which is behind sexual union. It is not possible to state this formally and logically, the only thing is to try and understand how it is that the two things are psychologically one with women. The mother's ex- citement on her daughter's wedding-day is of the same quality as that engendered by reading a story by Prevost, or Sudermann's ** Katzensteg. " It is quite true that men are very interested by novels which end in sexual union, but in quite a different way from women ; they thoroughly appreciate the sexual act in imagination, but they do not follow the gradual approach of the two people concerned from the very beginning ; and their interest does not grow, as woman's does, in constant proportion to the reciprocal value which the two people have for one another.
The breathless pleasure with which the various obstacles are overcome, the feeling of disappointment at each thwarting of the sexual purpose, is altogether womanish and unmanly ; but it is always present with woman. She is continually on the watch for sexual developments, whether in real life or in literature. Has no one ever wondered why women are so keen and " disinterested " about bringing
256
? WOMAN AND HER SIGNIFICANCE
other men and women together ? 'QThe satisfaction they derive from it arises from a personal stimulus at the thought of the sexual union of others>
But the full extent to which match-making influences the point of view of all women is not yet fully grasped. On a summer evening when lovers may be seen in dark corners of public places, or on the seats and banks round about, it is always the women who wilfully and curiously try to see what is happening, whilst men who have to pass that way do so unwillingly, looking the other way, because of a sense of intrusion. Just in the same way it is women who turn in the streets to look at nearly every couple they meet, and gaze after them. This espionage and turning round are none the less " match-making," because they are sub-conscious acts. If a man does not want to see a thing he turns his back on it, and does not look round ; but women are glad to see two people in love with one another, and take pleasure in surprising them in their love-making, because of their innate and super-personal desire that sexual union should occur.
But man, as was seen much further back, only cares for that which has a positive value. A woman when she sees two lovers together is always awaiting developments, that is to say, she expects, anticipates, hopes, and desires an outcome. I know an elderly married woman who listened expectantly at the door for some time, when a servant of hers had allowed her sweetheart to come into her room, before ? he walked in and gave her notice.
The idea of union is always eagerly grasped and never repelled whatever form it may take (even where animals are concerned). * Sheexperiencesnodisgustatthenauseating details of the subject, and makes no attempt to think of anything pleasanter. This accounts for a great deal of what is so apparently mysterious in the psychic life of woman. Her wish for the activity of her own sexual life is her strongest impulse, but it is only a special case of her
* The one apparent exception to this rule is fully discussed in this chapter.
R
257
;
? 258 SEX AND CHARACTER
deep, her only vital interest, the interest that sexual unions shall take place ; the wish that as much of it as possible shall occur, in all cases, places, and times.
This universal desire may either be concentrated on the act itself or on the (possible) child ; in the first case, the woman is of the prostitute type and participates merely for the sake of the act ; in the second, she is of the mother type, but not merely with the idea of bearing children herself
;
she desires that every marriage she knows of or has helped
to bring about should be fruitful, and the nearer she is to
theabsolutemotherthemoreconspicuousisthisidea; the
real mother is also the real grandmother (even if she remains
avirgin JohannTesman'smarvellousportrayalof"Tante ;
Jule" in Ibsen's " Hedda Gabler" is an example of what I mean). Every real mother has the same purpose, that of helping on matrimony ; she is the mother of all mankind she welcomes every pregnancy.
The prostitute does not want other women to be with child, but to be prostitutes like herself.
A woman's relations with married men show how she subordinates her own sexuality to her match-making in- stinct, the latter being the dominant power.
Woman objects more strongly to bachelordom than any- thing else, because she is altogether a match-maker, and this makes her try to get men to marry ; but if a man is already married she at once loses most of her interest in him, how- ever much she liked him before. If the woman herself is already married, that is to say, when each man she meets is not a possible solution to her own fate, one would not imagine that a married man would find less favour with her because he was married than when he was a bachelor if the woman herself is unfaithful ; but women seldom carry on an intrigue with another woman's husband, except when they wish to triumph over her by making him neglect her. Thisshowsthatthedispositionofwomanistowards
the fact of pairing ; when men are already paired she seldom attempts to make them unfaithful, for the fact of their being paired has satisfied her instinct.
? WOMAN AND HER SIGNIFICANCE
V^This match-making is the most common characteristic of the human female ; the wish to become a mother-in-law is much more general than even the desire to become a mother, the intensity and extent of which is usually over-rate(5i
My readers may possibly not understand the emphasis I have laid on a phenomenon which is usually looked upon as amusing as it is disgusting ; and it may be thought that I have given undue importance to it.
But let us see why I have done so. Match-making is essentially the phenomenon of all others which gives us the key to the nature of woman, and we must not, as has always been the case, merely acknowledge the fact and pass on, but we should try to analyse and explain it. One of our commonest phrases runs : " Every woman is a bit of a match-maker. "
But we must remember that in this, and nothing else, lies the actual essence of woman. After mature consideration of the most varied types of women and with due regard to the special classes besides those which I have dis- cussed, I am of opinion that the only positively general female characteristic is that of match-making,<^that is, her uniform willingness to further the idea of sexual unior^.
Any definition of the nature of woman which goes no further than to declare that she has the strong instinct for her own union would be too narrow ; any definition that would link her instincts to the child or to the husband, or toboth,wouldbetoowide. Themostgeneralandcom- prehensive statement of the nature of woman is that it is completely adapted and disposed for the special mission of aiding and abetting the bodily union of the sexes. All women are match-makers, and this property of the woman to be the advocate of the idea of pairing is the only one which is found in women of all ages, in youn^ girls, in adults, and in the aged. The old woman is no longer interested in her own union, but she devotes herself to the pairing of others. This habit of the old woman is nothing new, it is only the continuance of her enduring instinct surviving the complications that were caused when her
259
? 26o SEX AND CHARACTER
personal interests came into conflict with her general desire ;
it is the now unselfish pursuit of the impersonal idea.
It is convenient to recapitulate at this point what my investigation has shown as to the sexuality of women. /I have shown that woman is engrossed exclusively by sexuality, not intermittently, but throughout her life ; that her whole being, bodily and mental, is nothing but sexu- ality itself. I added, moreover, that she was so constituted that her whole body and being continually were in sexual relations with her environment, and that just as the sexual organs were the centre of woman physically, so the sexual idea was the centre of her mental nature^ The idea of pairing is the only conception which has positive worth for women. The woman is the bearer of the thought of the continuity of the species. The high value which she attaches to the idea of pairing is not selfish and individual, it is super- individual, and, if I may be forgiven the desecration of the phrase, it is the transcendental function of woman. And just as femaleness is no more than the embodiment of the idea of pairing, so is it sexuality in the abstract. Pairing is the supreme good for the woman ; she seeks to effect it always and everywhere. Her personal sexuality is only a special case of this universal, generalised, impersonal
instinct.
The effort of woman to realise this idea of pairing is so
fundamentally opposed to that conception of innocence and purity, the higher virginity which man's erotic nature has demanded from women, that not all his erotic incense would have obscured her real nature but for one factor. I have now to explain this factor which has veiled from man the true nature of woman, and which in itself is one of the deepest problems of woman, I mean her absolute duplicity. Her pairing instinct and her duplicity, the latter so great as to conceal even from woman herself what is the real essence of her nature, must be explained together.
All that may have seemed like clear gain is now again called into question. Self-observation was found lacking in women, and yet there certainly are women who observe
? WOMAN AND HER SIGNIFICANCE
very closely all that happens to them. They were denied the love of truth, and yet one knows many women who would not tell a lie for anything. It has been said that they are lacking in consciousness of guilt ; but there are many women who reproach themselves bitterly for most trifling matters, besides " penitents " who mortify their flesh. Modesty was left to man, but what is to be said of the womanly modesty, that bashfulness, which, according to Hamerling, only women have ? Is there no foundation for the way in which the idea has grown and found such acceptance ? And then again : Can religion be absent, in spite ot so many " professing " women ? Are we to exclude all women from the moral purity, all the womanly virtues, which poets and historians have ascribed to her ? Are we to say that woman is merely sexual, that sexuality only receives its proper due from her when it is so well known that women are shocked at the slightest allusion to sexual matters, that instead of giving way to it they are often irritated and disgusted at the idea of impurity, and quite often detest sexual union for themselves and regard it just as many men do ?
It is, of course, manifest that one and the same point is bound up in all these antitheses, and on the answer given to them depends the finai and decisive judgment on woman. And it is clear that if only one single female creature were really asexual, or could be shown to have a real relationship to the idea of personal moral worth, every- thing that I have said about woman, its general value as psychically characteristic of the sex, would be irretrievably demolished, and the whole position which this book has taken up would be shattered at one blow.
These apparently contradictory phenomena must be satisfactorily explained, and it must be shown that what is at the bottom ot it ail and makes it seem so equivocal arises from the very nature of woman whicti 1 have been trying to explain all along.
In order to understand these fallacious contradictions one must first of all remember the tremendous " accessi-
261
? 262 SEX AND CHARACTER
bility," to use another word, the " impressionability," of women, -^heir extraordinary aptitude for anything new, and their easy acceptance of other people's views have not yet been sufficiently emphasised in this bool^
/As a rule, the woman adapts herself to the man, his views become hers, his likes and dislikes are shared by her, every word he says is an incentive to her, and the stronger his sexual influence on her the more this is so. Woman does not perceive that this influence which man has on her causes her to deviate from the line of her own development ; she does not look upon it as a sort of unwarrantable intrusion ; she does not try to shake off what is really an invasion of her private life ; she is not ashamed of being receptive ; on the contrary, she is really pleased when she can be so, and prefer^ man to mould her mentally. She rejoices in being dependent, and her expectatioiis-fr? )m. m. an resolve themselves i nto the moment when she may_bg_p? if? cily43assi-ve.
But it is not only from her lover (although she would like that best), but also from her father and mother, uncles and aunts, brothers and sisters, near relations and distant ac- quaintances, that a woman takes what she thinks and believes, being only too glad to get her opinions " ready made. "
It is not only inexperienced girls but even elderly and married women who copy each other in everj'thing, from the nice new dress or pretty coiffure down to the places where they get their things, and the very recipes by which they cook.
And it never seems to occur to them that they are doing something derogatory on their part, as it ought to do if they possessed an individuality of their own and strove to work out their own salvation. A woman's thoughts and actions have no definite, independent relations to things in themselves ; they are not the result of the reaction of her individuality to the world. They accept what is imposed onthemgladly,andadheretoit withthegreatestfirmness. That is why woman is so intolerant when there has been a breach of conventional laws. I must guote an amusing
;
? WOMANANDHERSIGNIFICANCE 263
instance, bearing on this side of woman's character, from Herbert Spencer. It is the custom in various tribes of Indians in North and South America for the men to hunt and fight and leave all the laborious and menial tasks to theirwives. TheDakotanwomenaresoimbuedwiththe idea of the reasonableness and fitness of this arrangement that, instead of feeling injured by it, the greatest insult that one of these women can offer to another would be implied
in some such words as follows ; " You disgraceful creature. . . . I saw your husband carrying home wood for the fires. What was his wife doing that he had to demean himself by
"
doing woman's work ?
<^ The extraordinary way in which woman can be influenced
b^ external agencies is similar in its nature to her suggesti- bility, which is far greater and more general than man's they are both in accordance with woman's desire to play the passive and never the active part in the sexual act and all that leads to it. *.
\
It is the universal passivity of woman's nature which makes her accept and assume man's valuations of things, although these are utterly at variance with her nature. The way in which woman can be impregnated with the masculine point of view, the saturation of her innermost thoughts with a foreign element, her false recognition of morahty, which cannot be called hypocrisy because it does not conceal anything anti-moral, her assumption and prac- tise of things which in themselves are not in her realm, are all very well if the woman does not try to use her own
judgment, and they succeed in keeping up the fiction of her superior morality. Complications first arise when these acquired valuations come into collision with the only inborn, genuine, and universally feminine valuation, the supreme value she sets on pairing.
Woman's acceptance of pairing as the supreme good is quite unconscious on her part. As she has no sense of
* The quiescent, inactive, large egg-cells are sought out by the mobile, active, and slender spermatozoa.
? 264 SEX AND CHARACTER
individuality she has nothing to contrast with oairing ; and so, unlike man, she cannot realise its significance, or even notice the presence in herself of this instinct.
No woman knows, or ever has known, or ever will know, what she does when she enters into association with man. Femaleness is identical with pairing, and a woman would have to get outside herself in order to see and under- stand that she pairs. Thus it is that the deepest desire of woman, all that she means, and all that she is, remain unrecognised by her. There is nothing, then, to prevent the male negative valuation of pairing overshadowing the female positive valuation of it in the consciousness of the woman. The susceptibility of woman is so great that she can even act in opposition to what she is, to the one thing on which she really sets a positive value !
But the imposture which she enacts when she allows herself to be incorporated with man's opinions of sexuality and shamelessness, even of the miposture itself, and when she uses the masculine standard for her actions, is such a colossal fraud that she is never conscious of it ; she has acquired a second nature, without even guessing that it is not her real one ; she takes herself seriously, believes she is something and that she believes in something ; she is con- vinced of the sincerity and originality of her moralisings and opinions; the lie is as deeply rooted as that; it is organic. I cannot do better than speak of the ontological untruthfulness of woman.
Wolfram von Eschenbach says of his hero :
" . . . So keusch und rein Ruht' er bei seiner Ko? nigin,
Dass kein Genu? gen fand' darin
So manches Weib beim lieben Mann. Dass doch so manche in Gedanken Zur U? ppigkeit will u? berschwanken, Die sonst sich spro? de zeigen kann ! Vor Fremden zu? chtig sie erscheinen. Doch ist des Herzens tiefstes Meinen Das Widerspiel vom a? ussern Schein. "
Wolfram indicates clearly enough what is at the bottom
WOMAN AND HER SIGNIFICANCE
265
of woman's heart, but he does not say all that is to be said. Women deceive themselves as well as others on this point. One cannot artificially suppress and supplant one's real nature, the physical as well as the other side, without some- thing happening. The hygienic penalty that must be paid for woman's denial of her real nature is hysteria.
Of all the neurotic and psychic phenomena, those of hysteria are the most fascinating for psychologists ; they represent a far more difficult and, therefore, a more interest- ing study than those observed in melancholia or in simple paranoia.
The majority of psychiatrists have a distrust of psycho- logical analyses which it is not easy for them to shake off every statement of pathological alteration of tissues or intoxication by certain means is for them a limine credible
;
it is only in psychical matters that they refuse to recognise a primary cause. But since no reason has so far been given why psychical phenomena should be of importance secondary to physical phenomena, it is quite justifiable to disregard such prejudices.
It is quite possible--there is nothing to prevent it being so--that a very great deal, perhaps everything, may depend on the proper interpretation of the " psychical mechanism " of hysteria. That this is so is proved by the fact that the few conclusions of any value with reference to hysteria so far discovered have been arrived at in this way ; the inves- tigations carried out by Pierre Janet, Oskar Vogt, and particularly by Breuer and S. Freud, show what I mean.
J.
All good work on hysteria will undoubtedly follow the lines
these men have worked on ; that is to say, by investigation of the psychological processes which led up to the disease.
I believe myself that what may be called a psycho- logical sexual traumatism is at the root of hysteria. The typical picture of a hysterical case is not very different from the following : A woman has always accepted the male views on sexual matters ; they are in reality totally foreign to her nature, and sometime, by some chance, out of the conflict between what her nature asserts to be true and
;
? ? SEX AND CHARACTER
what she has always accepted as true and beUeved to be true, there comes what may be called a " wounding of the mind. " It is thus possible for the person affected to declare a sexual desire to be an " extraneous body in her conscious- ness," a sensation which she thinks she detests, but which inrealityhasitsorigininherownnature. Thetremendous intensity with which she endeavours to suppress the desire (and which only serves to increase it) so that she may the more vehemently and indignantly reject the thought--these are the alternations which are seen in hysteria. And the chronic untruthfulness of woman becomes acute if the woman has ever allowed herself to be imbued with man's ethically negative valuation of sexuality. It is well known that hysterical women manifest the strongest suggestibility with men. Hysteria is the organic crisis of the organic
untruthfulness of woman.
I do not deny that there are hysterical men, but these are
comparatively few ; and since man's psychic possibilities are endless, that of becoming "female " is amongst them, and,therefore,hecanbehysterical. Thereareundoubtedly many untruthful men, but in them the crisis takes a different form, man's untruthfulness being of a different kind and never so hopeless in character as woman's.
This examination mto the organic untruthfulness of woman, into her inability to be honest about herself which alone makes it possible for her to think that she thinks what is really totally opposed to her nature, appears to me to offer a satisfactory explanation of those difficulties which the aetiology of hysteria present.
Hysteria shows that untruthfulness, however far it may reach,cannotsuppresseverything. Byeducationorenviron- ment woman adopts a whole system of ideas and valuations which are foreign to her, or, rather, has patiently submitted to have them impressed on her ; and it would need a tremendous shock to get rid of this strongly-rooted psychical complexity, and to transplant woman to that condition of intellectual helplessness which is so characteristic of hysteria.
266
? WOMANANDHERSIGNIFICANCE 267
An extraordinary shock suffices to destroy the artificial structure, and to place woman in the arena to undertake a fight between her unconscious, oppressed nature, and her certainly conscious but unnatural mind. The see-sawing which now begins between the two explains the unusual psychic discontinuity during the hysterical phase, the con- tinual changes of mood, none of which are subject to the control of a dominant, central, controlling nucleus of indi- viduality. It is extraordinary how many contradictions can co-exist in the hysterical. Sometimes they are highly intelligent and able to judge correctly and keenly oppose hypnotism and so forth. Then, again, they are excited by most trivial causes, and are most subject to hypnotic trances. Sometimes they are abnormally chaste, at other times extremely sensual.
All this is no longer difficult to explain. The absolute sincerity, the painful love of truth, the avoidance of every- thing sexual, the careful judgment, and the strength of will--all these form part of that spurious personality which woman in her passivity has taken upon herself to exhibit to herself and to the world at large. Everything that belongs to her original temperament and her real sense form that " other self," that " unconscious mind " which can delight in obscurities and which is so open to suggestion.
It has been endeavoured to show that in what is known as the " duplex " and " multiplex personality," the " double conscience," the " dual ego," lies one of the strongest arguments against the belief in the soul. As a matter of fact, these phenomena are the very reasons why we ought to believe in a soul. The " dividing up of the personality " is only possible when there never has been a personality, as with woman. All the celebrated cases which Janet has described in his book, " L'Automatisme Psychologique," concern women, not in a single instance man. It is only woman who, minus soul or an intelligible ego, has not the power to become conscious of what is in her ; who cannot throw the light of truth on her inmost self ; who can by her completely passive inundation by a
268 SEX AND CHARACTER
consciousness belonging to another, allow what is in her own nature to be suppressed by an extraneous element who can display the hysterical phenomena described by
Hysteria is the bankruptcy of this superficial sham self which has been put on, and the woman becomes for the time being a tabula rasa, whilst the working in her of her own genuine nature appears to her as something coming fromwithout. Thisapparent"secondarypersonality,"this " foreign body in the consciousness," this false self, is, in reality, the true female nature, sexuality itself appearing, and a proper understanding of this fact, and of the com- plications that must ensue from the ebbings and fiowings of the false, supposed to be true, and the true supposed to be false, lie at the root of the most difficult phenomena of hysteria.
Woman's incapacity for truth--which I hold to be con- sequent on her lack of free will with regard to the truth, in accordance with Kant's " Indetermmism "--conditions her falsity. Any one who has had anything to do with women knows how often they give offhand quite patently untrue reasons for what they have said or done, under the momen- tary necessity of answering a question. It is, however, hysterical subjects who are most careful to avoid unveracity (in a most marked and premeditated way before strangers)
;
but however paradoxical it may sound it is exactly in this that their untruthfulness lies ! They do not know that this desire for truth has come to them from outside and is no part of their real nature.
They have slavishly accepted the postulate of morality, and, therefore, wish to show at every opportunity, like a good servant, how faithfully they follow instructions.
It is always suspicious when a man is frequently spoken of as exceptionally trustworthy : he must have gone out of his way to let people know it, and it would be safe to wager that in reahty he is a rogue. No confidence must be placed in the genuineness of hysterical morality, which doctors (no doubt in good faith) often emphasise by remarks as to the high moral position of their patients.
Janet.
;
? ? WOMANANDHERSIGNIFICANCE 269
I repeat : hysterical patients do not consciously simulate. It can only be made clear to them by suggestion that they actually have been simulating, and all the " confessions" of the dissimulation can only be explained in the same way.
Otherwise they believe in their own natural honesty and morality. Neither are the various things which torture them imaginary; it is much more likely that in the fact that they feel them, and that the symptoms first disappear with what Breuer calls "catharsis " (the successive bringing to their consciousness of the true causes of their illness by hypnotism), lies the proof of their organic untruthfulness.
The self-accusations which hysterical people are so full of are nothing but unconscious dissimulation. The sense of guilt, which is equally poignant in great and most trifling things, cannot be genuine ; if the hysterical self- torturers possessed a standard of morality for themselves and others they would not be so indiscriminate in their self-accusations, and not cast as much blame on themselves for a slight error as for real wrong-doing.
The most distingishing character of the unconscious un- truthfulness of their self-reproaches is their habit of telling others how wicked they are, what terrible things they have done, and then they ask if they (the hysterical) are not hope- lessly abandoned sort of people. No one who really feels remorse could talk in such a way. The fallacy of repre- senting the hysterical as being eminently moral is one which evenBreuerandFreudhaveshared. Theh^^stericalsimply become imbued with moral ideas which are foreign to them in their normal state. They subordinate themselves to this code, they cease to prove things for themselves, they no longer exercise their own judgment.
Probably these hysterical subjects approach more closely than any other natures to the moral ideal of the social and utilitarian ethics which regard a lie as moral if it is for the good of society or of the race. Hysterical women realise that ideal ontogenetically inasmuch as their standard of morality comes from without, not from within, and prac- tically as they appear to act most readily from altruistic
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motives. For them duty towards others is not merely a special application of duty towards oneself.
The untruthfulness of the hysterical is proportional to their belief in their own accuracy. From their complete inability to attain personal truth, to be honest about them- selves--the hysterical never think for themselves, they want other people to think about them, they want to arouse the interest of others--it follows that the hysterical are the best mediums for hypnotic purposes. But any one who allows him or herself to be hypnotised is doing the most immoralthingpossible. Itisyieldingtocompleteslavery
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it is a renunciation of the will and consciousness ; it means allowing another person to do what he likes with the sub- ject. Hypnosis shows how all possibility of truth depends upon the wish to be truthful, but it must be the real wish of the person concerned : when a hypnotised person is told to do something, he does it when he comes out of the trance, and if asked his reasons will give a plausible motive on the spot, not only before others, but he will justify his action to himself by quite fanciful reasons. In this we have, so to speak, an experimental proof of Kant's " Ethical Code. "
All women can be hypnotised and like being hypnotised, but this proclivity is exaggerated in hysterical women. Even the memory of definite events in their life can be destroyed by the mere suggestion of the hypnotiser. Breuer's experiments on hypnotised patients show clearly that the consciousness of guilt in them is not deeply seated, as otherwise it could not be got rid of at the mere sugges- tion of the hypnotiser. But the sham conviction of responsibility, so readily exhibited by women of hysterical constitution, rapidly disappears at the moment when nature, the sexual impulse, appears to drive through the superficial restraints. Inthehystericalparoxysmwhathappensisthat the woman, while no longer believing it altogether herself, asseverates more and more loudly : "I do not want that at all, some one not really me is forcing it on me, but I do not want it at all. " Every stimulation from outside will now be brought into relation with that demand, which.
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as she partly believes, is being forced on her, but which, in reality, corresponds with the deepest wish of her nature. That is why women in a hysterical attack are so easily seduced. The " attitudes passionelles " of the hysterical are merely passionate repudiations of sexual desire, which are loud merely because they are not real, and are more plaintive than at other times because the danger is greater. It is easy to understand why the sexual experiences of the time preceding puberty play so large a part in acute hysteria.
The influence of extraneous moral views can be imposed comparatively easily on the child, as they have little to overcome in the almost unawakened state of the sexual incli- nations. But, later on, the suppressed, although not wholly vanquished, nature lays hold of these old experiences, rein- terprets them in the light of the new contents of conscious-
ness, and the crisis takes place. The different forms that the paroxysms assume and their shifting nature are due very largely to the fact that the subject does not admit the true cause, the presence of a sexual desire, any consciousness of it being attributed by her to some extraneous influence, some self that is not her " real self. "
Medical observation or interpretation of hysteria is wrong it allows itself to be deceived by the patients, who in turn deceive themselves. It is not the rejecting ego but the rejected which is the true and original nature of the hysterical patients, however much they pretend to themselves and others that it is foreign to them.
If the rejecting ego were really their natural ego they could act in opposition to the disturbing element which they say is foreign to them, and be fully conscious of it, and differentiate and recognise it in their memory. But the fraud is evident, because the rejecting ego is only borrowed, and they lack the courage to look their own desire in the face, although something seems to say that it is the real, inborn,andonlypowerfulonetheyhave. Eventhedesire itself has no real identity, for it is not seated in a real indi- vidual, and, as it is suppressed, leaps, so to speak, from one
part of the body to the other. It may be that my attempt
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at an explanation will be thought fanciful, but at least it appears to be true that the various forms of hysteria are one and the same thing. This one thing is what the hysterical patient will not admit is part of hei, although it is what is pressing on her. If she were able to ascribe it to herself and criticise it in the way in which she admits trivial matters of another kind, she would be in a measure outside andaboveherownexperiences. Thefranticrageofhys- terical women at what they say is imposed on them by some strange will, whilst it in reality is their own will, shows that theyare just as much under the domination of sexuality as are non-hysterical women, are just as subject to their destiny and incapable of avertmg it, since they, too, are without any intelligible, free ego.
But it may be asked, with reason, why all women are not hysterical, since all women are liars ? This brings us to a necessary inquiry as to the hysterical constitution. If my theory has been on the right lines, it ought to be able to give an answer in accordance with facts. According to it, the hysterical woman is one who has passively accepted in entirety the masculine and conventional valuations instead ofallowingherownmentalcharacteritsproperplay. The woman who is not to be led is the antithesis of the hysterical woman. I must not delay over this point ; it really belongs tospecialfemalecharacterology. Thehystericalwomanis hysterical because she is servile ; mentally she is identical with the maid-servant. Her opposite (who does not really exist)istheshrewishdame. Sothatwomenmaybesub- divided into the maid who serves, and the woman who commands. *
The servant is born and not made, and there are many women in good circumstances who are *' born servants," although they never need to put their rightful position to
* We may find the analogy to this in men : there are masculine " servants " who are so by nature, and there is the masculine form of the shrew e. g. , the policeman. It is a noticeable fact that a policeman usually finds his sexual complement in the housemaid.
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The servant and the mistress are a sort of " com- plete woman " when considered as a "whole. "*
The consequences of this theory are fully borne out by experience. The Xanthippe is the woman who has the least resemblance to the hysterical type. She vents her spleen (which is really the outcome of unsatisfied sexual desires) on others, whereas the hysterical woman visits hers on herself. The " shrew " detests other women, the " servant " detests herself. The drudge weeps out her woes alone, without really feeling lonely--loneliness is identical with morality, and a condition which implies true duality or manifoldness ; the shrew hates to be alone because she must have some one to scold, whilst hysterical women vent their passion on themselves. The shrew lies openly and boldly but without knowing it, because it is her nature to think herself always in the right, and she insults those who contradict her. The servant submits wonderingly to the demands made of her which are so foreign to her nature :
the hypocrisy of this pliant acquiescence is apparent in her hysterical attacks when the conflict with her own sexual emotions begins. It is because of this receptivity and sus- ceptibility that hysteria and the hysterical type of woman are so leniently dealt with : it is this type, and not the shrewish type, that will be cited in opposition to my views. f
Untruthfulness, organic untruthfulness, characterises both types, and accordingly all women. It is quite wrong to say
* A real dame would never dream of asking her husband what she was to do, what she is to give him for dinner, &c. ; the hysteri- cal woman, on the contrary, is always lacking in ideas, and wants suggestions from others. This is a rough way of indicating the two types.
f It is the " yielding type " and not the virago type of woman that men think capable of love. Such a woman's love is only the mental sense of satisfaction aroused by the maleness of some parti- cular man, and, therefore, it is only possible with the hysterical ; it has nothing to do with her individual power of loving, and can have nothing to do with it. The bashfulness of woman is also due to her " obsession " by one man ; this also causes her neglect of all other men.
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that women lie. That would imply that they sometimes speak the truth. Sincerity, pro foro interno et externo, is the virtue of all others of which women are absolutely incapable, which is impossible for them !
The point I am urging is that woman is never genuine at any period of her life, not even when she, in hysteria, slavishly accepts the aspect of truth laid on her by another, and apparently speaks in accordance with those demands.
A woman can laugh, cry, blush, or even look wicked at will : the shrew, when she has some object in view ; the " maid," when she has to make a decision for herself. Men have not the organic and physiological qualifications for such dissimulation.
If we are able to show that the supposed love of truth in these types of woman is no more than their natural hypocrisy in a mask, it is only to be expected that all the other qualities for which woman has been praised will suffer under analysis. Her modesty, her self-respect, and her religiousfervourareloudlyacclaimed. Womanlymodesty, none the less, is nothing but prudery, i. e. , an extravagant denial and rejection of her natural immodesty. Whenever a woman evinces any trace of what could really be called modesty, hysteria is certainly answerable for it. The woman who is absolutely unhysterical and not to be influenced, i. e. , the absolute shrew, will not be ashamed of any re- proaches her husband may shower on her, however just incipient hysteria is present when a woman blushes under her husband's direct censure ; but hysteria in its most marked form is present when a woman blushes when she is quite alone : it is only then that she may be said to be fully impregnated with the masculine standard of values.
The women who most nearly approximate to what has been called sexual anaethesia or frigidity are always hysterical, as Paul Solliers, with whom I entirely agree, discovered. Sexual anaesthesia is merely one of the many hysterical, that is to say, unreal, simulated forms of anaesthesia. Oskar Vogt, in particular (and general obser- vation has confirmed him), proved that such anaesthesia
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does not involve a real lack of sensation, but is simply due to an inhibition which keeps certain sensations in check, and excludes them from the consciousness.
If the anaesthetised arm of a hypnotised subject is pricked a certain number of times, and the medium is told to say how many times he has been pricked, he is able to do so, althoughotherwisehewouldnothaveperceivedthem. So also with sexual frigidity ; it is an order given by the con- trolling force of the super-imposed asexual ideas; but this, like all other forms of anaesthesia, can be counteracted by a sufficiently strong " order. "
The repulsion to sexuality in general shown by the hysterical woman corresponds in its nature with her insensibility to sexual matters in her own case. Such a repulsion, an intense disinclination for everything sexual, is really present in many women, and this may be urged as an exception to my generalisation as to the universality in woman of the match-making tendency. But women
who are made ill by discovering two people in sexual inter- course are always hysterical. In this we have a special justification of the theory which holds match-making to be the true nature of woman, and which looks upon her own sexuality as merely a special case of it. A woman may be made hysterical not only by a sexual suggestion to herself which she outwardly resists whilst inwardly assenting to it, but may be just as much so by the sight of two people in sexual intercourse, for, though she thinks the matter has no value for her, her inborn assent to it forces itself through all outward and artificial barriers, and overcomes the super-
imposed and incorporated method of thought in which she usually lives. That is to say, she feels herself involved in the sexual union of others.
Something similar takes place in the hysterical " conscious- ness of guilt," which has already been spoken about. The absolute shrew never feels herself really in the wrong the woman who is slightly hysterical only feels so in the presence of men ; the woman who is thoroughly hysterical feels it in the presence of the particular man who dominates
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her. One cannot prove the existence of a sense of guilt in woman by the mortifications to which " devotees " and " penitents" subject themselves. It is these extreme cases of self-discipline which make one suspicious. Doing penance proves, in most cases, that the doer has not over- come his fault, that the sense of guilt has not really entered consciousness ; it appears really to be much rather an attempt to force repentance from the outside, to make up for not really feeling it.
The difference between the conviction of guilt in hysterical women and in men, and the origin of the self-reproaches of the former, are of some importance. When the hysterical woman realises that she has done or thought something immoral, she tries to rectify it by some code which she seeks to obey and to substitute in her mind in place of the immoral thought. She does not really get rid of the thought which is too deeply rooted in her nature ; she does not really face it, try to understand it, and so purge herself of it. She simply, from point to point, case by case, tries to adhere to the moral code without ever transforming herself, reforming her idea. The moral character in the woman is elaborated bit by bit ; in the male rightconductcomesfrommoralcharacter. Thevowre- models the whole man ; the change takes place in the only possible way, from within outwards, and leads to a real morality which is not only a justification by works. The morality of the woman is merely superficial and is not real morality.
The current opinion that woman is religious is equally erroneous. Female mysticism, when it is anything more than mere superstition, is either thinly veiled sexuality (the identification of the Deity and the lover has been frequently discussed, as, for instance, in Maupassant's " Bel-Ami," or in Hauptmann's " Hannele's Himmelfahrt") as in numberless spiritualists and theosophists, or it is a mere passive and unconscious acceptance of man's religious views which are clung to the more firmly because of woman's natural disinclination for them. The lover is readily transformed
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into a Saviour ; very readily (as is well known to be the case with many nuns) the Saviour becomes the lover.
