Themanwho
is most under its influence has least sense of female beauty, and desires any woman merely because she is a woman.
Weininger - 1903 - Sex and Character
Napoleon, the greatest of the conquerors, is a sufficient proof that great men of action are criminals, and, therefore, not geniuses.
One can understand him by thinking of the tremendous intensity with which he tried to escape from himself.
There is this element in all the conquerors, great or small.
Just because he had great gifts, greater than those of any emperor before him, he had greater difficulty in stifling the disapprovingvoicewithinhim.
Themotiveofhisambition was the craving to stifle his better self.
A truly great man may honestly share in the desire for admiration or fame but personal ambition will not be his aim.
He will not try to knit the whole world to himself by superficial, transitory bonds, to heap up all the things of the world in a pyramid overhisname.
Themanofactionshareswiththeepileptic the desire to be in criminal relation to everything around him, to make them appanages of his petty self.
(The great man feels himself defined and separate from the world, a monad amongst monads, and, as a true microcosm, he feels the world already within him ; he realises in the fullest sense of personal experience that he has a definite, assured, intelli- gible relation to the world whole.
The great tribune and the great courtesan do not feel that they are marked off from the world ; they merge with it, and demand it all as decoration or adornment of their empirical persons, and th^y^arejiTcapable of love,^ff^ectic)n^_Qrjfrie.
ndshi^.
The kmg of the fairy tale who wished to conquer the
? 230 SEX AND CHARACTER
stars is the perfect image of the conqueror. The great genius honours himself, and has not to hve in a condition of give and take with the populace, as is necessary for the politician. The great politician makes his voice resound in the world, but he has also to sing in the streets ; he may make the world his chessboard, but he has also to strut in a booth ; he is no more a despot than he is a beggar for alms. He has to court the populace, and here he joins with the prostitute. The politician is a man of the streets. He must be completed by the public. It is the masses that he re- quires, not real individualities. If he is not clever he tries to be rid of the great men, or if, like Napoleon, he is cunning, he pretends to honour them in order that he may make them harmless. His dependence on the public makes some such course necessary. A politician cannot do all that he wishes, even if he is a Napoleon, and if, unlike Napoleon, he actually wished to realise ideals, he would soon be taught better by the public, his real master. The will of him who covets power is bound.
Every emperor is conscious of this relation between him- self ind the masses, and has an almost instinctive love of great assemblages of his people, or his army, or of his electors. Not Marcus Aurelius or Diocletian, but Kleo, Mark Antony, Themistocles, and Mirabeau are the em- bodiments of the real politician. Ambition means going amongstthepeople. Thetribunehastofollowtheprosti- tute in this respect. According to Emerson, Napoleon used to go incognito amongst the people to excite their hurrahs and praise. Schiller imagined the same course for his Wallenstein.
Hitherto the phenomena of the great man of action have been regarded even by artists and philosophers as unique. I think that my analysis has shown that there is the strongest resemblance between them and prostitutes. To see an analogy between Antonius (Caesar) and Cleopatra may appear at first far-fetched, but none the less it exists. The great man of action has to despise his inner life, in order that he may live altogether " in the world," and he must
I
? MOTHERHOOD AND PROSTITUTION 231
perish,likethethingsoftheworld. Theprostituteabandons the lasting purpose of her sex, to live in the instincts of the moment. The great prostitute and the great tribune are firebrands causing destruction all around them, leaving death and devastation in their paths, and pass like meteors unconnected with the course of human life, indifferent to its objects, and soon disappearing, whilst the genius and the mother work for the future in silence. ^The prostitute and the tribune may be called the enemies of God ? they are both anti-moral phenomena^
Great men of action, then, must be excluded from the category of genius. The true genius, whether he be an artist or a philosopher, is always strongly marked by his relation to the constructive side of the world.
The motive that actuates the prostitute requires further investigation. The purpose of the motherly woman was easy to understand ; she is the upholder of the race. But the fundamental idea of prostitution is much more mys- terious, and no one can have meditated long on the subject without often doubting if it were possible to get an explana- tion. Perhaps the relation of the two types to the sexual actmayassisttheinquiry. Ihopethatnoonewillconsider such a subject below the dignity of a philosopher. The spirit in which the inquiry is made is the chief matter. It is at least clear that the painters of Leda and Dana? e have pondered over the problem, and many great writers-- have in mind Zola's "Confession of Claude," his "Hortense," "Renee," and "Nana," Tolstoi's "Resurrection," Ibsen's "Hedda Gabler," and " Rita," and above all the "Sonja" of that great soul Dostoyevski--must have been thinking of the
general problem rather than merely wishing to describe particular cases.
The maternal woman regards the sexual relations as means to an end ; the prostitute considers them as the end itself. That sexual congress may have another purpose than mere reproduction is plain, as many animals and plants are devoid of it. On the other hand, in the animal kingdom, sexual congress is always in connection with reproduction,
? '
SEX AND CHARACTER
and is never simply lust ; and, moreover, takes place only at times suitable for breeding. Desire is simply the means employed by nature to secure the contmuity of the species.
Although sexual congress is an end in itself for the prostitute, it must not be assumed that it is meaningless in themother-type. Womenwhoaresexuallyanaestheticno doubt exist in both classes, but they are very rare, and many apparent cases may really be phenomena of hysteria.
The final importance attached by the prostitute to the sexual act is made plain by the fact that it is only that type inwhichcoquetryoccurs. Coquetryhasinvariablyasexual significance. Its purpose is to picture to the man the
. f? Q0Ja? 9if:s. t_oi _the woman before it has_ occurred, in order to induce him to make the conquest an actual fact. The readiness of the type to coquet with every man is an expres- sion of her nature ; whether it proceeds further depends on mprely accidental circumstances.
[The maternal type regards the sexual act as the beginning of a series of important events, and so attaches value to it equally with the prostitute, although in a different fashion/ The one is contented, completed, satisfied ; her life is made richer and of fuller meaning to her by it. The other, for whom the act is everything, the compression and end of all life, is never satisfied, never to be satisfied, were she visited by all the men in the world.
' The body of a woman, as I have already shown, is sexual 'throughout, and the special sexual acts are only intensifica- tions of a distributed sensation. Here, also, the difference between the two types displays itself. The prostiiute type in coquetting is merely using the general sexuality of her body as an end in itself ; for her there is a difference only in degree between flirtation and sexual congress. The maternal type is equally sexual, but with a different purpose; all her life, through all her body, she is being impregnated. In this fact lies the explanation of the "impression " which I referred to as being indubitable, although it is denied by
men of science and physicians^ Paternityisadiffusedrelation. Manyinstances,disputed
232
? MOTHERHOOD AND PROSTITUTION
by men of science, point to an influence not brought about directly by the reproductive cells. White women who have borne a child to a black man, are said if they bear children afterwards to white men, to have retained enough impression from the first mate to show an effect on the subsequent children. All such facts, grouped under the names of " telegony," ** germinal infection," and so. on, although disputed by scientists, speak for my view. (And so also the motherly woman, throughout her whole lire, is impressed by lovers, by voices, by words, by inanimate things. All the influences that come to her she turns to the purpose of her being, to the shaping of her child, and the " actual " father has to share his paternity with perhaps other men and many other things. )
Thewomanis impregnatednotonlythroughthegenital tract but through every fibre of her being. All life makes an impression on her and throws its image on her child. This universality, in the purely physical sphere, is analagous to genius.
<Jt is quite different with the prostitute. Whilst the maternal woman turns the whole world, the love of her lover, and all the impressions that she receives to the pur- poses of the child, the prostitute absorbs everything for herself^ But just as she has this absorbing need of the man, so the man can get something from her which he fails to find in the badly dressed, tasteless, pre-occupied maternal type. Something within him requires pleasure, and this he gets from the daughters of joy. Unlike the mother, these think of the pleasures of the world, of dancing, of dressing, of theatres and concerts, of pleasure-resorts. They know the use of gold, turning it to luxury instead of to comfort, they flame through the world, making all its ways a triumphant march for their beautiful bodies.
The prostitute is the great seductress of the world, the female Don Juan, the being in the woman that knows the art of love, that cultivates it, teaches it, and enjoys it.
Very deep-seated differences are linked with what I have been describing. The mother-woman craves for respect-
233
? /
/
234
ability in the man, not because she grasps its value as an idea, but because it is the supporter of the life of the world. Sheherselfworks,andisnotidleliketheprostitute; sheis tilled with care for the future, and so requires from the man a corresponding practical responsibility, and will not seduce him to pleasure. (The prostitute, on the other hand, is
most attracted by a careless, idle, dissipated man. A man that has lost self-restraint repels the mother-woman, is attractive to the prostitute. There are women who are dissatisfiedwithasonthatisidleatschool; thereareothers who encourage him^ The diligent boy pleases the mother- woman, the idle and careless boy wins approval from the prostitute type. This distinction reaches high up amongst the respectable classes of society, but a salient example of it is seen in the fact that the " bullies " loved by women of the streets are usually criminals. The souteneur is always a criminal, a thief, a fraudulent person, or sometimes even a murderer.
I am almost on the point of saymg that, however little woman is to be regarded as immoral (she is only non- moral), prostitution stands in some deep relation with crime, whilst motherhood is equally bound with the oppo- site tendency. We must avoid regarding the prostitute as the female analogue of the criminal ; women, as I have already pointed out, are not criminals ; they are too low in the moral scale for that designation. None the less, there is a constant connection between the prostitute type and crime. The great courtesan is comparable with that great criminal, the conqueror, and readily enters into actual rela- tions with him ; the petty courtesan entertains the thief and the pickpocket. 'vThe mother type is in fact the guardian of the life of the world, the prostitute type is its enemy^ But just as the mother is in harmony, not with the soul but with the body, so the prostitute is no diabolic destroyer of the idea,butonlyacorrupterofempiricalphenomena. Physi- cal life and physical death, both of which are in intimate connection with the sexual act, are displayed by the woman
SEX AND CHARACTER
,in her two capacities of mother and prostitute. /
? MOTHERHOOD AND PROSTITUTION
It is siill impossible to give a clearer solution than that which I h:ive attempted, of the real significance of mother- hood and prostitution. I am on an unfamiliar path, almost untrodden by any earlier wayfarer. Religious myths and plilosophy alike have been unable to propound solutions. I have found some clues however. The anti-moral signi- ficance of prostitution is in harmony with the fact that it appearsonlyamongstmankind. Inalltheanimalkingdom the females are used only for reproduction ; there are no true females that are sterile. There are analogies to prosti- tution, however, amongst male animals ; one has only to think of the display and decoration of the peacock, of tne shining glow-worm, of singing birds, of the love dances of many male birds. These secondary sexual manifestations, however, are mere advertisements of sexuality.
Prostitution is a human phenomenon ; animals and plants are non-moral ; they are never disposed to immo- ralityandpossessonlymotherhood. Hereisadeepsecret, hidden in the nature and origin of mankind. I ought to correctmyearlierexpositionbyinsistingthatI havecome to regard the prostitute element as a possibility in all women just as much as the merely animal capacity for motherhood. It is something which penetrates the nature of the human female, something with which the most animal-like mother is tinged, something which corresponds in the human female, to the characters that separate the human male from the animal male. ^Just as the immoral, possibility of man is something that distinguishes him from the male animal/so the quality of the prostitute distinguishes the human female from the animal female. I shall have something to say as to the general relation of man to this element in woman, towards the end of my investigation, but possibly the ultimate origin of prostitution is a deep mystery into which none can penetrate.
235
? CHAPTER XI
EROTICS AND ESTHETICS
The arguments which are in common use to justify a high opinion of woman have now been examined in all except a few points to which I shall recur, from the point of view of critical philosophy, and have been controverted. I hope that I have justified my deliberate choice of ground, although, indeed, Schopenhauer's fate should have been a warning to me. His depreciation of women in his philo- sophical work "On Women," has been frequently attributed to the circumstance that a beautiful Venetian girl, in whose company he was, fell in love with the extremely handsome personal appearance of Byron ; as if a low opinion of women were not more likely to come to him who had had the best not the worst fortune with them.
The practice of merely calling any one who assails woman a misogynist, instead of refuting argument by argument, has much to commend it. Hatred is never impartial, and, therefore, to describe a man as having an animus against the object of his criticism, is at once to lay him open to the charge of insincerity, immorality, and partiality, and one that can be made with a hyperbole of accusation and evasion of the point, which only equal its lack of justification. This sort of answer never fails in its object, which is to exempt the vindicator from refuting the actual statements. It is the oldest and handiest weapon of the large majority of men, who never wish to see woman as she is. No men who really think deeply about women retain a high opinion of them ; men either despise women or they have never thought seriously about them.
? EROTICS AND ^ESTHETICS
Na? here is no doubt that it is a fallacious method in a theoretical argument to refer to one's opponent's psycho- logical motives instead of bringing forward proofs to controvert his statements^
It is not necessary for me to say that in logical contro- versy the adversaries should place themselves under an impersonal conception of truth, and their aim should be to reach a result, irrespective of their own concrete opinions. If, however, in an argument, one side has come to a certain conclusion by a logical chain of reasoning, and the other side merely opposes the conclusion without having followed the reasoning process, it is at once fair and appropriate to examine the psychological motives which have induced the adversaries to abandon argument for abuse. I shall now put the champions of women to the test and see how much of their attitude is due to sentimentality, how much of it is disinterested, and how much due to selfish motives.
All objections raised against those who despise women arise from the erotic relations in which man stands to woman. This relationship is absolutely different from the purely sexual attraction which occurs in the animal world, and plays a most important part in human affairs. It is quite erroneous to say that sexuality and eroticism, sexual impulse and love, are fundamentally one and the same thing, the second an embellishing, refining, spiritualising sublimation of the first ; although practically all medical men hold this view, and even such men as Kam and Schopenhauer thought so. Before I go into the reasons for maintaining the existence of this great distinction, I should like to say something about the views of these two men.
Kant's opinion is not of much weight, because love as sexual impulse must have been as little known to him as possible, probably less than in the case of any other man.
He was so little erotic that he never felt the kindred desire to travel. * He represents too lofty and pure a type to speak
* The association of these two desires may surprise readers. It rests on a metaphysical ground, much of which will be more
237
? 238 SEX AND CHARACTER
with authority on this matter : his one passion was meta- physics.
As for Schopenhauer, he had just as Httle idea of the higher form of eroticism ; his sexuality was of the gross order. This can be seen from the following : Schopen- hauer's countenance shows very little kindliness and a good deal of fierceness (a circumstance which must have causedhimgreatsorrow. Thereisnoexhibitionofethical sympathy if one is very sorry for oneself. The most sym- pathetic persons are those who, like Kant and Nietzsche, have no particle of self-pity).
But it may be said with safety that only those who are most sympathetic are capable of a strong passion : those " who take no interest in things " are incapable of love. This does notimplythattheyhavediabolicalnatures. Theymay,on the contrary, stand very high morally without knowmg what their neighbours are thinking or doing,<and without having a sense for other than sexual relations with women, as was the case with Schopenhauer. He was a man who knew only too well what the sexual impulse was, but he never was in love ; if that were not so, the bias in his famous work, " The Metaphysics of Sexual Love," would be inex- plicable ; in it the most important doctrine is that the uncon- scious goal of all love is nothing more than "the formation of the next generation. y
This view, as I hope to prove, is false. It is true that a love entirely without sexuality has never been known. However high a man may stand he is still a being with
apparent when I have developed my theory of eroticism further. Time, like space, is conceived of as unlimited, and man, in his desire for freedom, in his efforts stimulated by his power of free will to transcend his limits, has the craving for unlimited time and unlimited space. The desire for travel is simply an expression of this rest- lessness, this fundamental chafing of the spirit against its bonds. But just as eternity is not prolonged time, but the negation of time, so however far a man wanders, he can extend his area but cannot abolish space. And so his efforts to transcend space must always be heroic failures : I shall show that his eroticism is a similar notable failure.
EROTICS AND ESTHETICS
239
senses, ^hatabsolutelydisposesoftheoppositeviewisthis all love, as such--without going into aesthetic principles of love--is antagonistic to those elements (of the relationship) which press towards sexual union ; in fact, such elements tend to negate love. Love and desire are two unlike, mutually exclusive, opposing conditions, and during the time a man really loves, the thought of physical union with the object of his love is insupportable. ) because there is no hope which is entirely free from fear does not alter the fact that hope and fear are utterly opposite principles. It is just the same m the case of sexual impulse and love. The more erotic a man is the less he will be troubled with his sexuality, and vice versag
If it be the case that there is no adoration utterly free from desire, there is no reason why the two should be identified, since it might be possible for a superior being to attainthehighestphasesofboth. Thatpersonlies,orhas never known what love is, who says he loves a woman
whom he desires ; so much difference is there between sexual impulse and love. This is what makes talk of love after marriage seem, in most cases, make-believe.
,^he following will show how obtuse the view of those is who persist, with unconscious cynicism, in maintaining the identity of love and sexual impulse. Sexual attraction increases with physical proximity ; love is strongest in the absence of the loved one ; it needs separation, a certain distance, to preserve it. In fact, what all the travels in the world could not achieve, what time could not accomplish, may be brought about by accidental, unintentional, physical contact with the beloved object, in which the sexual im- pulse is awakened, and which suffices to kill love on the spot. ^Then, again, in the case of more highly differentiated, great men, the type of girl desired, and the type of girl loved but never desired, are always totally different in face, form, and disposition ; they are two different beings.
Then there is the " platonic love," which professors of psy- chiatry have such a poor opinion of. I should say rather, there is only " platonic " love, because any other so-called
:
? --"
? 240 SEX AND CHARACTER
' love belongs to the kingdom of the senses :At is the love of Beatrice, the worship of Madpnna ; the Babylonian woman is the symbol of sexual desire. )
Kant's enumeration of th6 transcendental ideas of love would have to be extended if it is to be held. For the purely spiritual love, the love of Plato and Bruno, which is absolutely free from desire, is none the less a transcendental concept ; nor is its significance as a concept impaired, because such a love has never been fully realised.
It is the problem put forward in " Tannha? user. " We have Tannha? user, Wolfram, Venus, and Maria. The fact that two lovers, who have found each other once for all Tristan and Isolde--choose death instead of the bridal bed, is just as absolute a proof of a higher, maybe metaphysical, something in mankind, as the martyrdom of a Giordano Bruno.
" Dir, hohe Liebe, to? ne Begeistert mein Gesang, Die mir in Engelscho? ne Tief in die Seele drang !
Du nahst als Gott gesandte :
-- So fu? hrst du in die Lande,
Wo ewig strahlt dein Stern. "
Who is the object of such love ? Is it woman, as she has been represented in this work, who lacks all higher quali- ties who gets her value from another, who has no power to attain value on her own account ? Impossible. It is the ideally beautiful, the immaculate woman, who is loved in suchhighfashion. Thesourceofthisbeautyandchastity in women must now be found.
The question as to whether the female sex is the more beautiful, and as to whether it deserves the title of " the beautiful, has been much disputed.
It may be well to consider by whom and how far woman is considered beautiful.
It is well known that woman is not most beautiful m the nude. I admit that in pictures or statues the nude female maylookwell. Butthesexualimpulsemakesitimpossible
Ich folg' aus holder Fern',
? EROTICS AND . ESTHETICS 241
to look at a living woman in a nude condition with the purely critical, unemotional eye, which is an essential feature injudginganyobjectofbeauty. Butapartfromthis,an absolute nude female figure in the life leaves an impression of something wanting, an incompleteness, which is incom- patible with beauty.
A nude woman may be beautiful in details, but the general effect is not beautiful ; she inevitably creates the feeling that she is looking for something, and this induces disin- clination rather than desire in the spectator. / The sight of an upright female form, in the nude, makes most patent her purposelessness, the sense of her purpose in life being derived from something outside herself ; in the recumbent
position this feeling is greatly diminished. It is evident that artists have perceived this in reproducing the nude)
But even in the details of her body a woman is not wholly beautiful, not even if she is a flawless, perfect type of her sex. The genitalia are the chief difficulty in the way of regarding her as theoretically beautiful. If the idea were justified that man's love for woman is the direct result of his sexual impulse ; if we could agree with Schopenhauer that " the under-sized, narrow-shouldered, broad-hipped, and short-limbed sex is called beautiful only because the male
intellect is befogged by the sexual impulse, that impulse being the creator of the conception of the beauty of woman," it would follow that the genitalia could not be excluded from theconceptionofbeauty. Itrequiresnolengthyexposition to prove that the genitalia are not regarded as beautiful, and that, therefore, the beauty of woman cannot be regarded as duetothesexualimpulse. Infact,thesexualimpulseism
realityopposedtotheconceptionofbeauty.
Themanwho is most under its influence has least sense of female beauty, and desires any woman merely because she is a woman. ? .
A woman's nude body is distasteful to man because it offends his sense of shame. The easy superficiality of our day has given colour to the statement that the sense of shame has arisen from the wearing of clothes, and it has been urged that the objection to the nude arises from those
242
their readiness to believe such protestations.
The love bestowed by the man is the standard of what is
\
/beautiful and what is hateful in woman. / The conditions
are quite different in aesthetics from those in logic or ethics. In logic there is an abstract truth which is the standard of thought ; in ethics there is an ideal good which furnishes the criterion of what ought to be done, and the value of the good is established by the determination to link the will with the good, (in aesthetics beauty is created by love ; there is no determining law to love what is beautiful, and the beauti- ful does not present itself to human beings with any im- perative command to love it. (And so there is no abstract, no super-individual "right " taste)
All beauty is really more a projection, an emanation of the requirements of love ; and so the beauty of woman is not apart from love, it is not an objective to which love is directedA)ut woman's beauty is the love of man ; they are not two things, but one and the same thing^
Just as hatefulness comes from hating, so love creates beauty. This is only another way of expressing the fact that beauty has as little to do with the sexual impulse as the sexual impulse has to do with love. Beauty is something that can neither be felt, touched, nor mixed with other things ; it is only at a distance that it can be plainly dis- cerned, and when it is approached it withdraws itself. The sexual impulse which seeks for sexual union with woman is a denial of such beauty ; the woman who has been possessed and enjoyed, will never again be worshipped for her beauty.
J
? SEX AND CHARACTER
whoareunnaturalandsecretlyimmorally-minded. Buta man who has become immorally-minded no longer is interested in the nude as such, because it has lost its in- fluence on him. He merely desires and no longer loves. AW true love is modest, like all true pity. There is only one case of shamelessness--a declaration of love the sincerity of which a man is convinced of in the moment he makes itk This would represent the conceivable maxi- mum of shamelessness ; but there is no declaration of love which is quite true, and the stupidity of women is shown by
? EROTICS AND ^STHETICS^
243 I now come to the second question : what are the inno-
cence and morality of a woman ?
It will be convenient to start with a few facts that concern
the origin of all love. /'-Bodily cleanliness, as has often been remarked, is in men a general indication of morality and rectitude ; or at least it m^ be said that uncleanly men are seldom of high character. ) It may be noticed that when men, who formerly paid little attention to bodily cleanliness, begin to strive for a higher perfection of character, they at the same time take more trouble with the care of the body. In the same way, when men suddenly become imbued with passion they experience a simultaneous desire for bodily cleanliness, and it may almost be said of them that only at such a time do they wash themselves thoroughly. Uf we now turn to gifted men, we shall see that in their case love frequently begins with self-mortification, humiliation, and restraint. A moral change sets in, a process of purification seems to emanate from the object loved, even if her lover has never spoken to her, or only seen her a few times in the
distance. It is, then, impossible that this process should have its origin in that person : very often it may be a bread-and-butter miss, a stolid lump, more often a sensuous coquette, in whom no one can see the marvellous charac- teristics with which his love endows her, save her lover. Can any one believe that it is a concrete person who is loved ? Does she not in reality serve as the starting point for incomparably greater emotions than she could inspire ?
In love, man is only loving himself. Not his empirical self, not the weaknesses and vulgarities, not the failings and smallnesses which he outwardly exhibits ; but all that he wants to be, all that he ought to be, his truest, deepest, in- telligible nature, free from all fetters of necessity, from all taint of earthy
In his actual physical existence, this being is limited by space and time and by the shackles of the senses ; however deep he may look into himself, he finds himself damaged and spotted, and sees nowhere the image of speckless purity for which he seeks. And yet there is nothing he covets so
? 244
SEX AND CHARACTER
much as to realise his own ideal, to find his real higher self. M. nd as he cannot find this true self within himself, he has to seek it without himself. He projects his ideal of an abso- lutely worthy existence, the ideal that he is unable to isolate within himself, upon another human being, and this act, and this alone, is none other than love and the significance of love. Only a person who has done wrong and is conscious of it can love, and so a child can never love. It is only because love represents the highest, most unattainable goal of all longing, because it cannot be realised in experience but must remain an idea ; only because it is localised on some other human being, and yet remains at a distance, so that the ideal never attains its realisation ; only because of such conditions can love be associated with the awakening of the desire for piirification, with the reaching after a goal that is purely spiritual, and so cannot be blemished by physical union with the beloved person ; only thus, is love the highest and strongest effort of the will towards the supreme good ; only thus does it bring the true being of man to a state between body and spirit, between the senses and the moral nature, between God and the beasts. / < A human being only finds himself when, in this fashion, he loves. And thus it comes about that only when they love do many men realise the existence of their own personality and of the personality of another, that " I " and '* thou " become for them more than grammatical expressions. And so also comes about the great part played in their love story by the names of the two lovers. There is no doubt but that it is through love that many men first come to know of their own
real nature, and to be convinced that they possess a soul. It is this which makes a lover desire to keep his beloved at a distance--on no account to injure her purity by contact with him--in order to assure himself of her and of his own existence. Many an inflexible empiricist, coming under the influence of love, becomes an enthusiastic mystic ; the most striking example being Auguste Comte, the founder of positivism, whose whole theories were revolutionised by his
feelings for Clotilde de Vaux.
? EROTICS AND ESTHETICS
It is not only for the artist, but for the whol^ of mankind that Arno, ergo sum holds good psychologically/
Love is a phenomenon of projection just as' hate is, not a phenomenon of equation as friendship is. The latter pre- supposes an equality of both individuals : ^ove always implies inequality, disproportion/ To endow an individual with all that one might be and yet never can be, to make her ideal--that is love. Beauty is the symbol of this act of worship. It is this that so often surprises and angers a lover when he is convinced that beauty does not imply morality in a woman. He feels that the nature of the offence is increased by " such depravity " being possible in conjunction with such " beauty. " He is not aware that the woman in question seems beautiful to him because he still loves her ; otherwise the incongruity between the ex- ternal and internal would no longer pain him.
The reason an ordinary prostitute can never seem beautiful is because it is naturally impossible to endow her with the projection of value ; she can satisfy only the taste ofvulgarminds. Sheisthemateoftheworstsortofmen. In this we have the explanation of a relation utterly opposed to morality : woman in general is simply indifferent to ethics, she is non-moral, and, therefore, unlike the anti- moral criminal, who is instinctively disliked, or the devil who is hideous in every one's imagination, serves as a receptacle for projected worthiness ; as she neither does good nor evil, she neither resists nor resents this imposition of the ideal on her personality. It is patent that woman's morality is acquired ; but this morality is man's, which he in an access of supreme love and devotion has conveyed to her.
(^ince all beauty is always only the constantly renewed endeavour to embody the highest form of value, there is a pre-eminently satisfymg element in it, in the face of which all desire, all self-seeking fade away.
All forms of beauty whfch appeal to man, by reason of the aesthetic function, are in reality also attempts on his part to realise the ideab Beauty is the symbol of
245
? 246 SEX AND CHARACTER
perfection in being) Therefore beauty is inviolable ; it is static and not dynamic ; so that any alteration with regard to it upsets and annuls the idea of it. The desire of personal worthiness, the lo^^e of perfection, materialise in theideaofbeauty. Andsothebeautyofnatureisborn,a beauty that the criminal can never know, as ethics first create nature. Thus it is that nature always and every- where, in its greatest and smallest forms, gives the impres- sion of perfection. The natural law is only the mortal symbol of the moral law, as natural beauty is the mani- festation of nobility of the soul ; logic thus becomes the embodiment of ethics ! Just as loves creates a new woman for man instead of the real woman, so art, the eroticism of the All, creates out of chaos the plenitude of forms in the universe ; and just as there is no natural beauty without form, without a law of nature, so also there is no art without form, no artistic beauty which does not conform to the laws of art. Natural beauty is no less a realisation of artistic beauty than the natural law is the fulfilment of the moral law, the natural reflection of that harmony whose
image is enthroned in the soul of man. The nature which the artist regards as his teacher, is the law which he creates out of his own being^
I return to my own theme from these analyses of art, which are no more than elaborations of the thoughts of Kant and Schelling (and of Schiller writing under their influence). The main proposition for which I have argued is that man's belief m the morality of woman, his projection of his own soul upon her, and his conception of the woman as beautiful, are one and the same thing, the second being the sensuous side of the first.
jit is thus intelligible, although an inversion of the truth, when, in morality, a beautiful soul is spoken of, or when, following Shaftesbury and Herbart, ethics are subordinated to aesthetics ; following Socrates and Plato we may identify the good and the beautiful, but we must not forget that beauty is only a bodily image in which morality tries to represent itself, that all aesthetics are created by ethics. J
? EROTICS AND . ESTHETICS
Every individual and temporal presentation of this attempted incarnation must necessarily be illusory, and can have no more than a fictitious reality. And so all indi- vidual cases of beauty are impermanent the love that is
;
directed to a woman must perish with the age of the woman. The idea of beauty is the idea of nature and is permanent, whilst every beautiful thing, every part of nature, is perish- able. /The eternal can realise itself in the limited and the concrete only by an illusion ; it is self-deception to seek the fulness of love in a woman. As all love that attaches itself to a person must be impermanent, the love of woman is doomed to unhappiness. All such love has this source of failure inherent in it. It is an heroic attempt to seek for permanent worth where there is no worth. The love that is attached to enduring worth is attached to the absolute, to the idea of God, whether that idea be a pantheistic con- ception of enduring nature, or remain transcendental ; the love that attaches itself to an individual thmg, as to a woman, must fail. 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
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
? EROTICS AND ^ESTHETICS
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
249
? 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).
The kmg of the fairy tale who wished to conquer the
? 230 SEX AND CHARACTER
stars is the perfect image of the conqueror. The great genius honours himself, and has not to hve in a condition of give and take with the populace, as is necessary for the politician. The great politician makes his voice resound in the world, but he has also to sing in the streets ; he may make the world his chessboard, but he has also to strut in a booth ; he is no more a despot than he is a beggar for alms. He has to court the populace, and here he joins with the prostitute. The politician is a man of the streets. He must be completed by the public. It is the masses that he re- quires, not real individualities. If he is not clever he tries to be rid of the great men, or if, like Napoleon, he is cunning, he pretends to honour them in order that he may make them harmless. His dependence on the public makes some such course necessary. A politician cannot do all that he wishes, even if he is a Napoleon, and if, unlike Napoleon, he actually wished to realise ideals, he would soon be taught better by the public, his real master. The will of him who covets power is bound.
Every emperor is conscious of this relation between him- self ind the masses, and has an almost instinctive love of great assemblages of his people, or his army, or of his electors. Not Marcus Aurelius or Diocletian, but Kleo, Mark Antony, Themistocles, and Mirabeau are the em- bodiments of the real politician. Ambition means going amongstthepeople. Thetribunehastofollowtheprosti- tute in this respect. According to Emerson, Napoleon used to go incognito amongst the people to excite their hurrahs and praise. Schiller imagined the same course for his Wallenstein.
Hitherto the phenomena of the great man of action have been regarded even by artists and philosophers as unique. I think that my analysis has shown that there is the strongest resemblance between them and prostitutes. To see an analogy between Antonius (Caesar) and Cleopatra may appear at first far-fetched, but none the less it exists. The great man of action has to despise his inner life, in order that he may live altogether " in the world," and he must
I
? MOTHERHOOD AND PROSTITUTION 231
perish,likethethingsoftheworld. Theprostituteabandons the lasting purpose of her sex, to live in the instincts of the moment. The great prostitute and the great tribune are firebrands causing destruction all around them, leaving death and devastation in their paths, and pass like meteors unconnected with the course of human life, indifferent to its objects, and soon disappearing, whilst the genius and the mother work for the future in silence. ^The prostitute and the tribune may be called the enemies of God ? they are both anti-moral phenomena^
Great men of action, then, must be excluded from the category of genius. The true genius, whether he be an artist or a philosopher, is always strongly marked by his relation to the constructive side of the world.
The motive that actuates the prostitute requires further investigation. The purpose of the motherly woman was easy to understand ; she is the upholder of the race. But the fundamental idea of prostitution is much more mys- terious, and no one can have meditated long on the subject without often doubting if it were possible to get an explana- tion. Perhaps the relation of the two types to the sexual actmayassisttheinquiry. Ihopethatnoonewillconsider such a subject below the dignity of a philosopher. The spirit in which the inquiry is made is the chief matter. It is at least clear that the painters of Leda and Dana? e have pondered over the problem, and many great writers-- have in mind Zola's "Confession of Claude," his "Hortense," "Renee," and "Nana," Tolstoi's "Resurrection," Ibsen's "Hedda Gabler," and " Rita," and above all the "Sonja" of that great soul Dostoyevski--must have been thinking of the
general problem rather than merely wishing to describe particular cases.
The maternal woman regards the sexual relations as means to an end ; the prostitute considers them as the end itself. That sexual congress may have another purpose than mere reproduction is plain, as many animals and plants are devoid of it. On the other hand, in the animal kingdom, sexual congress is always in connection with reproduction,
? '
SEX AND CHARACTER
and is never simply lust ; and, moreover, takes place only at times suitable for breeding. Desire is simply the means employed by nature to secure the contmuity of the species.
Although sexual congress is an end in itself for the prostitute, it must not be assumed that it is meaningless in themother-type. Womenwhoaresexuallyanaestheticno doubt exist in both classes, but they are very rare, and many apparent cases may really be phenomena of hysteria.
The final importance attached by the prostitute to the sexual act is made plain by the fact that it is only that type inwhichcoquetryoccurs. Coquetryhasinvariablyasexual significance. Its purpose is to picture to the man the
. f? Q0Ja? 9if:s. t_oi _the woman before it has_ occurred, in order to induce him to make the conquest an actual fact. The readiness of the type to coquet with every man is an expres- sion of her nature ; whether it proceeds further depends on mprely accidental circumstances.
[The maternal type regards the sexual act as the beginning of a series of important events, and so attaches value to it equally with the prostitute, although in a different fashion/ The one is contented, completed, satisfied ; her life is made richer and of fuller meaning to her by it. The other, for whom the act is everything, the compression and end of all life, is never satisfied, never to be satisfied, were she visited by all the men in the world.
' The body of a woman, as I have already shown, is sexual 'throughout, and the special sexual acts are only intensifica- tions of a distributed sensation. Here, also, the difference between the two types displays itself. The prostiiute type in coquetting is merely using the general sexuality of her body as an end in itself ; for her there is a difference only in degree between flirtation and sexual congress. The maternal type is equally sexual, but with a different purpose; all her life, through all her body, she is being impregnated. In this fact lies the explanation of the "impression " which I referred to as being indubitable, although it is denied by
men of science and physicians^ Paternityisadiffusedrelation. Manyinstances,disputed
232
? MOTHERHOOD AND PROSTITUTION
by men of science, point to an influence not brought about directly by the reproductive cells. White women who have borne a child to a black man, are said if they bear children afterwards to white men, to have retained enough impression from the first mate to show an effect on the subsequent children. All such facts, grouped under the names of " telegony," ** germinal infection," and so. on, although disputed by scientists, speak for my view. (And so also the motherly woman, throughout her whole lire, is impressed by lovers, by voices, by words, by inanimate things. All the influences that come to her she turns to the purpose of her being, to the shaping of her child, and the " actual " father has to share his paternity with perhaps other men and many other things. )
Thewomanis impregnatednotonlythroughthegenital tract but through every fibre of her being. All life makes an impression on her and throws its image on her child. This universality, in the purely physical sphere, is analagous to genius.
<Jt is quite different with the prostitute. Whilst the maternal woman turns the whole world, the love of her lover, and all the impressions that she receives to the pur- poses of the child, the prostitute absorbs everything for herself^ But just as she has this absorbing need of the man, so the man can get something from her which he fails to find in the badly dressed, tasteless, pre-occupied maternal type. Something within him requires pleasure, and this he gets from the daughters of joy. Unlike the mother, these think of the pleasures of the world, of dancing, of dressing, of theatres and concerts, of pleasure-resorts. They know the use of gold, turning it to luxury instead of to comfort, they flame through the world, making all its ways a triumphant march for their beautiful bodies.
The prostitute is the great seductress of the world, the female Don Juan, the being in the woman that knows the art of love, that cultivates it, teaches it, and enjoys it.
Very deep-seated differences are linked with what I have been describing. The mother-woman craves for respect-
233
? /
/
234
ability in the man, not because she grasps its value as an idea, but because it is the supporter of the life of the world. Sheherselfworks,andisnotidleliketheprostitute; sheis tilled with care for the future, and so requires from the man a corresponding practical responsibility, and will not seduce him to pleasure. (The prostitute, on the other hand, is
most attracted by a careless, idle, dissipated man. A man that has lost self-restraint repels the mother-woman, is attractive to the prostitute. There are women who are dissatisfiedwithasonthatisidleatschool; thereareothers who encourage him^ The diligent boy pleases the mother- woman, the idle and careless boy wins approval from the prostitute type. This distinction reaches high up amongst the respectable classes of society, but a salient example of it is seen in the fact that the " bullies " loved by women of the streets are usually criminals. The souteneur is always a criminal, a thief, a fraudulent person, or sometimes even a murderer.
I am almost on the point of saymg that, however little woman is to be regarded as immoral (she is only non- moral), prostitution stands in some deep relation with crime, whilst motherhood is equally bound with the oppo- site tendency. We must avoid regarding the prostitute as the female analogue of the criminal ; women, as I have already pointed out, are not criminals ; they are too low in the moral scale for that designation. None the less, there is a constant connection between the prostitute type and crime. The great courtesan is comparable with that great criminal, the conqueror, and readily enters into actual rela- tions with him ; the petty courtesan entertains the thief and the pickpocket. 'vThe mother type is in fact the guardian of the life of the world, the prostitute type is its enemy^ But just as the mother is in harmony, not with the soul but with the body, so the prostitute is no diabolic destroyer of the idea,butonlyacorrupterofempiricalphenomena. Physi- cal life and physical death, both of which are in intimate connection with the sexual act, are displayed by the woman
SEX AND CHARACTER
,in her two capacities of mother and prostitute. /
? MOTHERHOOD AND PROSTITUTION
It is siill impossible to give a clearer solution than that which I h:ive attempted, of the real significance of mother- hood and prostitution. I am on an unfamiliar path, almost untrodden by any earlier wayfarer. Religious myths and plilosophy alike have been unable to propound solutions. I have found some clues however. The anti-moral signi- ficance of prostitution is in harmony with the fact that it appearsonlyamongstmankind. Inalltheanimalkingdom the females are used only for reproduction ; there are no true females that are sterile. There are analogies to prosti- tution, however, amongst male animals ; one has only to think of the display and decoration of the peacock, of tne shining glow-worm, of singing birds, of the love dances of many male birds. These secondary sexual manifestations, however, are mere advertisements of sexuality.
Prostitution is a human phenomenon ; animals and plants are non-moral ; they are never disposed to immo- ralityandpossessonlymotherhood. Hereisadeepsecret, hidden in the nature and origin of mankind. I ought to correctmyearlierexpositionbyinsistingthatI havecome to regard the prostitute element as a possibility in all women just as much as the merely animal capacity for motherhood. It is something which penetrates the nature of the human female, something with which the most animal-like mother is tinged, something which corresponds in the human female, to the characters that separate the human male from the animal male. ^Just as the immoral, possibility of man is something that distinguishes him from the male animal/so the quality of the prostitute distinguishes the human female from the animal female. I shall have something to say as to the general relation of man to this element in woman, towards the end of my investigation, but possibly the ultimate origin of prostitution is a deep mystery into which none can penetrate.
235
? CHAPTER XI
EROTICS AND ESTHETICS
The arguments which are in common use to justify a high opinion of woman have now been examined in all except a few points to which I shall recur, from the point of view of critical philosophy, and have been controverted. I hope that I have justified my deliberate choice of ground, although, indeed, Schopenhauer's fate should have been a warning to me. His depreciation of women in his philo- sophical work "On Women," has been frequently attributed to the circumstance that a beautiful Venetian girl, in whose company he was, fell in love with the extremely handsome personal appearance of Byron ; as if a low opinion of women were not more likely to come to him who had had the best not the worst fortune with them.
The practice of merely calling any one who assails woman a misogynist, instead of refuting argument by argument, has much to commend it. Hatred is never impartial, and, therefore, to describe a man as having an animus against the object of his criticism, is at once to lay him open to the charge of insincerity, immorality, and partiality, and one that can be made with a hyperbole of accusation and evasion of the point, which only equal its lack of justification. This sort of answer never fails in its object, which is to exempt the vindicator from refuting the actual statements. It is the oldest and handiest weapon of the large majority of men, who never wish to see woman as she is. No men who really think deeply about women retain a high opinion of them ; men either despise women or they have never thought seriously about them.
? EROTICS AND ^ESTHETICS
Na? here is no doubt that it is a fallacious method in a theoretical argument to refer to one's opponent's psycho- logical motives instead of bringing forward proofs to controvert his statements^
It is not necessary for me to say that in logical contro- versy the adversaries should place themselves under an impersonal conception of truth, and their aim should be to reach a result, irrespective of their own concrete opinions. If, however, in an argument, one side has come to a certain conclusion by a logical chain of reasoning, and the other side merely opposes the conclusion without having followed the reasoning process, it is at once fair and appropriate to examine the psychological motives which have induced the adversaries to abandon argument for abuse. I shall now put the champions of women to the test and see how much of their attitude is due to sentimentality, how much of it is disinterested, and how much due to selfish motives.
All objections raised against those who despise women arise from the erotic relations in which man stands to woman. This relationship is absolutely different from the purely sexual attraction which occurs in the animal world, and plays a most important part in human affairs. It is quite erroneous to say that sexuality and eroticism, sexual impulse and love, are fundamentally one and the same thing, the second an embellishing, refining, spiritualising sublimation of the first ; although practically all medical men hold this view, and even such men as Kam and Schopenhauer thought so. Before I go into the reasons for maintaining the existence of this great distinction, I should like to say something about the views of these two men.
Kant's opinion is not of much weight, because love as sexual impulse must have been as little known to him as possible, probably less than in the case of any other man.
He was so little erotic that he never felt the kindred desire to travel. * He represents too lofty and pure a type to speak
* The association of these two desires may surprise readers. It rests on a metaphysical ground, much of which will be more
237
? 238 SEX AND CHARACTER
with authority on this matter : his one passion was meta- physics.
As for Schopenhauer, he had just as Httle idea of the higher form of eroticism ; his sexuality was of the gross order. This can be seen from the following : Schopen- hauer's countenance shows very little kindliness and a good deal of fierceness (a circumstance which must have causedhimgreatsorrow. Thereisnoexhibitionofethical sympathy if one is very sorry for oneself. The most sym- pathetic persons are those who, like Kant and Nietzsche, have no particle of self-pity).
But it may be said with safety that only those who are most sympathetic are capable of a strong passion : those " who take no interest in things " are incapable of love. This does notimplythattheyhavediabolicalnatures. Theymay,on the contrary, stand very high morally without knowmg what their neighbours are thinking or doing,<and without having a sense for other than sexual relations with women, as was the case with Schopenhauer. He was a man who knew only too well what the sexual impulse was, but he never was in love ; if that were not so, the bias in his famous work, " The Metaphysics of Sexual Love," would be inex- plicable ; in it the most important doctrine is that the uncon- scious goal of all love is nothing more than "the formation of the next generation. y
This view, as I hope to prove, is false. It is true that a love entirely without sexuality has never been known. However high a man may stand he is still a being with
apparent when I have developed my theory of eroticism further. Time, like space, is conceived of as unlimited, and man, in his desire for freedom, in his efforts stimulated by his power of free will to transcend his limits, has the craving for unlimited time and unlimited space. The desire for travel is simply an expression of this rest- lessness, this fundamental chafing of the spirit against its bonds. But just as eternity is not prolonged time, but the negation of time, so however far a man wanders, he can extend his area but cannot abolish space. And so his efforts to transcend space must always be heroic failures : I shall show that his eroticism is a similar notable failure.
EROTICS AND ESTHETICS
239
senses, ^hatabsolutelydisposesoftheoppositeviewisthis all love, as such--without going into aesthetic principles of love--is antagonistic to those elements (of the relationship) which press towards sexual union ; in fact, such elements tend to negate love. Love and desire are two unlike, mutually exclusive, opposing conditions, and during the time a man really loves, the thought of physical union with the object of his love is insupportable. ) because there is no hope which is entirely free from fear does not alter the fact that hope and fear are utterly opposite principles. It is just the same m the case of sexual impulse and love. The more erotic a man is the less he will be troubled with his sexuality, and vice versag
If it be the case that there is no adoration utterly free from desire, there is no reason why the two should be identified, since it might be possible for a superior being to attainthehighestphasesofboth. Thatpersonlies,orhas never known what love is, who says he loves a woman
whom he desires ; so much difference is there between sexual impulse and love. This is what makes talk of love after marriage seem, in most cases, make-believe.
,^he following will show how obtuse the view of those is who persist, with unconscious cynicism, in maintaining the identity of love and sexual impulse. Sexual attraction increases with physical proximity ; love is strongest in the absence of the loved one ; it needs separation, a certain distance, to preserve it. In fact, what all the travels in the world could not achieve, what time could not accomplish, may be brought about by accidental, unintentional, physical contact with the beloved object, in which the sexual im- pulse is awakened, and which suffices to kill love on the spot. ^Then, again, in the case of more highly differentiated, great men, the type of girl desired, and the type of girl loved but never desired, are always totally different in face, form, and disposition ; they are two different beings.
Then there is the " platonic love," which professors of psy- chiatry have such a poor opinion of. I should say rather, there is only " platonic " love, because any other so-called
:
? --"
? 240 SEX AND CHARACTER
' love belongs to the kingdom of the senses :At is the love of Beatrice, the worship of Madpnna ; the Babylonian woman is the symbol of sexual desire. )
Kant's enumeration of th6 transcendental ideas of love would have to be extended if it is to be held. For the purely spiritual love, the love of Plato and Bruno, which is absolutely free from desire, is none the less a transcendental concept ; nor is its significance as a concept impaired, because such a love has never been fully realised.
It is the problem put forward in " Tannha? user. " We have Tannha? user, Wolfram, Venus, and Maria. The fact that two lovers, who have found each other once for all Tristan and Isolde--choose death instead of the bridal bed, is just as absolute a proof of a higher, maybe metaphysical, something in mankind, as the martyrdom of a Giordano Bruno.
" Dir, hohe Liebe, to? ne Begeistert mein Gesang, Die mir in Engelscho? ne Tief in die Seele drang !
Du nahst als Gott gesandte :
-- So fu? hrst du in die Lande,
Wo ewig strahlt dein Stern. "
Who is the object of such love ? Is it woman, as she has been represented in this work, who lacks all higher quali- ties who gets her value from another, who has no power to attain value on her own account ? Impossible. It is the ideally beautiful, the immaculate woman, who is loved in suchhighfashion. Thesourceofthisbeautyandchastity in women must now be found.
The question as to whether the female sex is the more beautiful, and as to whether it deserves the title of " the beautiful, has been much disputed.
It may be well to consider by whom and how far woman is considered beautiful.
It is well known that woman is not most beautiful m the nude. I admit that in pictures or statues the nude female maylookwell. Butthesexualimpulsemakesitimpossible
Ich folg' aus holder Fern',
? EROTICS AND . ESTHETICS 241
to look at a living woman in a nude condition with the purely critical, unemotional eye, which is an essential feature injudginganyobjectofbeauty. Butapartfromthis,an absolute nude female figure in the life leaves an impression of something wanting, an incompleteness, which is incom- patible with beauty.
A nude woman may be beautiful in details, but the general effect is not beautiful ; she inevitably creates the feeling that she is looking for something, and this induces disin- clination rather than desire in the spectator. / The sight of an upright female form, in the nude, makes most patent her purposelessness, the sense of her purpose in life being derived from something outside herself ; in the recumbent
position this feeling is greatly diminished. It is evident that artists have perceived this in reproducing the nude)
But even in the details of her body a woman is not wholly beautiful, not even if she is a flawless, perfect type of her sex. The genitalia are the chief difficulty in the way of regarding her as theoretically beautiful. If the idea were justified that man's love for woman is the direct result of his sexual impulse ; if we could agree with Schopenhauer that " the under-sized, narrow-shouldered, broad-hipped, and short-limbed sex is called beautiful only because the male
intellect is befogged by the sexual impulse, that impulse being the creator of the conception of the beauty of woman," it would follow that the genitalia could not be excluded from theconceptionofbeauty. Itrequiresnolengthyexposition to prove that the genitalia are not regarded as beautiful, and that, therefore, the beauty of woman cannot be regarded as duetothesexualimpulse. Infact,thesexualimpulseism
realityopposedtotheconceptionofbeauty.
Themanwho is most under its influence has least sense of female beauty, and desires any woman merely because she is a woman. ? .
A woman's nude body is distasteful to man because it offends his sense of shame. The easy superficiality of our day has given colour to the statement that the sense of shame has arisen from the wearing of clothes, and it has been urged that the objection to the nude arises from those
242
their readiness to believe such protestations.
The love bestowed by the man is the standard of what is
\
/beautiful and what is hateful in woman. / The conditions
are quite different in aesthetics from those in logic or ethics. In logic there is an abstract truth which is the standard of thought ; in ethics there is an ideal good which furnishes the criterion of what ought to be done, and the value of the good is established by the determination to link the will with the good, (in aesthetics beauty is created by love ; there is no determining law to love what is beautiful, and the beauti- ful does not present itself to human beings with any im- perative command to love it. (And so there is no abstract, no super-individual "right " taste)
All beauty is really more a projection, an emanation of the requirements of love ; and so the beauty of woman is not apart from love, it is not an objective to which love is directedA)ut woman's beauty is the love of man ; they are not two things, but one and the same thing^
Just as hatefulness comes from hating, so love creates beauty. This is only another way of expressing the fact that beauty has as little to do with the sexual impulse as the sexual impulse has to do with love. Beauty is something that can neither be felt, touched, nor mixed with other things ; it is only at a distance that it can be plainly dis- cerned, and when it is approached it withdraws itself. The sexual impulse which seeks for sexual union with woman is a denial of such beauty ; the woman who has been possessed and enjoyed, will never again be worshipped for her beauty.
J
? SEX AND CHARACTER
whoareunnaturalandsecretlyimmorally-minded. Buta man who has become immorally-minded no longer is interested in the nude as such, because it has lost its in- fluence on him. He merely desires and no longer loves. AW true love is modest, like all true pity. There is only one case of shamelessness--a declaration of love the sincerity of which a man is convinced of in the moment he makes itk This would represent the conceivable maxi- mum of shamelessness ; but there is no declaration of love which is quite true, and the stupidity of women is shown by
? EROTICS AND ^STHETICS^
243 I now come to the second question : what are the inno-
cence and morality of a woman ?
It will be convenient to start with a few facts that concern
the origin of all love. /'-Bodily cleanliness, as has often been remarked, is in men a general indication of morality and rectitude ; or at least it m^ be said that uncleanly men are seldom of high character. ) It may be noticed that when men, who formerly paid little attention to bodily cleanliness, begin to strive for a higher perfection of character, they at the same time take more trouble with the care of the body. In the same way, when men suddenly become imbued with passion they experience a simultaneous desire for bodily cleanliness, and it may almost be said of them that only at such a time do they wash themselves thoroughly. Uf we now turn to gifted men, we shall see that in their case love frequently begins with self-mortification, humiliation, and restraint. A moral change sets in, a process of purification seems to emanate from the object loved, even if her lover has never spoken to her, or only seen her a few times in the
distance. It is, then, impossible that this process should have its origin in that person : very often it may be a bread-and-butter miss, a stolid lump, more often a sensuous coquette, in whom no one can see the marvellous charac- teristics with which his love endows her, save her lover. Can any one believe that it is a concrete person who is loved ? Does she not in reality serve as the starting point for incomparably greater emotions than she could inspire ?
In love, man is only loving himself. Not his empirical self, not the weaknesses and vulgarities, not the failings and smallnesses which he outwardly exhibits ; but all that he wants to be, all that he ought to be, his truest, deepest, in- telligible nature, free from all fetters of necessity, from all taint of earthy
In his actual physical existence, this being is limited by space and time and by the shackles of the senses ; however deep he may look into himself, he finds himself damaged and spotted, and sees nowhere the image of speckless purity for which he seeks. And yet there is nothing he covets so
? 244
SEX AND CHARACTER
much as to realise his own ideal, to find his real higher self. M. nd as he cannot find this true self within himself, he has to seek it without himself. He projects his ideal of an abso- lutely worthy existence, the ideal that he is unable to isolate within himself, upon another human being, and this act, and this alone, is none other than love and the significance of love. Only a person who has done wrong and is conscious of it can love, and so a child can never love. It is only because love represents the highest, most unattainable goal of all longing, because it cannot be realised in experience but must remain an idea ; only because it is localised on some other human being, and yet remains at a distance, so that the ideal never attains its realisation ; only because of such conditions can love be associated with the awakening of the desire for piirification, with the reaching after a goal that is purely spiritual, and so cannot be blemished by physical union with the beloved person ; only thus, is love the highest and strongest effort of the will towards the supreme good ; only thus does it bring the true being of man to a state between body and spirit, between the senses and the moral nature, between God and the beasts. / < A human being only finds himself when, in this fashion, he loves. And thus it comes about that only when they love do many men realise the existence of their own personality and of the personality of another, that " I " and '* thou " become for them more than grammatical expressions. And so also comes about the great part played in their love story by the names of the two lovers. There is no doubt but that it is through love that many men first come to know of their own
real nature, and to be convinced that they possess a soul. It is this which makes a lover desire to keep his beloved at a distance--on no account to injure her purity by contact with him--in order to assure himself of her and of his own existence. Many an inflexible empiricist, coming under the influence of love, becomes an enthusiastic mystic ; the most striking example being Auguste Comte, the founder of positivism, whose whole theories were revolutionised by his
feelings for Clotilde de Vaux.
? EROTICS AND ESTHETICS
It is not only for the artist, but for the whol^ of mankind that Arno, ergo sum holds good psychologically/
Love is a phenomenon of projection just as' hate is, not a phenomenon of equation as friendship is. The latter pre- supposes an equality of both individuals : ^ove always implies inequality, disproportion/ To endow an individual with all that one might be and yet never can be, to make her ideal--that is love. Beauty is the symbol of this act of worship. It is this that so often surprises and angers a lover when he is convinced that beauty does not imply morality in a woman. He feels that the nature of the offence is increased by " such depravity " being possible in conjunction with such " beauty. " He is not aware that the woman in question seems beautiful to him because he still loves her ; otherwise the incongruity between the ex- ternal and internal would no longer pain him.
The reason an ordinary prostitute can never seem beautiful is because it is naturally impossible to endow her with the projection of value ; she can satisfy only the taste ofvulgarminds. Sheisthemateoftheworstsortofmen. In this we have the explanation of a relation utterly opposed to morality : woman in general is simply indifferent to ethics, she is non-moral, and, therefore, unlike the anti- moral criminal, who is instinctively disliked, or the devil who is hideous in every one's imagination, serves as a receptacle for projected worthiness ; as she neither does good nor evil, she neither resists nor resents this imposition of the ideal on her personality. It is patent that woman's morality is acquired ; but this morality is man's, which he in an access of supreme love and devotion has conveyed to her.
(^ince all beauty is always only the constantly renewed endeavour to embody the highest form of value, there is a pre-eminently satisfymg element in it, in the face of which all desire, all self-seeking fade away.
All forms of beauty whfch appeal to man, by reason of the aesthetic function, are in reality also attempts on his part to realise the ideab Beauty is the symbol of
245
? 246 SEX AND CHARACTER
perfection in being) Therefore beauty is inviolable ; it is static and not dynamic ; so that any alteration with regard to it upsets and annuls the idea of it. The desire of personal worthiness, the lo^^e of perfection, materialise in theideaofbeauty. Andsothebeautyofnatureisborn,a beauty that the criminal can never know, as ethics first create nature. Thus it is that nature always and every- where, in its greatest and smallest forms, gives the impres- sion of perfection. The natural law is only the mortal symbol of the moral law, as natural beauty is the mani- festation of nobility of the soul ; logic thus becomes the embodiment of ethics ! Just as loves creates a new woman for man instead of the real woman, so art, the eroticism of the All, creates out of chaos the plenitude of forms in the universe ; and just as there is no natural beauty without form, without a law of nature, so also there is no art without form, no artistic beauty which does not conform to the laws of art. Natural beauty is no less a realisation of artistic beauty than the natural law is the fulfilment of the moral law, the natural reflection of that harmony whose
image is enthroned in the soul of man. The nature which the artist regards as his teacher, is the law which he creates out of his own being^
I return to my own theme from these analyses of art, which are no more than elaborations of the thoughts of Kant and Schelling (and of Schiller writing under their influence). The main proposition for which I have argued is that man's belief m the morality of woman, his projection of his own soul upon her, and his conception of the woman as beautiful, are one and the same thing, the second being the sensuous side of the first.
jit is thus intelligible, although an inversion of the truth, when, in morality, a beautiful soul is spoken of, or when, following Shaftesbury and Herbart, ethics are subordinated to aesthetics ; following Socrates and Plato we may identify the good and the beautiful, but we must not forget that beauty is only a bodily image in which morality tries to represent itself, that all aesthetics are created by ethics. J
? EROTICS AND . ESTHETICS
Every individual and temporal presentation of this attempted incarnation must necessarily be illusory, and can have no more than a fictitious reality. And so all indi- vidual cases of beauty are impermanent the love that is
;
directed to a woman must perish with the age of the woman. The idea of beauty is the idea of nature and is permanent, whilst every beautiful thing, every part of nature, is perish- able. /The eternal can realise itself in the limited and the concrete only by an illusion ; it is self-deception to seek the fulness of love in a woman. As all love that attaches itself to a person must be impermanent, the love of woman is doomed to unhappiness. All such love has this source of failure inherent in it. It is an heroic attempt to seek for permanent worth where there is no worth. The love that is attached to enduring worth is attached to the absolute, to the idea of God, whether that idea be a pantheistic con- ception of enduring nature, or remain transcendental ; the love that attaches itself to an individual thmg, as to a woman, must fail. 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
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
? EROTICS AND ^ESTHETICS
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
249
? 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).
