I shall show that | these three
improbabilities
spring from the same source in the nature of woman.
Weininger - 1903 - Sex and Character
The authoress and mathematician, Sonia Kowalevska, like Sappho,hadanabnormallyscantygrowthofhair,still less than is the fashion amongst the poetesses and female
* Chopin's portraits shovp his effeminacy plainly. erimee describes George Sand as being as thin as a nail. At the first meeting of the two, the lady behaved like a man, and the man like a girl. He blushed when she looked at him and began to pay him compliments in her bass voice.
e-j
;;
? 68 SEX AND CHARACTER
studentsofthepresentday. Itwouldbeaseriousomission to forget Rosa Bonheur, the very distinguished painter and it would be difficult to point to a single female trait in her appearance or character. The notorious Madame Blavatsky is extremely masculine in her appearance.
I might refer to many other emancipated women at present well known to the public, consideration of whom has provided me with much material for the support of my proposition that the true female element, the abstract "woman,"hasnothingtodowithemancipation. Thereis some historical justification for the saying "the longer the hair the smaller the brain," but the reservations made in chap. ii. must be taken into account.
(jt is only the male element in emancipated women that craves for emancipation^
There is, then, a stronger reason than has generally been supposed for the familiar assumption of male pseudonyms by women writers. Their choice is a mode of giving ex- pression to the inherent maleness they feel ; and this is still more marked in the case of those who, like George Sand, have a preference for male attire and masculine pur- suits. The motive for choosing a man's name springs from the feeling that it corresponds with their own character much more than from any desire for increased notice from the public. As a matter of fact, up to the present, partly owing to interest in the sex question, women's writings have aroused more interest, ceteris paribus, than those of men and, owing to the issues involved, have always received a fuller consideration and, if there were any justification, a
greater meed of praise than has been accorded to a man's work of equal merit. At the present time especially many women have attained celebrity by work which, if it had been produced by a man, would have passed almost un- noticed. Let us pause and examine this more closely.
If we attempt to apply a standard taken from the names of men who are of acknowledged value in philosophy, science, literature and art, to the long list of women who have achieved some kind of fame, there will at once be a miserable
? EMANCIPATED WOMEN
collapse. Judged in this way, it is difficult to grant any real degree of merit to women like Angelica Kaufmann or Madame Lebrun, Fernan Caballero or Hroswitha von Gapku? ersheim, Mary Somerville or George Egerton, Eliza- beth Barrett Browning or Sophie Germain, Anna Maria Schurmann or Sybilla Merian. I will not speak of names (such as that of Droste-Hu? lshoff) formerly so over-rated in the annals of feminism, nor will I refer to the measure of fame claimed for or by living women. It is enough to
make the general statement that there is not a single woman in the history of thought, not even the most manlike, who can be truthfully compared with men of fifth or sixth-rate genius, for instance with Riickert as a poet. Van Dyck as a painter,orScheirmacherasaphilosopher. Ifweeliminate hysterical visionaries,* such as the Sybils, the Priestesses of Delphi, Bourignon, Kettenberg, Jeanna de la Mothe Guyon, Joanna Southcote, Beate Sturmin, St. Teresa, there
still remain cases like that of Marie Bashkirtseff. So far as I can remember from her portrait, she at least seemed to be qui^e womanly in face and figure, although her forehead was rather masculine. But to any one who studies her pictures in the Salle des Etrangers in the Luxemburg Gallery in Paris, and compares them with those of her adored master, Bastien Lepage, it is plain that she simply had assimilated the style of the latter, as in Goethe's " Elec-
tive Affinities " Ottilie acquired the handwriting of Eduard. There remain the interesting and not infrequent cases where the talent of a clever family seems to reach its maxi- mum in a female member of the family. But it is only talent that is transmitted in this way, not genius. Mar-
garethe van Eyck and Sabina von Steinbach form the best illustrations of the kind of artists who, according to Ernst Guhl, in author with a great admiration for women-workers, " have been undoubtedly influenced in their choice of an
* Hysteria is the principal cause of much of the intellectual activity of many of the women above mentioned. But the usual view, that these cases are pathological, is too limited an interpreta- tion, us I shall show in the second part of this work.
69
? SEX AND CHARACTER
artistic calling by their fathers, mothers, or brothers. In other words, they found their incentive in their own families. There are two or three hundred of such cases on record, and probably many hundreds more could be added without exhausting the numbers of similar instances. " In order to give due weight to these statistics it may be mentioned that Guhl had just been speaking of " roughly, a thousand names of women artists known to us. "
This concludes my historical review of the emancipated women. It has justified the assertion that real desire for emancipation and real fitness for it are the outcome of a woman's maleness.
"NThe vast majority of women have never paid special attention to art or to science, and regard such occupations merelyashigherbranchesofmanuallabour,orif theypro- fess a certain devotion to such subjects, it is chiefly as a mode of attracting a particular person or group of persons of the opposite sex. ) Apart from these, a close investigation shows that women really interested in intellectual matters are sexually intermediate forms.
If it be the case that the desire for freedom and equality with man occurs only in masculine women, the inductive conclusion follows that the female principle is not conscious of a necessity for emancipation ; and the argument becomes stronger if we remember that it is based on an examination of the accounts of individual cases and not on psychical investigation of an " abstract woman. "
If we now look at the question of emancipation from the point of view of hygiene (not morality) there is no doubt as to the harm in it. The undesirability of emancipation lies in the excitement and agitation involved. It induces women who have no real original capacity but undoubted imitative powers to attempt to study or write, from various motives, such as vanity or the desire to attract admirers. Whilst it cannot be denied that there are a good many women with a real craving for emancipation and for higher education, these set the fashion and are followed by a host of others who get up a ridiculous agitation to convince themselves of
70
? EMANCIPATED WOMEN
71 therealityoftheirviews. Andmanyotherwiseestimable and worthy wives use the cry to assert themselves against their husbands, whilst daughters take it as a method of rebelling against maternal authority. The practical outcome of the whole matter would be as follows ; it being remem- bered that the issues are too mutable for the establishment of uniform rules or laws. Let there be the freest scope given to, and the fewest hindrances put in the way of all women with masculine dispositions who feel a psychical necessity to devote themselves to masculine occupations and are physically fit to undertake them. But the idea of mak- ing an emancipation party, of aiming at a social revolution, must be abandoned. Away with the whole ** woman's movement," with its unnaturalness and artificiality and its
fundamental errors.
It is most important to have done with the senseless cry
for " full equality," for even the malest woman is scarcely more than 50 per cent, male, and it is only to that male part of her that she owes her special capacity or whatever importance she may eventually gam. It is absurd to make comparisons between the few really intellectual women and one's average experience of men, and to deduce, as has been done, even the superiority of the female sex. As Darwin pointed out, the proper comparison is between the most highly developed individuals of two stocks. " If two lists," Darwin wrote in the " Descent of Man," " were made of the most eminent men and women in poetry, painting, sculpture, music--comprising composition and performance, history, science, and philosophy, with half a dozen names under each subject, the two lists would not bear comparison. " Moreover, if these lists were carefully examined it would be seen that the women's list would prove the soundness of my theory of the maleness of their genius, and the comparison would be still less pleasing to the champions of woman's rights>>
It is frequently urged that it is necessary to create a public feeling in favour of the full and unchecked mental development of women. Such an argument overlooks
SEX AND CHARACTER
72
the fact that " emancipation," the " woman question," " women's rights movements," are no new things in history, but have always been with us, although with varying prominence at different times in history. It also largely exaggerates the difficulties men place in the way of the mental development of women, especially at the present time. * Furthermoreitneglectsthefactthatatthepresent time it is not the true woman who clamours for eman- cipation, but only the masculine type of woman, who misconstrues her own character and the motives that actuate her when she formulates her demands in the name of woman.
<s^s has been the case with every other movement in history, so also it has been with the contemporary woman's movement. Itsorigmatorswereconvmcedthatitwasbeing put forward for the first time, and that such a thing had neverbeenthoughtofbefore. Theymaintainedthatwomen had hitherto been held in bondage and enveloped in dark- ness by man, and that it was high time for her to assert her- self and claim her natural rights. /
But the prototype of this movement, as of other move- ments, occurred in the earliest times. Ancient history and mediaeval times alike give us instances of women who, in social relations and intellectual matters, fought for such emancipation, and of male and female apologists of the female sex. It is totally erroneous to suggest that hitherto women have had no opportunity for the undisturbed development of their mental powers.
Jacob Burckhardt, speaking of the Renaissance, says " The greatest possible praise which could be given to the Italian women-celebrities of the time was to say that they were like men in brains and disposition ! " The virile deeds of women recorded in the epics, especially those of Boiardo and Ariosto, show the ideal of the time. To call
* There have been many celebrities amongst men who received practically no education--for instance, Robert Burns and Wolfram vonEschenbach buttherearenosimilarcasesamongstwomento
;
compare with them-
:
? EMANCIPATED WOMEN
ipliment, but it originally meant an honour.
Women were first allowed on the stage in the sixteenth
century, and actresses date from that time. " At that period it was admitted that women were just as capable as men of embodying the highest possible artistic ideals. " It was the period when panegyrics on the female sex were rife ; Sir Thomas More claimed for it full equality with the male sex, and Agrippa von Nettesheim goes so far as to represent women as superior to men ! And yet this was all lost for the fair sex, and the whole question sank into the oblivion from which the nineteenth century recalled it.
Is it not very remarkable that the agitation for the eman- cipation of women seems to repeat itself at certain intervals in the world's history, and lasts for a definite period ?
yt has been noticed that in the tenth, fifteenth, and six- teenth, and now again in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the agitation for the emancipation of women has been more marked, and the woman's movement more vigorous than in the intervening periods. It would be premature to found a hypothesis on the data at our dis- posal, but the possibility of a vastly important periodicity must be borne in mind, of regularly recurring periods in which it may be that there is an excess of production of hermaphrodite and sexually intermediate forms. Such a state of affairs is not unknown in the animal kingdom.
According to my interpretation, such a period would be one of minimum " gonochorism," cleavage of the sexes and it would be marked, on the one hand, by an increased production of male women, and on the other, by a similar increase in female men. There is strong evidence in favour of such a periodicity ; if it occurs it may be associated with the "secessionist taste," which idealised tall, lanky women with fiat chests and narrow hips. ^ The enormous recent increase in a kind of dandified homo-sexuality may be due to the increasing effeminacy of the age, and the peculiarities of the Pre-Raphaelite movement may have a similar explanation.
73 >a woman a "virago " nowadays would be a doubtful com-
;
? ? SEX AND CHARACTER
74
The existence of such periods in organic Hfe, comparable
with stages in individual life, but extending over several generations, would, if proved, throw much light on many obscure points in human history, concerning which the so-called " historical solutions," and especially the economic- materialistic views now in vogue have proved so futile. The history of the world from the biological standpoint has still to be written ; it lies in the future. Here 1 can do little more than indicate the direction which future work should take.
Were it proved that at certain periods fewer herma- phrodite beings were produced, and at certain other periods more, it would appear that the rising and falling, the periodic occurrence and disappearance of the woman movement in an unfailing rhythm of ebb and flow, was one of the ex- pressions of the preponderance of masculine and feminine women with the concomitant greater or lesser desire for emancipation.
Obviously I do not take into account in relation to the woman question the large number of womanly women, the wives of the prolific artisan class whom economic pressure forces to factory or field labour. The connection between industrial progress and the woman question is much less close than is usually realised, especially by the Social
Democratic Group. The relation between the mental energy required for intellectual and for industrial pursuits is even less. . ^France, for instance, although it can boast three of the most famous women, has never had a successful woman's movement, and yet in no other European country are there so many really businesslike, capable womei'^^ The struggle for the material necessities of life has nothing to do with the struggle for intellectual development, and a sharp distinction mast be made between the two.
The pro-pects of the movement for intellectual advance onthepartofwomenarenotverypromising; butstillless promising is another view, sometimes discussed in the same connection, the view that^he human race is moving towards a complete sexual differentiation, a definite sexual dimorphism. N
? EMANCIPATED WOMEN
75 The latter view seems to me fundamentally untenable, because in the higher groups of the animal kingdom there is no evidence for the increase of sexual dimorphism. Worms and rotifers, many birds and the mandrills amongst the apes, have more advanced sexual dimorphism than man. On the view that such an increased sexual dimorphism were to be expected, the necessity for emancipation would gradually disappear as mankind became separated into the completely male and the completely female. On the other hand, the view that there will be periodical resurrections of the woman's movement would reduce the whole affair to ridiculous impotence, making it only an ephemeral phase in
the history of mankind.
A complete obliteration will be the fate of any emancipa-
tion movement which attempts to place the whole sex in a new relation to society, and to see in man its perpetual oppressor. A corps of Amazons might be formed, but as time went on the material for the corps would cease to occur. The history of the woman movement during the Renaissance and its complete disappearance contains a lessonfortheadvocatesofwomen'srights. Realintellectual freedomcannotbeattainedbyanagitatedmass; itmustbe fought for by the individual. Who is the enemy ? What are the retarding influences ?
The greatest, the one enemy of the emancipation of women is woman herself. It is left to the second part of my work to prove this.
? SECOND OR PRINCIPAL PART THE SEXUAL TYPES
? CHAPTER I MAN AND WOMAN
" All that a man does is physiognomical of him. " Carlyle,
A FREE field for the investigation of the actual contrasts between the sexes is gained when we recognise that male and female, man and woman, must be considered only as types, and that the existing individuals, upon whose quali- ties there has been so much controversy, are mixtures of the types in different proportions. {Sexually intermediate forms, which are the only actually existing individualsy^were dealt with in a more or less schematic fashion in the first part of thisbook. Considerationofthegeneralbiologicalapplica- tion of my theory was entered upon there ; but now I have to make mankind the special subject of my investigation, and to show the defects of the results gained by the method of introspective analysis, as these results must be qualified by the universal existence of sexually intermediate condi- tions. In plants and animals the presence of hermaphro- ditism is an undisputed fact ; but in them it appears more to be the juxtaposition of the male and female genital
glands in the same individual than an actual fusion of the two sexes, more the co-existence of the two extremes than a quite neutral condition. In the case of human beings, however, it appears to be psychologically true that an indi- vidual, at least at one and the same moment, is always either man or woman. This is in harmony with the fact that each individual, whether superficially regarded as male or female, at once can recognise his sexual complement in.
? 8o SEX AND CHARACTER
anotherindividual"woman"or"man. "* Thisuni-sexuaHty is demonstrated by the fact, the theoretical value of which can hardly be over-estimated, that, in the relations of two homo-sexual men one always plays the physical and psy- chical roll of the man, and in cases of prolonged inter- course retains his male first-name, or takes one, whilst the other, who plays the part of the woman, either assumes a woman's name or calls himself by it, or--and this is suffi- ciently characteristic--receives it from the former.
In the same way, in the sexual relations of two women, one always plays the male and the other the female part, a fact of deepest significance. Here we encounter, in a most unexpected fashion, the fundamental relationship between the male and female elements. In spite of all sexually intermediate conditions, human beings are always oneoftwothings,eithermaleorfemale. Thereisadeep truth underlying the old empirical sexual duality, and this must not be neglected, even although in concrete cases there is not a necessary harmony in the anatomical and morphological conditions. To realise this is to make a great step forward and to advance towards most important
results. In this way we reach a conception of a real " being. " The task of the rest of this book is to set forth the significance of this " existence. " As, however, this existence is bound up with the most difficult side of characterology, it will be well, before setting out on our adventurous task, to attempt some preliminary orientation.
The obstacles in the way of characterological investiga- tionareverygreat,if onlyonaccountofthecomplexityof the material. Often and often it happens that when the path through the jungle appears to have been cleared, it is lost again in impenetrable thickets, and it seems impossible
* I once heard a bi-sexual man exclaim, when he saw a bi-sexual actress with a slight tendency to a beard, a deep sonorous voice, and very little hair on her head, " There is a fine woman. " " Woman " means something different for every man or for every poet, and yet it is always the same, the sexual complement of their own constitution.
? MAN AND WOMAN 8i
to recover it. But the greatest difficulty is that when the systematic method of setting out the complex material has been proceeded with and seems about to lead to good results, then at once objections of the most serious kind ariseandalmostforbidtheattempttomaketypes. With regard to the differences between the sexes, for instance, the most useful theory that has been put forward is the existence of a kind of polarity, two extremes separated by amultitudeofintermediateconditions. Thecharacterolo- gical differences appear to follow this rule in a fashion not dissimilar to the suggestion of the Pythagorean, Alcmaeon of Kroton, and recalling the recent chemical resurrection of Schelling's " Natur-philosophie. "
But even if we are able to determine the exact point occupied by an individual on the line between two ex- tremes, and multiply this determination by discovering it for a great many characters, would this complex system of co-ordmate lines really give us a conception of the indivi- dual ? Would it not be a relapse to the dogmatic scepticism of Mach and Hume, were we to expect that an analysis could be a full description of the human individual ? And in a fashion it would be a sort of Weismannistic doc- trine of particulate determinants, a mosaic psychology.
/rhis brings us in a new way directly against the old, over- ripeproblem. Isthereinamanasingleandsimpleexist- ence, and, if so, in what relation does that stand to the ^' complex psychical phenomena ? Has man, indeed, a soul ?
It is easy to understand why there has never been a science of character. The object of such a science, the character itself, is problematical. The problem of all metaphysics and theories of knowledge, the fundamental problem of psychology, is also the problem of characterology. At the least, characterology will have to take into account the the'^ry of knowledge itself with regard to its postulates, claims, and objects, and will have to attempt to obtain infor- mation as to all the differences in the nature of men. /
This unlimited science of character will be something more than the " psychology of individual differences," the
F
? 82 SEX AND CHARACTER
renewed insistence upon which as a goal of science we owe to L. William Stern ; it will be more than a sort of polity of the motor and sensory reactions of the individual, and in so far will not sink so low as the usual " results " of the modern experimental psychologists, which, indeed, are little more than statistics of physical experiments. It will hope to retain some kind of contact with the actuahties of the soul which the modern school of psychology seems to have forgotten, and will not have to fear that it will have to offer to ardent students of psychology no more than profound studies of words of one syllable, or of the results on the mindofsmalldosesofcaffein. Itisalamentabletestimony to the insufficiency of modern psychology that distinguished men of science, who have not been content with the study of perception and association, have yet had to hand over to poetry the explanation of such fundamental facts as heroism and self-sacrifice.
{No science will become shallow so quickly as psychology if it deserts philosophy. Its separation from philosophy is the true cause of its impotency. Psychology will have to discover that the doctrine of sensations is practically useless to it. The empirical psychologists of to-day, in their search for the development of character, begin with investigation of touch and the common sensations. But the analysis of sensations is simply a part of the physiology of sense, and any attempt to bring it into relation with the real problems of psychology must fail! \
It is a misfortune of the scientific psychology of the day that it has been influenced so deeply by two physicists, Fechner and von Helmholtz, with the result that it has failed to recognise that only the external and not the internal world can be reconstructed from sensations.
The two most intelligent of the empirical psychologists of recent times, William James and R. Avenarius, have felt almost instinctively that psychology cannot really rest upon sensa- tions of the skin and muscles, although, indeed, all modern psychologydoesdependuponstudyofsensations. Dilthey did not lay enough stress on his argument that existing
? MAN AND WOMAN
83 psychology does nothing towards problems that are eminently psychological, such as murder, friendship, lone- liness, and so forth. If anything is to be gained in the future there must be a demand for a really psychological psychology, and its first battle-cry must be : " Away with
the study of sensations. "
In attempting the broad and deep characterology that I
have indicated, I must set out with a conception of character itself as a unit existence. As in the fifth chapter of Part I. , I tried to show that behind the fleeting physiological changes there is a permanent morphological form, so in charac- terology we must seek the permanent, existing something through the fleeting changes.
\The character, however, is not something seated behind the thoughts and feelings of the individual, but something revealing itself in every thought and feeling. " All that a man does is physiognomical of him. " Just as every cell bears within it the characters of the whole individual, so every psychical manifestation of a man involves not merely a few little characteristic traits, but his whole being, of which at one moment one quality, at another moment another quality, comes into prominence. ^
Just as no sensation is ever isolated, but is set in a com- plete field of sensation, the world of the Ego, of which now one part and now the other, stands out more plainly, so the whole man is manifest in every moment of the psychical life, although, now one side, now the other, is more visible. This existence, manifest in every moment of the psychical life, is the object of characterology. By accepting this, there will be completed for the first time a real psychology, existing psychology, in manifest contradiction of the mean- ing of the word, having concerned itself almost entirely with the motley world, the changing field of sensations, and over-
looked the ruling force of the Ego. The new psychology would be a doctrine of the whole, and would become fresh and fertile inasmuch as it would combine the complexity of the subject and of the object, two spheres which can be separated only in abstraction. Many disputed points of
? SEX AND CHARACTER
psychology (perhaps the most important) would be settled by an application of such characterology, as that would explain why so many different views have been held on the same subject. The same psychical process appears from time to time in different aspects, merely because it takes tone and colouring from the individual character. And so it well may be that the doctrine of differential psychology may receive its completion in the domain-of general psychology.
vThe confusion of characterology with the doctrine of the soul has been a great misfortune, but because this has occurred in actual history, is no reason why it should con- tinue. The absolute sceptic differs only in a word from the absolute dogmatist. The man who dogmatically accepts the position of absolute phenomenalism, believing it to relieve him of all the burden of proof that the mere entering on another standpoint would itself entail, will be ready to dismiss without proof the existence which characterology posits, and which has nothing to do with a metaphysical " essence. "/
84
Characterology has to defend itself against two great enemies. The one assumes that character is something ultimate, and as little the subject-matter of science as is the art of a painter. The other looks on the sensations as the only realities, on sensation as the ground-work of the world of the Ego, and denies the existence of cha- racter. What is left for characterology, the science of character ?
On the one hand, there are those who cry, " Deindividuo nulla scientia," and " Individuum est ineffa- bile " ; on the other hand, there are those sworn to science, who maintain that science has nothing to do with character.
In such a cross-fire, characterology has to take its place, and it may well be feared that it may share the fate of its sisters and remain a trivial subject like physiognomy or a diviner's art like graphology.
? CHAPTER II
MALE AND FEMALE SEXUALITY " Woman does not betray her secret. "
Kant.
" From a woman you can learn nothing of women. " Nietzsche.
(iPy psychology, as a whole, we generally understand the psychology of the psychologists, and these are exclusively men ! Never since human history began have we heard of a female psychology ! ,) None the less the psychology of woman constitutes a chapter as important with regard to general psychology as that of the child. And inasmuch as the psychology of man has always been written with un- conscious but definite reference to man, general psychology has become simply the psychology of men, and the problem of the psychology of the sexes will be raised as soon as the existence of a separate psychology of women has been realised. Kant said that in anthropology the peculiarities of the female were more a study for the philosopher than those of the male, and it may be that the psychology of the sexes will disappear in a psychology of the female.
None the less the psychology of women will have to be written by men. It is easy to suggest that such an attempt is foredoomed to failure, inasmuch as the conclusions must be drawn from an alien sex and cannot be verified by intro- spection. Granted the possibility that woman could describe herself with sufficient exactness, it by no means follows that she would be interested in the sides of her
--
? 86 SEX AND CHARACTER
character that would interest us. Moreover, even if she could and would explore herself fully, it is doubtful if she could bring herself to talk about herself.
I shall show that | these three improbabilities spring from the same source in the nature of woman.
This investigation, therefore, lays itself open to the charge that no one who is not female can be in a posi- tion to make accurate statements about women. In the meantime the objection must stand, although, later, I shall have more to say of it. I will say only this much--up to now, and is this only a consequence of man's suppression ? we have no account from a pregnant woman of her sensa- tions and feelings, neither in poetry nor in memoirs, nor even in a gynaecological treatise. This cannot be on account of excessive modesty, for, as Schopenhauer rightly pointed out, there is nothing so far removed from a pregnant
womanasshameastohercondition. Besides,therewould still remain to them the possibility of, after the birth, con- fessing from memory the psychical life during the time ; if a sense of shame had prevented them from such communi- cation during the time, it would be gone afterwards, and the varied interests of such a disclosure ought to have induced some one to break silence. But this has not been
done. Just as we have always been indebted to men for really trustworthy expositions of the psychical side of women, so also it is to men that we owe descriptions of the sensations of pregnant women. What is the meaning of this ?
Although in recent times we have had revelations of the psychical life of half-women and three-quarter women, it is practically only about the male side of them that they have written. We have really only one clue ; we have to rely uponthefemaleelementinmen. Theprincipleofsexually intermediate forms is the authority for what we know about women through men.
I shall define and complete the application of this principle later on. In its indefinite form, the principle would seem to imply that the most womanish man would be best able to describe woman, and that the
j
? MALE AND FEMALE SEXUALITY 87
description might be completed by the real woman. This, however, is extremely doubtful. I must point out that a man can have a considerable proportion of female- ness in him without necessarily, to the same extent, being able to portray intermediate forms. It is the more remark- able that the male can give a faithful account of the nature of the female ; since, indeed, it must be admitted from the extreme maleness of successful portrayers of women that we cannot dispute the existence of this capacity in the abstract male ; this power of the male over the female is a most remarkable problem, and we shall have to consider it later. For the present we must take it as a fact, and pro- ceed to inquire in what lies the actual psychological difference between male and female.
It has been sought to attribute the fundamental difference of the sexes to the existence of a stronger sexual impulse in man, and to derive everything else from that. Apart from the question as to whether the phrase "sexual instinct" denotes a simple and real thing, it is to be doubted if there is proof of such a difference. It is not more probable than the ancient theories as to the influence of the "unsatistied womb" in the female, or of the " semen retentum " in men, and we have to be on guard against the current tendency to refer nearly everything to sublimated sexual instinct. No sys- tematic theory could be founded on a generalisation so vague. It is most improbable that the greater or lesser strength of the sexual impulse determines other qualities.
O^s a matter of fact, the statements that men have stronger sexual impulses than women, or that women have them stronger than men, are false. The strength of the sexual impulse in a man does not depend upon the proportion of masculinity in his composition, and in the same way the degree of femininity of a woman does not determine her sexual impulse*' These differences in mankind still await classification.
Contrary to the general opinion, there is no difference in the total sexual impulses of the sexes. However, if we examine the matter in respect to the two component forces
? 88 SEX AND CHARACTER
into which Albert Moll analysed the impulse, we shall find that a difference does exist. These forces may be termed the " liberating " and the " uniting " impulses. The first appears in the form of the discomfort caused by the accu- mulation of ripe sexual cells ; the second is the desire of the ripe individual for sexual completion. Both impulses are possessed by the male ; in the female only the latter is present. Theanatomyandthephysiologicalprocessesof the sexes bear out the distinction.
In this connection it may be noted that only the most male youths are addicted to masturbation, and although it is often disputed, I believe that similar vices occur only among the maler of women, and are absent from the female nature.
I must now discuss the "uniting" impulse of women, for that plays the chief, if not the sole part in her sexuality. But it must not be supposed that this is greater in one sex than the other. Any such idea comes from a confusion between the desire for a thing and the stimulus towards the active part in securing what is desired. Throughout the animal and plant kingdoms, the male reproductive cells are the motile, active agents, which move through space to seek out the passive female cells, and this physiological difference is sometimes confused with the actual wish for, or stimulus to,sexualunion. Andtoaddtotheconfusion,ithappens, in the animal kingdom particularly, that the male, in addition to the directly sexual stimulus, has the instinct to pursue and bodily capture the female, whilst the latter has only the passive part to be taken possession of. These differences of habit must not be mistaken for real differences of desire.
It can be shown, moreover, that woman is sexually much more excitable (not more sensitive) physiologically than man.
/The condition of sexual excitement is the supreme moment ofawoman'slife. ; Thewomanisdevotedwhollytosexual matters, that is to say, to the spheres of begetting and of reproduction. Her relations to her husband and children
complete her life, whereas the male is something more than
? MALE AND FEMALE SEXUALITY 89
sexual. In this respect, rather than in the relative strength of the sexual impulses, there is a real difference between the sexes. y It is important to distinguish between the intensity with which sexual matters are pursued and the proportion of the total activities of life that are devoted to them and to their accessory cares. The greater absorption of the human female by the sphere of sexual activities is the most signifi- cant difference between the sexes.
The female, moreover, is completely occupied and content with sexual matters, whilst the male is interested in much else, in war and sport, in social affairs and feasting, in philo- sophy and science, in business and politics, in religion and art. I do not mean to imply that this difference has always existed, as I do not think that important. As in the case of the Jewish question, it may be said that the Jews have their present character because it has been forced upon them, and that at one time they were different. It is now impossible to prove this, and we may leave it to those who believe in the modification by the environment to accept it. The his- torical evidence is equivocal on the point. In the question of women, we have to take people as they exist to-day. If, however, we happen to come on attributes that could not possibly have been grafted on them from without, we may believethatsuchhavealwaysbeenwiththem. Ofcontem- porary women at least one thing is certain. Apart from an exception to be noted in chap. xii. ,(it is certain that when the female occupies herself with matters outside the
interests of sex, it is for the man that she loves or by whom she wishes to be loved^ She takes no real interest in the things for themselves. It may happen that a real female learnsLatin; ifso,itisforsomesuchpurposeastohelpher son who is at school. Desire for a subject and ability for it, interest in it, and the facility for acquiring it, are usually proportional. Hewhohasslightmuscleshasnodesireto wield an axe ; those without the faculty for mathematics do not desire to study that subject. Talent seems to be rare and feeble in the real female (although possibly it is merely that the dominant sexuality prevents its development), with
the result that woman has no power of forming the com- binations which, although they do not actually make the individuality, certainly shape it.
Corresponding to true women, there are extremely female men who are to be found always in the apartments of the women, and who are interested in nothing but love and sexualmatters. Suchmen,however,arenottheDonJuans.
(The female principle is, then, nothing more than sexuality the male principle is sexual and something more. ') This difference is notable in the different way in which men and women enter the period of puberty. In the case of the male the onset of puberty is a crisis; he feels that something new and strange has come into his being, that something has been added to his powers and feelmgs independently of hiswill. Thephysiologicalstimulustosexualactivityappears to come from outside his being, to be independent of his will, and many men remember the disturbing event throughout their after lives. The woman, on the other hand, not only is not disturbed by the onset of puberty, but feels that her importance has been increased by it. The male, as a youth, hasnolongingfortheonsetofsexualmaturity thefemale,
;
from the time when she is still quite a young girl, looks forward to that time as one from which everything is to be expected. Man's arrival at maturity is frequently accom- panied by feelings of repulsion and disgust ; the young female watches the development of her body at the approach of puberty with excitement and impatient delight. It seems as if the onset of puberty were a side path in the normal development of man, whereas in the case of woman it is the directconclusion. Therearefewboysapproachingpuberty to whom the idea that they would marry (in the general sense, not a particular girl) would not appear ridiculous, whilst the smallest girl is almost invariably excited and interested in the question of her future marriage.
For such reasons a woman assigns positive value only to her period of maturity in her own case and in that of other women ; in childhood, as in old age, she has no real relation to the world. \The thought of her childhood is for her, later on,
;
? 90
SEX AND CHARACTER
? MALE AND FEMALE SEXUALITY 91
only the remembrance of her stupidity ; she faces the /approachofoldagewithdislikeandabhorrence^ Theonly real memories of her childhood are connected with sex, and these fade away in the intensely greater significance of her maturity. The passage of a woman from virginity is the great dividing point of her life, whilst the corresponding event in the case of a male has very little relation to the
course of his life. /
Woman is only sexual, man is partly sexual, and this
difference reveals itself in various ways. The parts of the male body by stimulation of which sexuality is excited are limited in area, and are strongly localised, whilst in the case of the woman, they are diffused over her whole body, so that stimulation may take place almost from any part. When in the second chapter of Part I. , I explained that sexuality is distributed over the whole body in both sexes, I did not mean that, therefore, the sense organs, through which the definite impulses are stimulated, were equally distributed. There are, certainly, areas of greater excitability, even in the case of the woman, but there is not, as in the man, a sharp division between the sexual areas and the body generally.
'The morphological isolation of the sexual area from the rest of the body in the case of man, may be taken as sym- bolical of the relation of sex to his whole nature. / Just as there is a contrast between the sexual and the sexless parts of a man's body, so there is a time-change in his sexuality.
&he female is always sexual, the male is sexual only inter- mittently. The sexual instinct is always active in woman (as to the apparent exceptions to this sexuality of women, I shall have to speak later on), whilst in man it is at rest from time to time. And thus it happens that the sexual impulse of the male is eruptive in character and so appears stronger. The real difference between the sexes is that in the male the desire is periodical, in the female continuous/
This exclusive and persisting sexuality of the female has important physical and psychical consequences. As the sexuality of the male is an adjunct to his life, it is possible for him to keep it in the physiological background, and out
? SEX AND CHARACTER
of his consciousness. And so a man can lay aside his sexuality and not have to reckon with it. A woman has not her sexuality limited to periods of time, nor to localised organs. (And so it happens that a man can know about his sexuality, whilst a woman is unconscious of it and can in all good faith deny it, because she is nothing but sexuality, because she is sexuality itself. )
vjt is impossible for women, because they are only sexual to recognise their sexuality, because recognition of anything requires duality. With man it is not only that he is not merely sexual, but anatomically and physiologically he can " detach " himself from it. That is why he has the power to enter into whatever sexual relations he desires ; if he likes he can limit or increase such relations ; he can refuse orassenttothem. HecanplaythepartofaDonJuanor a monk. He can assume which he will. To put it bluntly, man possesses sexual organs ; her sexual organs possess woman. /
We i^ay, therefore, deduce from the previous arguments that man has the power of consciousness of his sexuality and so can act against it, whilst the woman appears to be without this power. This implies, moreover, that there is greater differentiation in man, as in him the sexual and the unsexual parts of his nature are sharply separated. The possibility or impossibility of being aware of a particular definite object is, however, hardly a part of the customary meaning of the word consciousness, which is generally used as implying that if a being is conscious he can be conscious ofanyobject. Thisbringsmetoconsiderthenatureof the female consciousness, and I must take a long detour to consider it.
92
? CHAPTER III
MALE AND FEMALE CONSCIOUSNESS
Before proceeding to consider the main difference between the psychical hfe of the sexes, so far as the latter takes subjective and objective things as its contents, a few psy- chological soundings must be taken, and conceptions formulated. As the views and principles of prevailing systems of psychology have been formed without con- sideration of the subject of this book, it is not surprising that they contain little that I am able to use. (At present there is no psychology but many psychologists^ and it would really be a matter of caprice on my part to choose any particular school and attempt to apply its principles to my subject. I shall rather try to lay down a few useful
principles on my own account.
The endeavours to reach a comprehensive and unifying
conception of the whole psychical process by referring it to a single principle have been particularly evident in the relations between perceptions and sensations suggested by different psychologists. Herbart, for instance, derived the sensations from elementary ideas, whilst Horwicz supposed them to come from perceptions. Most modern psychologists have insisted that such monistic attempts must be fruitless. None the less there was some truth in the view.
/To discover this truth, however, it is necessary to make a distinction that has been overlooked by modern workers. We must distinguish between the perceiving of a percep- tion, feeling of a sensation, thinking a thought from the later repetitions of the process in which recognition plays a
? SEX AND CHARACTER
94
part. In many cases this distinction is of fundamental importance.
Every simple, clear, plastic perception and every distinct idea, before it could be put into words, passes through a stage (which may indeed be very short) of indistinctness. So also in the case of association ; for a longer or shorter time before the elements about to be grouped have actually come together, there is a sort of vague, generalised expecta- tionorpresentimentofassociation^ Leibnitz,inparticular, has worked at kindred processes, and I believe them to underlie the attempts of Herbart and Horwicz.
The common acceptance of pleasure and pain as the fundamental sensations, even with Wundt's addition of the sensations of tension and relaxation, of rest and stimulation, makes the division of psychical phenomena into sensations and perceptions too narrow for due treatment of the vague preliminary stages to which I have referred. I shall go back therefore to the widest classification of psychical phenomena that I know of, that of Avenarius into " elements " and "characters. " Theword"character"inthisconnection, of course, has nothing to do with the subject of charac- terology.
Avenarius added to the difficulty of applying his theories by his use of a practically new terminology (which is cer- tainly most striking and indispensable for some of the new viewsheexpounded). Butwhatstandsmostinthewayof accepting some of his conclusions is his desire to derive his psychology from the physiology of the brain, a physiology which he evolved himself out of his inner consciousness with only a slight general acquaintance with actual biological facts. The psychological, or second part of his " Critique of Pure Experience," was really the source from which he derived the first or physiological part, with the result that the latter appears to its readers as an account of some dis- covery in Atlantis. Because of these difficulties I shall give here a short account of the system of Avenarius, as I find it useful for my thesis.
An " Element " in the sense of Avenarius represents what
? MALE AND FEMALE CONSCIOUSNESS
95
thV usual psychology terms a perception^ or the content of a perception, what Schopenhauer called a presentation, what in England is called an " impression " or " idea," the " thing," " fact," or "object" of ordinary language; and the word is used independently of the presence or absence of a special sense-organ stimulation--a most important and novel addition. In the sense of Avenarius, and for our purpose, it is a matter of indifference to the terminology how far what is called " analysis " takes place, the whole tree may be taken as the " element," or each single leaf, or each hair, or (where most people would stop), the colours, sizes, weights, temperatures, resistances, and so forth. Still, the analysis may go yet further, and the colour of the leaf may be taken as merely the resultant of its quality, intensity, luminosity,andsoforth,thesebeingtheelements. Orwe may go still further and take modern ultimate conceptions reaching units incapable of sub-division.
In the sense of Avenarius, then, elements are such ideas as "green," "blue," "cold," "warm," "soft," "hard," "sweet," "bitter," and their "character" is the particular kind of quality with which they appear, not merely their pleasantness or unpleasantness, but also such modes of presentation as "surprising," "expected," "novel," "in- different," "recognised," "known," "actual," "doubtful," categories which Avenarius first recognised as being psycho- logical. For instance, what I guess, believe, or know is an " element " ; the fact that I guess it, not believe it or know it, is the " character " in which it presents itself psycho- logically (not logically).
Now there is a stage in mental activity in which this sub-division of psychical phenomena cannot be made, which is too early for it. All " elements " at their first appearance are merged with the floating background, the whole being vaguely tinged by " character. " To follow my meaning, think of what takes place, when for the first time at a distance one sees something in the landscape, such as a shrub or a heap of wood, at the moment when one does not yet know what " it " is.
? SEX AND CHARACTER
96
At this moment " element " and " character " are abso-
lutely indistinguishable (they are always inseparable as Petzoldt ingeniously pointed out), so improving the original statement of Avenarius.
InadensecrowdI perceive,forinstance,afacewhich
attracts me across the swaying mass by its expression. I
have no idea what the face is like, and should be quite
unable to describe it or give an idea of it ; but it has
appealed to me in the most disturbing manner, and I find
myself asking with keen curiosity, " Where have 1 seen that
" face before ?
(^ man may see the head of a woman for a moment, and this may make a very strong impression on him, and yet he may be unable to say exactly what he has seen, or, for instance, be able to remember the colour of her hair. The retina must be exposed to the object sufficiently long, if only a fraction of a second, for a photographic impression to be made. \
If one looks at any object from a considerable distance
one has at first only the vaguest impression of its outlines ;
and as one comes nearer and sees the details more clearly, lively sensations, at first lost in the general mass, are received. Think, for instance, of the first general impres- sion of, say, the sphenoid bone disarticulated from a skull, or of many pictures seen a little too closely or a little too far away. I myself have a remembrance of having had strong impressions from sonatas of Beethoven before I knewanythingofthemusicalnotes. AvenariusandPetz- oldt have overlooked the fact that the coming into con- sciousness of the elements is accompanied by a kind of
secretion of characterisation.
Some of the simple experiments of physiological psy-
chology illustrate the point to which I have been referring. If one stays in a dark room until the eye has adapted itself to the absence of light, and then for a second subjects oneself to a ray of coloured light, a sensation of illumina- tion will be received, although it is impossible to recognise the quality of the illumination ; something has been
? MALE AND FEMALE CONSCIOUSNESS
97
perceived, but what the something is cannot be apprehended unless the stimulation lasts a definite time. .
yn the same way every scientific discovery, every tech- nical invention, every artistic creation passes through a preliminaryphaseofindistinctness. Theprocessissimilar to the series of impressions that would be got as a statue wasgraduallyunwrappedfromaseriesofswathings. The same kind of sequence occurs, although, perhaps, in a very brief space of time, when one is trying to recall a piece of music. Every thought is preceded by a kind of half- thought, a condition in which vague geometrical figures, shifting masks, a swaying and indistinct background hover in the mind. The beginning and the end of the whole process, which I may term " clarification," are what take place when a short-sighted person proceeds to look through properly adapted lenses^
Just as this process occurs in the life of the individual (and he, indeed, may die long before it is complete), so it occurs in history. \Definite scientific conceptions are pre- ceded by anticipations. The process of clarification is spread over many generations. There were ancient and modern vague anticipations of the theory of Darwin and Lamarck, anticipations which we are now apt to overvalue. Mayer and Helmholz had their predecessors, and Goethe and Leonardo da Vinci, perhaps two of the most many-sided intellects known to us, anticipated in a vague way many of theconclusionsofmodernscience. Thewholehistoryof thought is a continuous " clarification," a more and more accuratedescriptionorrealisationofdetails. Theenormous number of stages between light and darkness, the minute gradations of detail that follow each other in the develop- mentofthoughtcanberealisedbestif onefollowshistori- cally some complicated modern piece of knowledge, such as, for instance, the theory of elliptical functions^
The process of clarification may be reversed, and the act of forgetting is such a reversal. This may take a consider- able time, and is usually noticed only by accident at some pointorotherofitscourse. Theprocessissimilartothe
G
? SEX AND CHARACTER
gradual obliteration of well-made roads, for the maintenance of which no provision has been made. The faint anticipa- tions of a thought are very like the faint recollections of it, and the latter gradually become blurred as in the case of a neglected road over the boundaries of which animals stray, slowly obliterating it. In this connection a practical rule for memorising, discovered and applied by a friend of mine, is interesting. It generally happens that if one wants to learn, say, a piece of music, or a section from the history of philosophy, one has to go over parts of it again and again. The problem was, how long should the intervals be between these successive attempts to commit to memory ? The answer was that they should not be so long as to make it possible to take a fresh interest in the subject again, to be interested and curious about it. If the interval has produced that state of mind, then the process of clarification must begin fromthebeginningagain. Theratherpopularphysiological theory of Sigismund Exner as to the formation of "paths" in the nervous system may perhaps be taken as a physical parallel of the process of clarification. According to the theory, the ne'-ves, or rather the fibrils, make paths easy for the stimulations to travel along, if these stimulations last sufficiently long or are repeated sufficiently often. So also inthecaseofforgetting; whathappensisthatthesepaths or processes of the nerve-cells atrophy from disuse. Ave- narius would have explained the above processes by his theory of the articulation of the fibres of the brain, but his physical doctrine was rather too crude and too simple for applicationtopsycho-physics. Nonethelesshisconception of articulation or jointing is both convenient and appropriate in its application to the process of clarification, and I shall employ it in that connection.
The process of clarification must be traced thoroughly in order to realise its importance, but for the moment, it is important to consider only the initial stage. The distinction of Avenarius between " element " and " character," which later on will become evident in a process of clarification, is not applicable to the very earliest moments of the process.
98
? MALE AND FEMALE CONSCIOUSNESS
99 It is necessary to coin a name for those minds to which the duahty of element and character becomes appreciable at no stage of the process. I propose for psychical data at this earliest stage of their existence the word Henid (from the
Greek h, because in them it is impossible to distinguish perception and sensation as two analytically separable factors, and because, therefore, there is no trace of duality in them).
Naturally the "henid" is an abstract conception and may notoccurintheabsoluteform. Howoftenpsychicaldata in human beings actually stand at this absolute extreme of undifferentiation is uncertain and unimportant ; but the theory does not need to concern itself with the possibility of such an extreme. A common example from what has happened to all of us may serve to illustrate what a henid is. I may have a definite wish to say something particular, and then something distracts me, and the '* it " I wanted to
sayorthmkhasgone. Lateron,bysomeprocessofasso- ciation, the " it " IS quite suddenly reproduced, and I know at once that it was what was on my tongue, but, so to speak, in a more perfect stage of development.
I fear lest some one may expect me to describe exactly whatI meanby"henid. " Thewishcancomeonlyfroma misconception. The very idea of a henid forbids its de- scription ; it is merely a something. Later on identification will come with the complete articulation of the contents of the henid ; but the henid is not the whole of this detailed content, but is distinguished from it by a lower grade of consciousness, by an absence of, so to speak, relief, by a blending of the die and the impression, by the absence of a central point in the field of vision.
And so one cannot describe particular henids ; one can only be conscious of their existence.
None the less henids are things as vital as elements and characters. Each henid is an individual and can be dis- tinguished from other henids. Later on I shall show that probably the mental data of early childhood (certainly of the first fourteen months) are all henids, although perhaps not in the absolute sense. Throughout childhood these
? 100 SEX AND CHARACTER
data do not reach far from the henid stage ; in adults there is always a certain process of development going on. Probably the perceptions of some plants and animals are henids. \[n the case of mankind the development from the henid to the completely differentiated perception and idea is always possible, although such an ideal condition may seldom be attained) ^Whilst expression in words is im- possible in the case of the absolute henid, as words imply articulated thoughts, there are also in the highest stages of the intellect possible to man some things still unclarified and, therefore, unspeakable^
The theory of henids will help in the old quarrel between the spheres of perception and sensation, and will replace by a developmental conception the ideas of element and charater which Avenarius and Petzoldt deduced from the process of clarification. It is only when the elements become distinct that they can be distinguished from the characters. Man is disposed to humours and sentimentali- ties only so long as the contours of his ideas are vague
;
when he sees things in the light instead of the dark his process of thinking will become different.
* Chopin's portraits shovp his effeminacy plainly. erimee describes George Sand as being as thin as a nail. At the first meeting of the two, the lady behaved like a man, and the man like a girl. He blushed when she looked at him and began to pay him compliments in her bass voice.
e-j
;;
? 68 SEX AND CHARACTER
studentsofthepresentday. Itwouldbeaseriousomission to forget Rosa Bonheur, the very distinguished painter and it would be difficult to point to a single female trait in her appearance or character. The notorious Madame Blavatsky is extremely masculine in her appearance.
I might refer to many other emancipated women at present well known to the public, consideration of whom has provided me with much material for the support of my proposition that the true female element, the abstract "woman,"hasnothingtodowithemancipation. Thereis some historical justification for the saying "the longer the hair the smaller the brain," but the reservations made in chap. ii. must be taken into account.
(jt is only the male element in emancipated women that craves for emancipation^
There is, then, a stronger reason than has generally been supposed for the familiar assumption of male pseudonyms by women writers. Their choice is a mode of giving ex- pression to the inherent maleness they feel ; and this is still more marked in the case of those who, like George Sand, have a preference for male attire and masculine pur- suits. The motive for choosing a man's name springs from the feeling that it corresponds with their own character much more than from any desire for increased notice from the public. As a matter of fact, up to the present, partly owing to interest in the sex question, women's writings have aroused more interest, ceteris paribus, than those of men and, owing to the issues involved, have always received a fuller consideration and, if there were any justification, a
greater meed of praise than has been accorded to a man's work of equal merit. At the present time especially many women have attained celebrity by work which, if it had been produced by a man, would have passed almost un- noticed. Let us pause and examine this more closely.
If we attempt to apply a standard taken from the names of men who are of acknowledged value in philosophy, science, literature and art, to the long list of women who have achieved some kind of fame, there will at once be a miserable
? EMANCIPATED WOMEN
collapse. Judged in this way, it is difficult to grant any real degree of merit to women like Angelica Kaufmann or Madame Lebrun, Fernan Caballero or Hroswitha von Gapku? ersheim, Mary Somerville or George Egerton, Eliza- beth Barrett Browning or Sophie Germain, Anna Maria Schurmann or Sybilla Merian. I will not speak of names (such as that of Droste-Hu? lshoff) formerly so over-rated in the annals of feminism, nor will I refer to the measure of fame claimed for or by living women. It is enough to
make the general statement that there is not a single woman in the history of thought, not even the most manlike, who can be truthfully compared with men of fifth or sixth-rate genius, for instance with Riickert as a poet. Van Dyck as a painter,orScheirmacherasaphilosopher. Ifweeliminate hysterical visionaries,* such as the Sybils, the Priestesses of Delphi, Bourignon, Kettenberg, Jeanna de la Mothe Guyon, Joanna Southcote, Beate Sturmin, St. Teresa, there
still remain cases like that of Marie Bashkirtseff. So far as I can remember from her portrait, she at least seemed to be qui^e womanly in face and figure, although her forehead was rather masculine. But to any one who studies her pictures in the Salle des Etrangers in the Luxemburg Gallery in Paris, and compares them with those of her adored master, Bastien Lepage, it is plain that she simply had assimilated the style of the latter, as in Goethe's " Elec-
tive Affinities " Ottilie acquired the handwriting of Eduard. There remain the interesting and not infrequent cases where the talent of a clever family seems to reach its maxi- mum in a female member of the family. But it is only talent that is transmitted in this way, not genius. Mar-
garethe van Eyck and Sabina von Steinbach form the best illustrations of the kind of artists who, according to Ernst Guhl, in author with a great admiration for women-workers, " have been undoubtedly influenced in their choice of an
* Hysteria is the principal cause of much of the intellectual activity of many of the women above mentioned. But the usual view, that these cases are pathological, is too limited an interpreta- tion, us I shall show in the second part of this work.
69
? SEX AND CHARACTER
artistic calling by their fathers, mothers, or brothers. In other words, they found their incentive in their own families. There are two or three hundred of such cases on record, and probably many hundreds more could be added without exhausting the numbers of similar instances. " In order to give due weight to these statistics it may be mentioned that Guhl had just been speaking of " roughly, a thousand names of women artists known to us. "
This concludes my historical review of the emancipated women. It has justified the assertion that real desire for emancipation and real fitness for it are the outcome of a woman's maleness.
"NThe vast majority of women have never paid special attention to art or to science, and regard such occupations merelyashigherbranchesofmanuallabour,orif theypro- fess a certain devotion to such subjects, it is chiefly as a mode of attracting a particular person or group of persons of the opposite sex. ) Apart from these, a close investigation shows that women really interested in intellectual matters are sexually intermediate forms.
If it be the case that the desire for freedom and equality with man occurs only in masculine women, the inductive conclusion follows that the female principle is not conscious of a necessity for emancipation ; and the argument becomes stronger if we remember that it is based on an examination of the accounts of individual cases and not on psychical investigation of an " abstract woman. "
If we now look at the question of emancipation from the point of view of hygiene (not morality) there is no doubt as to the harm in it. The undesirability of emancipation lies in the excitement and agitation involved. It induces women who have no real original capacity but undoubted imitative powers to attempt to study or write, from various motives, such as vanity or the desire to attract admirers. Whilst it cannot be denied that there are a good many women with a real craving for emancipation and for higher education, these set the fashion and are followed by a host of others who get up a ridiculous agitation to convince themselves of
70
? EMANCIPATED WOMEN
71 therealityoftheirviews. Andmanyotherwiseestimable and worthy wives use the cry to assert themselves against their husbands, whilst daughters take it as a method of rebelling against maternal authority. The practical outcome of the whole matter would be as follows ; it being remem- bered that the issues are too mutable for the establishment of uniform rules or laws. Let there be the freest scope given to, and the fewest hindrances put in the way of all women with masculine dispositions who feel a psychical necessity to devote themselves to masculine occupations and are physically fit to undertake them. But the idea of mak- ing an emancipation party, of aiming at a social revolution, must be abandoned. Away with the whole ** woman's movement," with its unnaturalness and artificiality and its
fundamental errors.
It is most important to have done with the senseless cry
for " full equality," for even the malest woman is scarcely more than 50 per cent, male, and it is only to that male part of her that she owes her special capacity or whatever importance she may eventually gam. It is absurd to make comparisons between the few really intellectual women and one's average experience of men, and to deduce, as has been done, even the superiority of the female sex. As Darwin pointed out, the proper comparison is between the most highly developed individuals of two stocks. " If two lists," Darwin wrote in the " Descent of Man," " were made of the most eminent men and women in poetry, painting, sculpture, music--comprising composition and performance, history, science, and philosophy, with half a dozen names under each subject, the two lists would not bear comparison. " Moreover, if these lists were carefully examined it would be seen that the women's list would prove the soundness of my theory of the maleness of their genius, and the comparison would be still less pleasing to the champions of woman's rights>>
It is frequently urged that it is necessary to create a public feeling in favour of the full and unchecked mental development of women. Such an argument overlooks
SEX AND CHARACTER
72
the fact that " emancipation," the " woman question," " women's rights movements," are no new things in history, but have always been with us, although with varying prominence at different times in history. It also largely exaggerates the difficulties men place in the way of the mental development of women, especially at the present time. * Furthermoreitneglectsthefactthatatthepresent time it is not the true woman who clamours for eman- cipation, but only the masculine type of woman, who misconstrues her own character and the motives that actuate her when she formulates her demands in the name of woman.
<s^s has been the case with every other movement in history, so also it has been with the contemporary woman's movement. Itsorigmatorswereconvmcedthatitwasbeing put forward for the first time, and that such a thing had neverbeenthoughtofbefore. Theymaintainedthatwomen had hitherto been held in bondage and enveloped in dark- ness by man, and that it was high time for her to assert her- self and claim her natural rights. /
But the prototype of this movement, as of other move- ments, occurred in the earliest times. Ancient history and mediaeval times alike give us instances of women who, in social relations and intellectual matters, fought for such emancipation, and of male and female apologists of the female sex. It is totally erroneous to suggest that hitherto women have had no opportunity for the undisturbed development of their mental powers.
Jacob Burckhardt, speaking of the Renaissance, says " The greatest possible praise which could be given to the Italian women-celebrities of the time was to say that they were like men in brains and disposition ! " The virile deeds of women recorded in the epics, especially those of Boiardo and Ariosto, show the ideal of the time. To call
* There have been many celebrities amongst men who received practically no education--for instance, Robert Burns and Wolfram vonEschenbach buttherearenosimilarcasesamongstwomento
;
compare with them-
:
? EMANCIPATED WOMEN
ipliment, but it originally meant an honour.
Women were first allowed on the stage in the sixteenth
century, and actresses date from that time. " At that period it was admitted that women were just as capable as men of embodying the highest possible artistic ideals. " It was the period when panegyrics on the female sex were rife ; Sir Thomas More claimed for it full equality with the male sex, and Agrippa von Nettesheim goes so far as to represent women as superior to men ! And yet this was all lost for the fair sex, and the whole question sank into the oblivion from which the nineteenth century recalled it.
Is it not very remarkable that the agitation for the eman- cipation of women seems to repeat itself at certain intervals in the world's history, and lasts for a definite period ?
yt has been noticed that in the tenth, fifteenth, and six- teenth, and now again in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the agitation for the emancipation of women has been more marked, and the woman's movement more vigorous than in the intervening periods. It would be premature to found a hypothesis on the data at our dis- posal, but the possibility of a vastly important periodicity must be borne in mind, of regularly recurring periods in which it may be that there is an excess of production of hermaphrodite and sexually intermediate forms. Such a state of affairs is not unknown in the animal kingdom.
According to my interpretation, such a period would be one of minimum " gonochorism," cleavage of the sexes and it would be marked, on the one hand, by an increased production of male women, and on the other, by a similar increase in female men. There is strong evidence in favour of such a periodicity ; if it occurs it may be associated with the "secessionist taste," which idealised tall, lanky women with fiat chests and narrow hips. ^ The enormous recent increase in a kind of dandified homo-sexuality may be due to the increasing effeminacy of the age, and the peculiarities of the Pre-Raphaelite movement may have a similar explanation.
73 >a woman a "virago " nowadays would be a doubtful com-
;
? ? SEX AND CHARACTER
74
The existence of such periods in organic Hfe, comparable
with stages in individual life, but extending over several generations, would, if proved, throw much light on many obscure points in human history, concerning which the so-called " historical solutions," and especially the economic- materialistic views now in vogue have proved so futile. The history of the world from the biological standpoint has still to be written ; it lies in the future. Here 1 can do little more than indicate the direction which future work should take.
Were it proved that at certain periods fewer herma- phrodite beings were produced, and at certain other periods more, it would appear that the rising and falling, the periodic occurrence and disappearance of the woman movement in an unfailing rhythm of ebb and flow, was one of the ex- pressions of the preponderance of masculine and feminine women with the concomitant greater or lesser desire for emancipation.
Obviously I do not take into account in relation to the woman question the large number of womanly women, the wives of the prolific artisan class whom economic pressure forces to factory or field labour. The connection between industrial progress and the woman question is much less close than is usually realised, especially by the Social
Democratic Group. The relation between the mental energy required for intellectual and for industrial pursuits is even less. . ^France, for instance, although it can boast three of the most famous women, has never had a successful woman's movement, and yet in no other European country are there so many really businesslike, capable womei'^^ The struggle for the material necessities of life has nothing to do with the struggle for intellectual development, and a sharp distinction mast be made between the two.
The pro-pects of the movement for intellectual advance onthepartofwomenarenotverypromising; butstillless promising is another view, sometimes discussed in the same connection, the view that^he human race is moving towards a complete sexual differentiation, a definite sexual dimorphism. N
? EMANCIPATED WOMEN
75 The latter view seems to me fundamentally untenable, because in the higher groups of the animal kingdom there is no evidence for the increase of sexual dimorphism. Worms and rotifers, many birds and the mandrills amongst the apes, have more advanced sexual dimorphism than man. On the view that such an increased sexual dimorphism were to be expected, the necessity for emancipation would gradually disappear as mankind became separated into the completely male and the completely female. On the other hand, the view that there will be periodical resurrections of the woman's movement would reduce the whole affair to ridiculous impotence, making it only an ephemeral phase in
the history of mankind.
A complete obliteration will be the fate of any emancipa-
tion movement which attempts to place the whole sex in a new relation to society, and to see in man its perpetual oppressor. A corps of Amazons might be formed, but as time went on the material for the corps would cease to occur. The history of the woman movement during the Renaissance and its complete disappearance contains a lessonfortheadvocatesofwomen'srights. Realintellectual freedomcannotbeattainedbyanagitatedmass; itmustbe fought for by the individual. Who is the enemy ? What are the retarding influences ?
The greatest, the one enemy of the emancipation of women is woman herself. It is left to the second part of my work to prove this.
? SECOND OR PRINCIPAL PART THE SEXUAL TYPES
? CHAPTER I MAN AND WOMAN
" All that a man does is physiognomical of him. " Carlyle,
A FREE field for the investigation of the actual contrasts between the sexes is gained when we recognise that male and female, man and woman, must be considered only as types, and that the existing individuals, upon whose quali- ties there has been so much controversy, are mixtures of the types in different proportions. {Sexually intermediate forms, which are the only actually existing individualsy^were dealt with in a more or less schematic fashion in the first part of thisbook. Considerationofthegeneralbiologicalapplica- tion of my theory was entered upon there ; but now I have to make mankind the special subject of my investigation, and to show the defects of the results gained by the method of introspective analysis, as these results must be qualified by the universal existence of sexually intermediate condi- tions. In plants and animals the presence of hermaphro- ditism is an undisputed fact ; but in them it appears more to be the juxtaposition of the male and female genital
glands in the same individual than an actual fusion of the two sexes, more the co-existence of the two extremes than a quite neutral condition. In the case of human beings, however, it appears to be psychologically true that an indi- vidual, at least at one and the same moment, is always either man or woman. This is in harmony with the fact that each individual, whether superficially regarded as male or female, at once can recognise his sexual complement in.
? 8o SEX AND CHARACTER
anotherindividual"woman"or"man. "* Thisuni-sexuaHty is demonstrated by the fact, the theoretical value of which can hardly be over-estimated, that, in the relations of two homo-sexual men one always plays the physical and psy- chical roll of the man, and in cases of prolonged inter- course retains his male first-name, or takes one, whilst the other, who plays the part of the woman, either assumes a woman's name or calls himself by it, or--and this is suffi- ciently characteristic--receives it from the former.
In the same way, in the sexual relations of two women, one always plays the male and the other the female part, a fact of deepest significance. Here we encounter, in a most unexpected fashion, the fundamental relationship between the male and female elements. In spite of all sexually intermediate conditions, human beings are always oneoftwothings,eithermaleorfemale. Thereisadeep truth underlying the old empirical sexual duality, and this must not be neglected, even although in concrete cases there is not a necessary harmony in the anatomical and morphological conditions. To realise this is to make a great step forward and to advance towards most important
results. In this way we reach a conception of a real " being. " The task of the rest of this book is to set forth the significance of this " existence. " As, however, this existence is bound up with the most difficult side of characterology, it will be well, before setting out on our adventurous task, to attempt some preliminary orientation.
The obstacles in the way of characterological investiga- tionareverygreat,if onlyonaccountofthecomplexityof the material. Often and often it happens that when the path through the jungle appears to have been cleared, it is lost again in impenetrable thickets, and it seems impossible
* I once heard a bi-sexual man exclaim, when he saw a bi-sexual actress with a slight tendency to a beard, a deep sonorous voice, and very little hair on her head, " There is a fine woman. " " Woman " means something different for every man or for every poet, and yet it is always the same, the sexual complement of their own constitution.
? MAN AND WOMAN 8i
to recover it. But the greatest difficulty is that when the systematic method of setting out the complex material has been proceeded with and seems about to lead to good results, then at once objections of the most serious kind ariseandalmostforbidtheattempttomaketypes. With regard to the differences between the sexes, for instance, the most useful theory that has been put forward is the existence of a kind of polarity, two extremes separated by amultitudeofintermediateconditions. Thecharacterolo- gical differences appear to follow this rule in a fashion not dissimilar to the suggestion of the Pythagorean, Alcmaeon of Kroton, and recalling the recent chemical resurrection of Schelling's " Natur-philosophie. "
But even if we are able to determine the exact point occupied by an individual on the line between two ex- tremes, and multiply this determination by discovering it for a great many characters, would this complex system of co-ordmate lines really give us a conception of the indivi- dual ? Would it not be a relapse to the dogmatic scepticism of Mach and Hume, were we to expect that an analysis could be a full description of the human individual ? And in a fashion it would be a sort of Weismannistic doc- trine of particulate determinants, a mosaic psychology.
/rhis brings us in a new way directly against the old, over- ripeproblem. Isthereinamanasingleandsimpleexist- ence, and, if so, in what relation does that stand to the ^' complex psychical phenomena ? Has man, indeed, a soul ?
It is easy to understand why there has never been a science of character. The object of such a science, the character itself, is problematical. The problem of all metaphysics and theories of knowledge, the fundamental problem of psychology, is also the problem of characterology. At the least, characterology will have to take into account the the'^ry of knowledge itself with regard to its postulates, claims, and objects, and will have to attempt to obtain infor- mation as to all the differences in the nature of men. /
This unlimited science of character will be something more than the " psychology of individual differences," the
F
? 82 SEX AND CHARACTER
renewed insistence upon which as a goal of science we owe to L. William Stern ; it will be more than a sort of polity of the motor and sensory reactions of the individual, and in so far will not sink so low as the usual " results " of the modern experimental psychologists, which, indeed, are little more than statistics of physical experiments. It will hope to retain some kind of contact with the actuahties of the soul which the modern school of psychology seems to have forgotten, and will not have to fear that it will have to offer to ardent students of psychology no more than profound studies of words of one syllable, or of the results on the mindofsmalldosesofcaffein. Itisalamentabletestimony to the insufficiency of modern psychology that distinguished men of science, who have not been content with the study of perception and association, have yet had to hand over to poetry the explanation of such fundamental facts as heroism and self-sacrifice.
{No science will become shallow so quickly as psychology if it deserts philosophy. Its separation from philosophy is the true cause of its impotency. Psychology will have to discover that the doctrine of sensations is practically useless to it. The empirical psychologists of to-day, in their search for the development of character, begin with investigation of touch and the common sensations. But the analysis of sensations is simply a part of the physiology of sense, and any attempt to bring it into relation with the real problems of psychology must fail! \
It is a misfortune of the scientific psychology of the day that it has been influenced so deeply by two physicists, Fechner and von Helmholtz, with the result that it has failed to recognise that only the external and not the internal world can be reconstructed from sensations.
The two most intelligent of the empirical psychologists of recent times, William James and R. Avenarius, have felt almost instinctively that psychology cannot really rest upon sensa- tions of the skin and muscles, although, indeed, all modern psychologydoesdependuponstudyofsensations. Dilthey did not lay enough stress on his argument that existing
? MAN AND WOMAN
83 psychology does nothing towards problems that are eminently psychological, such as murder, friendship, lone- liness, and so forth. If anything is to be gained in the future there must be a demand for a really psychological psychology, and its first battle-cry must be : " Away with
the study of sensations. "
In attempting the broad and deep characterology that I
have indicated, I must set out with a conception of character itself as a unit existence. As in the fifth chapter of Part I. , I tried to show that behind the fleeting physiological changes there is a permanent morphological form, so in charac- terology we must seek the permanent, existing something through the fleeting changes.
\The character, however, is not something seated behind the thoughts and feelings of the individual, but something revealing itself in every thought and feeling. " All that a man does is physiognomical of him. " Just as every cell bears within it the characters of the whole individual, so every psychical manifestation of a man involves not merely a few little characteristic traits, but his whole being, of which at one moment one quality, at another moment another quality, comes into prominence. ^
Just as no sensation is ever isolated, but is set in a com- plete field of sensation, the world of the Ego, of which now one part and now the other, stands out more plainly, so the whole man is manifest in every moment of the psychical life, although, now one side, now the other, is more visible. This existence, manifest in every moment of the psychical life, is the object of characterology. By accepting this, there will be completed for the first time a real psychology, existing psychology, in manifest contradiction of the mean- ing of the word, having concerned itself almost entirely with the motley world, the changing field of sensations, and over-
looked the ruling force of the Ego. The new psychology would be a doctrine of the whole, and would become fresh and fertile inasmuch as it would combine the complexity of the subject and of the object, two spheres which can be separated only in abstraction. Many disputed points of
? SEX AND CHARACTER
psychology (perhaps the most important) would be settled by an application of such characterology, as that would explain why so many different views have been held on the same subject. The same psychical process appears from time to time in different aspects, merely because it takes tone and colouring from the individual character. And so it well may be that the doctrine of differential psychology may receive its completion in the domain-of general psychology.
vThe confusion of characterology with the doctrine of the soul has been a great misfortune, but because this has occurred in actual history, is no reason why it should con- tinue. The absolute sceptic differs only in a word from the absolute dogmatist. The man who dogmatically accepts the position of absolute phenomenalism, believing it to relieve him of all the burden of proof that the mere entering on another standpoint would itself entail, will be ready to dismiss without proof the existence which characterology posits, and which has nothing to do with a metaphysical " essence. "/
84
Characterology has to defend itself against two great enemies. The one assumes that character is something ultimate, and as little the subject-matter of science as is the art of a painter. The other looks on the sensations as the only realities, on sensation as the ground-work of the world of the Ego, and denies the existence of cha- racter. What is left for characterology, the science of character ?
On the one hand, there are those who cry, " Deindividuo nulla scientia," and " Individuum est ineffa- bile " ; on the other hand, there are those sworn to science, who maintain that science has nothing to do with character.
In such a cross-fire, characterology has to take its place, and it may well be feared that it may share the fate of its sisters and remain a trivial subject like physiognomy or a diviner's art like graphology.
? CHAPTER II
MALE AND FEMALE SEXUALITY " Woman does not betray her secret. "
Kant.
" From a woman you can learn nothing of women. " Nietzsche.
(iPy psychology, as a whole, we generally understand the psychology of the psychologists, and these are exclusively men ! Never since human history began have we heard of a female psychology ! ,) None the less the psychology of woman constitutes a chapter as important with regard to general psychology as that of the child. And inasmuch as the psychology of man has always been written with un- conscious but definite reference to man, general psychology has become simply the psychology of men, and the problem of the psychology of the sexes will be raised as soon as the existence of a separate psychology of women has been realised. Kant said that in anthropology the peculiarities of the female were more a study for the philosopher than those of the male, and it may be that the psychology of the sexes will disappear in a psychology of the female.
None the less the psychology of women will have to be written by men. It is easy to suggest that such an attempt is foredoomed to failure, inasmuch as the conclusions must be drawn from an alien sex and cannot be verified by intro- spection. Granted the possibility that woman could describe herself with sufficient exactness, it by no means follows that she would be interested in the sides of her
--
? 86 SEX AND CHARACTER
character that would interest us. Moreover, even if she could and would explore herself fully, it is doubtful if she could bring herself to talk about herself.
I shall show that | these three improbabilities spring from the same source in the nature of woman.
This investigation, therefore, lays itself open to the charge that no one who is not female can be in a posi- tion to make accurate statements about women. In the meantime the objection must stand, although, later, I shall have more to say of it. I will say only this much--up to now, and is this only a consequence of man's suppression ? we have no account from a pregnant woman of her sensa- tions and feelings, neither in poetry nor in memoirs, nor even in a gynaecological treatise. This cannot be on account of excessive modesty, for, as Schopenhauer rightly pointed out, there is nothing so far removed from a pregnant
womanasshameastohercondition. Besides,therewould still remain to them the possibility of, after the birth, con- fessing from memory the psychical life during the time ; if a sense of shame had prevented them from such communi- cation during the time, it would be gone afterwards, and the varied interests of such a disclosure ought to have induced some one to break silence. But this has not been
done. Just as we have always been indebted to men for really trustworthy expositions of the psychical side of women, so also it is to men that we owe descriptions of the sensations of pregnant women. What is the meaning of this ?
Although in recent times we have had revelations of the psychical life of half-women and three-quarter women, it is practically only about the male side of them that they have written. We have really only one clue ; we have to rely uponthefemaleelementinmen. Theprincipleofsexually intermediate forms is the authority for what we know about women through men.
I shall define and complete the application of this principle later on. In its indefinite form, the principle would seem to imply that the most womanish man would be best able to describe woman, and that the
j
? MALE AND FEMALE SEXUALITY 87
description might be completed by the real woman. This, however, is extremely doubtful. I must point out that a man can have a considerable proportion of female- ness in him without necessarily, to the same extent, being able to portray intermediate forms. It is the more remark- able that the male can give a faithful account of the nature of the female ; since, indeed, it must be admitted from the extreme maleness of successful portrayers of women that we cannot dispute the existence of this capacity in the abstract male ; this power of the male over the female is a most remarkable problem, and we shall have to consider it later. For the present we must take it as a fact, and pro- ceed to inquire in what lies the actual psychological difference between male and female.
It has been sought to attribute the fundamental difference of the sexes to the existence of a stronger sexual impulse in man, and to derive everything else from that. Apart from the question as to whether the phrase "sexual instinct" denotes a simple and real thing, it is to be doubted if there is proof of such a difference. It is not more probable than the ancient theories as to the influence of the "unsatistied womb" in the female, or of the " semen retentum " in men, and we have to be on guard against the current tendency to refer nearly everything to sublimated sexual instinct. No sys- tematic theory could be founded on a generalisation so vague. It is most improbable that the greater or lesser strength of the sexual impulse determines other qualities.
O^s a matter of fact, the statements that men have stronger sexual impulses than women, or that women have them stronger than men, are false. The strength of the sexual impulse in a man does not depend upon the proportion of masculinity in his composition, and in the same way the degree of femininity of a woman does not determine her sexual impulse*' These differences in mankind still await classification.
Contrary to the general opinion, there is no difference in the total sexual impulses of the sexes. However, if we examine the matter in respect to the two component forces
? 88 SEX AND CHARACTER
into which Albert Moll analysed the impulse, we shall find that a difference does exist. These forces may be termed the " liberating " and the " uniting " impulses. The first appears in the form of the discomfort caused by the accu- mulation of ripe sexual cells ; the second is the desire of the ripe individual for sexual completion. Both impulses are possessed by the male ; in the female only the latter is present. Theanatomyandthephysiologicalprocessesof the sexes bear out the distinction.
In this connection it may be noted that only the most male youths are addicted to masturbation, and although it is often disputed, I believe that similar vices occur only among the maler of women, and are absent from the female nature.
I must now discuss the "uniting" impulse of women, for that plays the chief, if not the sole part in her sexuality. But it must not be supposed that this is greater in one sex than the other. Any such idea comes from a confusion between the desire for a thing and the stimulus towards the active part in securing what is desired. Throughout the animal and plant kingdoms, the male reproductive cells are the motile, active agents, which move through space to seek out the passive female cells, and this physiological difference is sometimes confused with the actual wish for, or stimulus to,sexualunion. Andtoaddtotheconfusion,ithappens, in the animal kingdom particularly, that the male, in addition to the directly sexual stimulus, has the instinct to pursue and bodily capture the female, whilst the latter has only the passive part to be taken possession of. These differences of habit must not be mistaken for real differences of desire.
It can be shown, moreover, that woman is sexually much more excitable (not more sensitive) physiologically than man.
/The condition of sexual excitement is the supreme moment ofawoman'slife. ; Thewomanisdevotedwhollytosexual matters, that is to say, to the spheres of begetting and of reproduction. Her relations to her husband and children
complete her life, whereas the male is something more than
? MALE AND FEMALE SEXUALITY 89
sexual. In this respect, rather than in the relative strength of the sexual impulses, there is a real difference between the sexes. y It is important to distinguish between the intensity with which sexual matters are pursued and the proportion of the total activities of life that are devoted to them and to their accessory cares. The greater absorption of the human female by the sphere of sexual activities is the most signifi- cant difference between the sexes.
The female, moreover, is completely occupied and content with sexual matters, whilst the male is interested in much else, in war and sport, in social affairs and feasting, in philo- sophy and science, in business and politics, in religion and art. I do not mean to imply that this difference has always existed, as I do not think that important. As in the case of the Jewish question, it may be said that the Jews have their present character because it has been forced upon them, and that at one time they were different. It is now impossible to prove this, and we may leave it to those who believe in the modification by the environment to accept it. The his- torical evidence is equivocal on the point. In the question of women, we have to take people as they exist to-day. If, however, we happen to come on attributes that could not possibly have been grafted on them from without, we may believethatsuchhavealwaysbeenwiththem. Ofcontem- porary women at least one thing is certain. Apart from an exception to be noted in chap. xii. ,(it is certain that when the female occupies herself with matters outside the
interests of sex, it is for the man that she loves or by whom she wishes to be loved^ She takes no real interest in the things for themselves. It may happen that a real female learnsLatin; ifso,itisforsomesuchpurposeastohelpher son who is at school. Desire for a subject and ability for it, interest in it, and the facility for acquiring it, are usually proportional. Hewhohasslightmuscleshasnodesireto wield an axe ; those without the faculty for mathematics do not desire to study that subject. Talent seems to be rare and feeble in the real female (although possibly it is merely that the dominant sexuality prevents its development), with
the result that woman has no power of forming the com- binations which, although they do not actually make the individuality, certainly shape it.
Corresponding to true women, there are extremely female men who are to be found always in the apartments of the women, and who are interested in nothing but love and sexualmatters. Suchmen,however,arenottheDonJuans.
(The female principle is, then, nothing more than sexuality the male principle is sexual and something more. ') This difference is notable in the different way in which men and women enter the period of puberty. In the case of the male the onset of puberty is a crisis; he feels that something new and strange has come into his being, that something has been added to his powers and feelmgs independently of hiswill. Thephysiologicalstimulustosexualactivityappears to come from outside his being, to be independent of his will, and many men remember the disturbing event throughout their after lives. The woman, on the other hand, not only is not disturbed by the onset of puberty, but feels that her importance has been increased by it. The male, as a youth, hasnolongingfortheonsetofsexualmaturity thefemale,
;
from the time when she is still quite a young girl, looks forward to that time as one from which everything is to be expected. Man's arrival at maturity is frequently accom- panied by feelings of repulsion and disgust ; the young female watches the development of her body at the approach of puberty with excitement and impatient delight. It seems as if the onset of puberty were a side path in the normal development of man, whereas in the case of woman it is the directconclusion. Therearefewboysapproachingpuberty to whom the idea that they would marry (in the general sense, not a particular girl) would not appear ridiculous, whilst the smallest girl is almost invariably excited and interested in the question of her future marriage.
For such reasons a woman assigns positive value only to her period of maturity in her own case and in that of other women ; in childhood, as in old age, she has no real relation to the world. \The thought of her childhood is for her, later on,
;
? 90
SEX AND CHARACTER
? MALE AND FEMALE SEXUALITY 91
only the remembrance of her stupidity ; she faces the /approachofoldagewithdislikeandabhorrence^ Theonly real memories of her childhood are connected with sex, and these fade away in the intensely greater significance of her maturity. The passage of a woman from virginity is the great dividing point of her life, whilst the corresponding event in the case of a male has very little relation to the
course of his life. /
Woman is only sexual, man is partly sexual, and this
difference reveals itself in various ways. The parts of the male body by stimulation of which sexuality is excited are limited in area, and are strongly localised, whilst in the case of the woman, they are diffused over her whole body, so that stimulation may take place almost from any part. When in the second chapter of Part I. , I explained that sexuality is distributed over the whole body in both sexes, I did not mean that, therefore, the sense organs, through which the definite impulses are stimulated, were equally distributed. There are, certainly, areas of greater excitability, even in the case of the woman, but there is not, as in the man, a sharp division between the sexual areas and the body generally.
'The morphological isolation of the sexual area from the rest of the body in the case of man, may be taken as sym- bolical of the relation of sex to his whole nature. / Just as there is a contrast between the sexual and the sexless parts of a man's body, so there is a time-change in his sexuality.
&he female is always sexual, the male is sexual only inter- mittently. The sexual instinct is always active in woman (as to the apparent exceptions to this sexuality of women, I shall have to speak later on), whilst in man it is at rest from time to time. And thus it happens that the sexual impulse of the male is eruptive in character and so appears stronger. The real difference between the sexes is that in the male the desire is periodical, in the female continuous/
This exclusive and persisting sexuality of the female has important physical and psychical consequences. As the sexuality of the male is an adjunct to his life, it is possible for him to keep it in the physiological background, and out
? SEX AND CHARACTER
of his consciousness. And so a man can lay aside his sexuality and not have to reckon with it. A woman has not her sexuality limited to periods of time, nor to localised organs. (And so it happens that a man can know about his sexuality, whilst a woman is unconscious of it and can in all good faith deny it, because she is nothing but sexuality, because she is sexuality itself. )
vjt is impossible for women, because they are only sexual to recognise their sexuality, because recognition of anything requires duality. With man it is not only that he is not merely sexual, but anatomically and physiologically he can " detach " himself from it. That is why he has the power to enter into whatever sexual relations he desires ; if he likes he can limit or increase such relations ; he can refuse orassenttothem. HecanplaythepartofaDonJuanor a monk. He can assume which he will. To put it bluntly, man possesses sexual organs ; her sexual organs possess woman. /
We i^ay, therefore, deduce from the previous arguments that man has the power of consciousness of his sexuality and so can act against it, whilst the woman appears to be without this power. This implies, moreover, that there is greater differentiation in man, as in him the sexual and the unsexual parts of his nature are sharply separated. The possibility or impossibility of being aware of a particular definite object is, however, hardly a part of the customary meaning of the word consciousness, which is generally used as implying that if a being is conscious he can be conscious ofanyobject. Thisbringsmetoconsiderthenatureof the female consciousness, and I must take a long detour to consider it.
92
? CHAPTER III
MALE AND FEMALE CONSCIOUSNESS
Before proceeding to consider the main difference between the psychical hfe of the sexes, so far as the latter takes subjective and objective things as its contents, a few psy- chological soundings must be taken, and conceptions formulated. As the views and principles of prevailing systems of psychology have been formed without con- sideration of the subject of this book, it is not surprising that they contain little that I am able to use. (At present there is no psychology but many psychologists^ and it would really be a matter of caprice on my part to choose any particular school and attempt to apply its principles to my subject. I shall rather try to lay down a few useful
principles on my own account.
The endeavours to reach a comprehensive and unifying
conception of the whole psychical process by referring it to a single principle have been particularly evident in the relations between perceptions and sensations suggested by different psychologists. Herbart, for instance, derived the sensations from elementary ideas, whilst Horwicz supposed them to come from perceptions. Most modern psychologists have insisted that such monistic attempts must be fruitless. None the less there was some truth in the view.
/To discover this truth, however, it is necessary to make a distinction that has been overlooked by modern workers. We must distinguish between the perceiving of a percep- tion, feeling of a sensation, thinking a thought from the later repetitions of the process in which recognition plays a
? SEX AND CHARACTER
94
part. In many cases this distinction is of fundamental importance.
Every simple, clear, plastic perception and every distinct idea, before it could be put into words, passes through a stage (which may indeed be very short) of indistinctness. So also in the case of association ; for a longer or shorter time before the elements about to be grouped have actually come together, there is a sort of vague, generalised expecta- tionorpresentimentofassociation^ Leibnitz,inparticular, has worked at kindred processes, and I believe them to underlie the attempts of Herbart and Horwicz.
The common acceptance of pleasure and pain as the fundamental sensations, even with Wundt's addition of the sensations of tension and relaxation, of rest and stimulation, makes the division of psychical phenomena into sensations and perceptions too narrow for due treatment of the vague preliminary stages to which I have referred. I shall go back therefore to the widest classification of psychical phenomena that I know of, that of Avenarius into " elements " and "characters. " Theword"character"inthisconnection, of course, has nothing to do with the subject of charac- terology.
Avenarius added to the difficulty of applying his theories by his use of a practically new terminology (which is cer- tainly most striking and indispensable for some of the new viewsheexpounded). Butwhatstandsmostinthewayof accepting some of his conclusions is his desire to derive his psychology from the physiology of the brain, a physiology which he evolved himself out of his inner consciousness with only a slight general acquaintance with actual biological facts. The psychological, or second part of his " Critique of Pure Experience," was really the source from which he derived the first or physiological part, with the result that the latter appears to its readers as an account of some dis- covery in Atlantis. Because of these difficulties I shall give here a short account of the system of Avenarius, as I find it useful for my thesis.
An " Element " in the sense of Avenarius represents what
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thV usual psychology terms a perception^ or the content of a perception, what Schopenhauer called a presentation, what in England is called an " impression " or " idea," the " thing," " fact," or "object" of ordinary language; and the word is used independently of the presence or absence of a special sense-organ stimulation--a most important and novel addition. In the sense of Avenarius, and for our purpose, it is a matter of indifference to the terminology how far what is called " analysis " takes place, the whole tree may be taken as the " element," or each single leaf, or each hair, or (where most people would stop), the colours, sizes, weights, temperatures, resistances, and so forth. Still, the analysis may go yet further, and the colour of the leaf may be taken as merely the resultant of its quality, intensity, luminosity,andsoforth,thesebeingtheelements. Orwe may go still further and take modern ultimate conceptions reaching units incapable of sub-division.
In the sense of Avenarius, then, elements are such ideas as "green," "blue," "cold," "warm," "soft," "hard," "sweet," "bitter," and their "character" is the particular kind of quality with which they appear, not merely their pleasantness or unpleasantness, but also such modes of presentation as "surprising," "expected," "novel," "in- different," "recognised," "known," "actual," "doubtful," categories which Avenarius first recognised as being psycho- logical. For instance, what I guess, believe, or know is an " element " ; the fact that I guess it, not believe it or know it, is the " character " in which it presents itself psycho- logically (not logically).
Now there is a stage in mental activity in which this sub-division of psychical phenomena cannot be made, which is too early for it. All " elements " at their first appearance are merged with the floating background, the whole being vaguely tinged by " character. " To follow my meaning, think of what takes place, when for the first time at a distance one sees something in the landscape, such as a shrub or a heap of wood, at the moment when one does not yet know what " it " is.
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At this moment " element " and " character " are abso-
lutely indistinguishable (they are always inseparable as Petzoldt ingeniously pointed out), so improving the original statement of Avenarius.
InadensecrowdI perceive,forinstance,afacewhich
attracts me across the swaying mass by its expression. I
have no idea what the face is like, and should be quite
unable to describe it or give an idea of it ; but it has
appealed to me in the most disturbing manner, and I find
myself asking with keen curiosity, " Where have 1 seen that
" face before ?
(^ man may see the head of a woman for a moment, and this may make a very strong impression on him, and yet he may be unable to say exactly what he has seen, or, for instance, be able to remember the colour of her hair. The retina must be exposed to the object sufficiently long, if only a fraction of a second, for a photographic impression to be made. \
If one looks at any object from a considerable distance
one has at first only the vaguest impression of its outlines ;
and as one comes nearer and sees the details more clearly, lively sensations, at first lost in the general mass, are received. Think, for instance, of the first general impres- sion of, say, the sphenoid bone disarticulated from a skull, or of many pictures seen a little too closely or a little too far away. I myself have a remembrance of having had strong impressions from sonatas of Beethoven before I knewanythingofthemusicalnotes. AvenariusandPetz- oldt have overlooked the fact that the coming into con- sciousness of the elements is accompanied by a kind of
secretion of characterisation.
Some of the simple experiments of physiological psy-
chology illustrate the point to which I have been referring. If one stays in a dark room until the eye has adapted itself to the absence of light, and then for a second subjects oneself to a ray of coloured light, a sensation of illumina- tion will be received, although it is impossible to recognise the quality of the illumination ; something has been
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perceived, but what the something is cannot be apprehended unless the stimulation lasts a definite time. .
yn the same way every scientific discovery, every tech- nical invention, every artistic creation passes through a preliminaryphaseofindistinctness. Theprocessissimilar to the series of impressions that would be got as a statue wasgraduallyunwrappedfromaseriesofswathings. The same kind of sequence occurs, although, perhaps, in a very brief space of time, when one is trying to recall a piece of music. Every thought is preceded by a kind of half- thought, a condition in which vague geometrical figures, shifting masks, a swaying and indistinct background hover in the mind. The beginning and the end of the whole process, which I may term " clarification," are what take place when a short-sighted person proceeds to look through properly adapted lenses^
Just as this process occurs in the life of the individual (and he, indeed, may die long before it is complete), so it occurs in history. \Definite scientific conceptions are pre- ceded by anticipations. The process of clarification is spread over many generations. There were ancient and modern vague anticipations of the theory of Darwin and Lamarck, anticipations which we are now apt to overvalue. Mayer and Helmholz had their predecessors, and Goethe and Leonardo da Vinci, perhaps two of the most many-sided intellects known to us, anticipated in a vague way many of theconclusionsofmodernscience. Thewholehistoryof thought is a continuous " clarification," a more and more accuratedescriptionorrealisationofdetails. Theenormous number of stages between light and darkness, the minute gradations of detail that follow each other in the develop- mentofthoughtcanberealisedbestif onefollowshistori- cally some complicated modern piece of knowledge, such as, for instance, the theory of elliptical functions^
The process of clarification may be reversed, and the act of forgetting is such a reversal. This may take a consider- able time, and is usually noticed only by accident at some pointorotherofitscourse. Theprocessissimilartothe
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gradual obliteration of well-made roads, for the maintenance of which no provision has been made. The faint anticipa- tions of a thought are very like the faint recollections of it, and the latter gradually become blurred as in the case of a neglected road over the boundaries of which animals stray, slowly obliterating it. In this connection a practical rule for memorising, discovered and applied by a friend of mine, is interesting. It generally happens that if one wants to learn, say, a piece of music, or a section from the history of philosophy, one has to go over parts of it again and again. The problem was, how long should the intervals be between these successive attempts to commit to memory ? The answer was that they should not be so long as to make it possible to take a fresh interest in the subject again, to be interested and curious about it. If the interval has produced that state of mind, then the process of clarification must begin fromthebeginningagain. Theratherpopularphysiological theory of Sigismund Exner as to the formation of "paths" in the nervous system may perhaps be taken as a physical parallel of the process of clarification. According to the theory, the ne'-ves, or rather the fibrils, make paths easy for the stimulations to travel along, if these stimulations last sufficiently long or are repeated sufficiently often. So also inthecaseofforgetting; whathappensisthatthesepaths or processes of the nerve-cells atrophy from disuse. Ave- narius would have explained the above processes by his theory of the articulation of the fibres of the brain, but his physical doctrine was rather too crude and too simple for applicationtopsycho-physics. Nonethelesshisconception of articulation or jointing is both convenient and appropriate in its application to the process of clarification, and I shall employ it in that connection.
The process of clarification must be traced thoroughly in order to realise its importance, but for the moment, it is important to consider only the initial stage. The distinction of Avenarius between " element " and " character," which later on will become evident in a process of clarification, is not applicable to the very earliest moments of the process.
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99 It is necessary to coin a name for those minds to which the duahty of element and character becomes appreciable at no stage of the process. I propose for psychical data at this earliest stage of their existence the word Henid (from the
Greek h, because in them it is impossible to distinguish perception and sensation as two analytically separable factors, and because, therefore, there is no trace of duality in them).
Naturally the "henid" is an abstract conception and may notoccurintheabsoluteform. Howoftenpsychicaldata in human beings actually stand at this absolute extreme of undifferentiation is uncertain and unimportant ; but the theory does not need to concern itself with the possibility of such an extreme. A common example from what has happened to all of us may serve to illustrate what a henid is. I may have a definite wish to say something particular, and then something distracts me, and the '* it " I wanted to
sayorthmkhasgone. Lateron,bysomeprocessofasso- ciation, the " it " IS quite suddenly reproduced, and I know at once that it was what was on my tongue, but, so to speak, in a more perfect stage of development.
I fear lest some one may expect me to describe exactly whatI meanby"henid. " Thewishcancomeonlyfroma misconception. The very idea of a henid forbids its de- scription ; it is merely a something. Later on identification will come with the complete articulation of the contents of the henid ; but the henid is not the whole of this detailed content, but is distinguished from it by a lower grade of consciousness, by an absence of, so to speak, relief, by a blending of the die and the impression, by the absence of a central point in the field of vision.
And so one cannot describe particular henids ; one can only be conscious of their existence.
None the less henids are things as vital as elements and characters. Each henid is an individual and can be dis- tinguished from other henids. Later on I shall show that probably the mental data of early childhood (certainly of the first fourteen months) are all henids, although perhaps not in the absolute sense. Throughout childhood these
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data do not reach far from the henid stage ; in adults there is always a certain process of development going on. Probably the perceptions of some plants and animals are henids. \[n the case of mankind the development from the henid to the completely differentiated perception and idea is always possible, although such an ideal condition may seldom be attained) ^Whilst expression in words is im- possible in the case of the absolute henid, as words imply articulated thoughts, there are also in the highest stages of the intellect possible to man some things still unclarified and, therefore, unspeakable^
The theory of henids will help in the old quarrel between the spheres of perception and sensation, and will replace by a developmental conception the ideas of element and charater which Avenarius and Petzoldt deduced from the process of clarification. It is only when the elements become distinct that they can be distinguished from the characters. Man is disposed to humours and sentimentali- ties only so long as the contours of his ideas are vague
;
when he sees things in the light instead of the dark his process of thinking will become different.
