No More Learning

238 SEX AND CHARACTER
with authority on this matter : his one passion was meta- physics.
As for Schopenhauer, he had just as Httle idea of the higher form of eroticism ; his sexuality was of the gross order. This can be seen from the following : Schopen- hauer's countenance shows very little kindliness and a good deal of fierceness (a circumstance which must have causedhimgreatsorrow. Thereisnoexhibitionofethical sympathy if one is very sorry for oneself. The most sym- pathetic persons are those who, like Kant and Nietzsche, have no particle of self-pity).
But it may be said with safety that only those who are most sympathetic are capable of a strong passion : those " who take no interest in things " are incapable of love. This does notimplythattheyhavediabolicalnatures. Theymay,on the contrary, stand very high morally without knowmg what their neighbours are thinking or doing,<and without having a sense for other than sexual relations with women, as was the case with Schopenhauer. He was a man who knew only too well what the sexual impulse was, but he never was in love ; if that were not so, the bias in his famous work, " The Metaphysics of Sexual Love," would be inex- plicable ; in it the most important doctrine is that the uncon- scious goal of all love is nothing more than "the formation of the next generation. y
This view, as I hope to prove, is false. It is true that a love entirely without sexuality has never been known. However high a man may stand he is still a being with
apparent when I have developed my theory of eroticism further. Time, like space, is conceived of as unlimited, and man, in his desire for freedom, in his efforts stimulated by his power of free will to transcend his limits, has the craving for unlimited time and unlimited space. The desire for travel is simply an expression of this rest- lessness, this fundamental chafing of the spirit against its bonds. But just as eternity is not prolonged time, but the negation of time, so however far a man wanders, he can extend his area but cannot abolish space. And so his efforts to transcend space must always be heroic failures : I shall show that his eroticism is a similar notable failure.
EROTICS AND ESTHETICS
239
senses, ^hatabsolutelydisposesoftheoppositeviewisthis all love, as such--without going into aesthetic principles of love--is antagonistic to those elements (of the relationship) which press towards sexual union ; in fact, such elements tend to negate love. Love and desire are two unlike, mutually exclusive, opposing conditions, and during the time a man really loves, the thought of physical union with the object of his love is insupportable. ) because there is no hope which is entirely free from fear does not alter the fact that hope and fear are utterly opposite principles. It is just the same m the case of sexual impulse and love. The more erotic a man is the less he will be troubled with his sexuality, and vice versag
If it be the case that there is no adoration utterly free from desire, there is no reason why the two should be identified, since it might be possible for a superior being to attainthehighestphasesofboth. Thatpersonlies,orhas never known what love is, who says he loves a woman
whom he desires ; so much difference is there between sexual impulse and love. This is what makes talk of love after marriage seem, in most cases, make-believe.
,^he following will show how obtuse the view of those is who persist, with unconscious cynicism, in maintaining the identity of love and sexual impulse. Sexual attraction increases with physical proximity ; love is strongest in the absence of the loved one ; it needs separation, a certain distance, to preserve it. In fact, what all the travels in the world could not achieve, what time could not accomplish, may be brought about by accidental, unintentional, physical contact with the beloved object, in which the sexual im- pulse is awakened, and which suffices to kill love on the spot. ^Then, again, in the case of more highly differentiated, great men, the type of girl desired, and the type of girl loved but never desired, are always totally different in face, form, and disposition ; they are two different beings.
Then there is the " platonic love," which professors of psy- chiatry have such a poor opinion of. I should say rather, there is only " platonic " love, because any other so-called
:
? --"
? 240 SEX AND CHARACTER
' love belongs to the kingdom of the senses :At is the love of Beatrice, the worship of Madpnna ; the Babylonian woman is the symbol of sexual desire. )
Kant's enumeration of th6 transcendental ideas of love would have to be extended if it is to be held. For the purely spiritual love, the love of Plato and Bruno, which is absolutely free from desire, is none the less a transcendental concept ; nor is its significance as a concept impaired, because such a love has never been fully realised.
It is the problem put forward in " Tannha? user. " We have Tannha? user, Wolfram, Venus, and Maria. The fact that two lovers, who have found each other once for all Tristan and Isolde--choose death instead of the bridal bed, is just as absolute a proof of a higher, maybe metaphysical, something in mankind, as the martyrdom of a Giordano Bruno.
" Dir, hohe Liebe, to? ne Begeistert mein Gesang, Die mir in Engelscho? ne Tief in die Seele drang !
Du nahst als Gott gesandte :
-- So fu? hrst du in die Lande,
Wo ewig strahlt dein Stern. "
Who is the object of such love ? Is it woman, as she has been represented in this work, who lacks all higher quali- ties who gets her value from another, who has no power to attain value on her own account ? Impossible. It is the ideally beautiful, the immaculate woman, who is loved in suchhighfashion. Thesourceofthisbeautyandchastity in women must now be found.
The question as to whether the female sex is the more beautiful, and as to whether it deserves the title of " the beautiful, has been much disputed.
It may be well to consider by whom and how far woman is considered beautiful.
It is well known that woman is not most beautiful m the nude. I admit that in pictures or statues the nude female maylookwell. Butthesexualimpulsemakesitimpossible
Ich folg' aus holder Fern',
? EROTICS AND . ESTHETICS 241
to look at a living woman in a nude condition with the purely critical, unemotional eye, which is an essential feature injudginganyobjectofbeauty. Butapartfromthis,an absolute nude female figure in the life leaves an impression of something wanting, an incompleteness, which is incom- patible with beauty.
A nude woman may be beautiful in details, but the general effect is not beautiful ; she inevitably creates the feeling that she is looking for something, and this induces disin- clination rather than desire in the spectator. / The sight of an upright female form, in the nude, makes most patent her purposelessness, the sense of her purpose in life being derived from something outside herself ; in the recumbent
position this feeling is greatly diminished. It is evident that artists have perceived this in reproducing the nude)
But even in the details of her body a woman is not wholly beautiful, not even if she is a flawless, perfect type of her sex. The genitalia are the chief difficulty in the way of regarding her as theoretically beautiful. If the idea were justified that man's love for woman is the direct result of his sexual impulse ; if we could agree with Schopenhauer that " the under-sized, narrow-shouldered, broad-hipped, and short-limbed sex is called beautiful only because the male
intellect is befogged by the sexual impulse, that impulse being the creator of the conception of the beauty of woman," it would follow that the genitalia could not be excluded from theconceptionofbeauty. Itrequiresnolengthyexposition to prove that the genitalia are not regarded as beautiful, and that, therefore, the beauty of woman cannot be regarded as duetothesexualimpulse. Infact,thesexualimpulseism
realityopposedtotheconceptionofbeauty. Themanwho is most under its influence has least sense of female beauty, and desires any woman merely because she is a woman. ? .
A woman's nude body is distasteful to man because it offends his sense of shame. The easy superficiality of our day has given colour to the statement that the sense of shame has arisen from the wearing of clothes, and it has been urged that the objection to the nude arises from those
242
their readiness to believe such protestations.
The love bestowed by the man is the standard of what is
\
/beautiful and what is hateful in woman. / The conditions
are quite different in aesthetics from those in logic or ethics. In logic there is an abstract truth which is the standard of thought ; in ethics there is an ideal good which furnishes the criterion of what ought to be done, and the value of the good is established by the determination to link the will with the good, (in aesthetics beauty is created by love ; there is no determining law to love what is beautiful, and the beauti- ful does not present itself to human beings with any im- perative command to love it. (And so there is no abstract, no super-individual "right " taste)
All beauty is really more a projection, an emanation of the requirements of love ; and so the beauty of woman is not apart from love, it is not an objective to which love is directedA)ut woman's beauty is the love of man ; they are not two things, but one and the same thing^
Just as hatefulness comes from hating, so love creates beauty. This is only another way of expressing the fact that beauty has as little to do with the sexual impulse as the sexual impulse has to do with love. Beauty is something that can neither be felt, touched, nor mixed with other things ; it is only at a distance that it can be plainly dis- cerned, and when it is approached it withdraws itself. The sexual impulse which seeks for sexual union with woman is a denial of such beauty ; the woman who has been possessed and enjoyed, will never again be worshipped for her beauty.
J
? SEX AND CHARACTER
whoareunnaturalandsecretlyimmorally-minded. Buta man who has become immorally-minded no longer is interested in the nude as such, because it has lost its in- fluence on him. He merely desires and no longer loves. AW true love is modest, like all true pity. There is only one case of shamelessness--a declaration of love the sincerity of which a man is convinced of in the moment he makes itk This would represent the conceivable maxi- mum of shamelessness ; but there is no declaration of love which is quite true, and the stupidity of women is shown by
? EROTICS AND ^STHETICS^
243 I now come to the second question : what are the inno-
cence and morality of a woman ?
It will be convenient to start with a few facts that concern
the origin of all love. /'-Bodily cleanliness, as has often been remarked, is in men a general indication of morality and rectitude ; or at least it m^ be said that uncleanly men are seldom of high character. ) It may be noticed that when men, who formerly paid little attention to bodily cleanliness, begin to strive for a higher perfection of character, they at the same time take more trouble with the care of the body. In the same way, when men suddenly become imbued with passion they experience a simultaneous desire for bodily cleanliness, and it may almost be said of them that only at such a time do they wash themselves thoroughly. Uf we now turn to gifted men, we shall see that in their case love frequently begins with self-mortification, humiliation, and restraint. A moral change sets in, a process of purification seems to emanate from the object loved, even if her lover has never spoken to her, or only seen her a few times in the
distance. It is, then, impossible that this process should have its origin in that person : very often it may be a bread-and-butter miss, a stolid lump, more often a sensuous coquette, in whom no one can see the marvellous charac- teristics with which his love endows her, save her lover. Can any one believe that it is a concrete person who is loved ? Does she not in reality serve as the starting point for incomparably greater emotions than she could inspire ?
In love, man is only loving himself. Not his empirical self, not the weaknesses and vulgarities, not the failings and smallnesses which he outwardly exhibits ; but all that he wants to be, all that he ought to be, his truest, deepest, in- telligible nature, free from all fetters of necessity, from all taint of earthy
In his actual physical existence, this being is limited by space and time and by the shackles of the senses ; however deep he may look into himself, he finds himself damaged and spotted, and sees nowhere the image of speckless purity for which he seeks. And yet there is nothing he covets so
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SEX AND CHARACTER
much as to realise his own ideal, to find his real higher self. M. nd as he cannot find this true self within himself, he has to seek it without himself. He projects his ideal of an abso- lutely worthy existence, the ideal that he is unable to isolate within himself, upon another human being, and this act, and this alone, is none other than love and the significance of love. Only a person who has done wrong and is conscious of it can love, and so a child can never love. It is only because love represents the highest, most unattainable goal of all longing, because it cannot be realised in experience but must remain an idea ; only because it is localised on some other human being, and yet remains at a distance, so that the ideal never attains its realisation ; only because of such conditions can love be associated with the awakening of the desire for piirification, with the reaching after a goal that is purely spiritual, and so cannot be blemished by physical union with the beloved person ; only thus, is love the highest and strongest effort of the will towards the supreme good ; only thus does it bring the true being of man to a state between body and spirit, between the senses and the moral nature, between God and the beasts. / < A human being only finds himself when, in this fashion, he loves. And thus it comes about that only when they love do many men realise the existence of their own personality and of the personality of another, that " I " and '* thou " become for them more than grammatical expressions. And so also comes about the great part played in their love story by the names of the two lovers. There is no doubt but that it is through love that many men first come to know of their own
real nature, and to be convinced that they possess a soul. It is this which makes a lover desire to keep his beloved at a distance--on no account to injure her purity by contact with him--in order to assure himself of her and of his own existence. Many an inflexible empiricist, coming under the influence of love, becomes an enthusiastic mystic ; the most striking example being Auguste Comte, the founder of positivism, whose whole theories were revolutionised by his
feelings for Clotilde de Vaux.
? EROTICS AND ESTHETICS
It is not only for the artist, but for the whol^ of mankind that Arno, ergo sum holds good psychologically/
Love is a phenomenon of projection just as' hate is, not a phenomenon of equation as friendship is. The latter pre- supposes an equality of both individuals : ^ove always implies inequality, disproportion/ To endow an individual with all that one might be and yet never can be, to make her ideal--that is love. Beauty is the symbol of this act of worship. It is this that so often surprises and angers a lover when he is convinced that beauty does not imply morality in a woman. He feels that the nature of the offence is increased by " such depravity " being possible in conjunction with such " beauty. " He is not aware that the woman in question seems beautiful to him because he still loves her ; otherwise the incongruity between the ex- ternal and internal would no longer pain him.
The reason an ordinary prostitute can never seem beautiful is because it is naturally impossible to endow her with the projection of value ; she can satisfy only the taste ofvulgarminds. Sheisthemateoftheworstsortofmen. In this we have the explanation of a relation utterly opposed to morality : woman in general is simply indifferent to ethics, she is non-moral, and, therefore, unlike the anti- moral criminal, who is instinctively disliked, or the devil who is hideous in every one's imagination, serves as a receptacle for projected worthiness ; as she neither does good nor evil, she neither resists nor resents this imposition of the ideal on her personality. It is patent that woman's morality is acquired ; but this morality is man's, which he in an access of supreme love and devotion has conveyed to her.
(^ince all beauty is always only the constantly renewed endeavour to embody the highest form of value, there is a pre-eminently satisfymg element in it, in the face of which all desire, all self-seeking fade away.
All forms of beauty whfch appeal to man, by reason of the aesthetic function, are in reality also attempts on his part to realise the ideab Beauty is the symbol of
245
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perfection in being) Therefore beauty is inviolable ; it is static and not dynamic ; so that any alteration with regard to it upsets and annuls the idea of it. The desire of personal worthiness, the lo^^e of perfection, materialise in theideaofbeauty. Andsothebeautyofnatureisborn,a beauty that the criminal can never know, as ethics first create nature. Thus it is that nature always and every- where, in its greatest and smallest forms, gives the impres- sion of perfection. The natural law is only the mortal symbol of the moral law, as natural beauty is the mani- festation of nobility of the soul ; logic thus becomes the embodiment of ethics ! Just as loves creates a new woman for man instead of the real woman, so art, the eroticism of the All, creates out of chaos the plenitude of forms in the universe ; and just as there is no natural beauty without form, without a law of nature, so also there is no art without form, no artistic beauty which does not conform to the laws of art. Natural beauty is no less a realisation of artistic beauty than the natural law is the fulfilment of the moral law, the natural reflection of that harmony whose
image is enthroned in the soul of man. The nature which the artist regards as his teacher, is the law which he creates out of his own being^
I return to my own theme from these analyses of art, which are no more than elaborations of the thoughts of Kant and Schelling (and of Schiller writing under their influence). The main proposition for which I have argued is that man's belief m the morality of woman, his projection of his own soul upon her, and his conception of the woman as beautiful, are one and the same thing, the second being the sensuous side of the first.
jit is thus intelligible, although an inversion of the truth, when, in morality, a beautiful soul is spoken of, or when, following Shaftesbury and Herbart, ethics are subordinated to aesthetics ; following Socrates and Plato we may identify the good and the beautiful, but we must not forget that beauty is only a bodily image in which morality tries to represent itself, that all aesthetics are created by ethics. J
? EROTICS AND . ESTHETICS
Every individual and temporal presentation of this attempted incarnation must necessarily be illusory, and can have no more than a fictitious reality. And so all indi- vidual cases of beauty are impermanent the love that is
;
directed to a woman must perish with the age of the woman. The idea of beauty is the idea of nature and is permanent, whilst every beautiful thing, every part of nature, is perish- able. /The eternal can realise itself in the limited and the concrete only by an illusion ; it is self-deception to seek the fulness of love in a woman. As all love that attaches itself to a person must be impermanent, the love of woman is doomed to unhappiness. All such love has this source of failure inherent in it. It is an heroic attempt to seek for permanent worth where there is no worth. The love that is attached to enduring worth is attached to the absolute, to the idea of God, whether that idea be a pantheistic con- ception of enduring nature, or remain transcendental ; the love that attaches itself to an individual thmg, as to a woman, must fail. A
/I have already partly explained why man takes this burden on himself. Just as hatred is a projection of our own evil qualities on other persons in order that we may stand apart from them and hate them ; just as the devil was invented to serve as a vehicle of all the evil impulses in man ; so love has the purpose of helping man in his battle for good, when he feels that he himself is not strong enough. Loveandhatearealikeformsofcowardice. In hate we picture to ourselves that our own hateful qualities exist in another, and by so doing we feel ourselves partly freed from them. In love we project what is good in us, and so having created a good and an evil image we are more able to compare and value themy
Lovers seek their own souls in the loved ones, and so love is free from the limits I described in the first part of this book, not being bound down by the conditions of merely sexual attraction. In spite of their real opposition, thereisananalogybetweeneroticsandsexuality. Sexuality uses the woman as the means to produce pleasure and
247
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children of the body ; -erotics use her as the means to create worth and children of the soul. A little understood con- ception of Plato is full of the deepest meaning : that love is not directed towards beauty, but towards the procreation of beauty ; that it seeks to win immortality for the things of the mind, just as the lower sexual impulse is directed towards the perpetuation of the species/
It is more than a merely formal analogy, a superficial, verbal resemblance, to speak of the fruitfulness of the mind, of its conception and reproduction, or, in the words of Plato, to speak of the children of the soul. As bodily sexu- ality is the effort of an organic being to perpetuate its own form, so love is the attempt to make permanent one's own soul or individuality. Sexuality and love are alike the effort to realise oneself, the one by a bodily image, the other by an image of the soul. <But it is only the man of genius who can approach this entirely unsensuous love, and it is only he who seeks to produce eternal children in whom his deepest nature shall live for eve^'^
The parallel may be carried further. Since Novalis first called attention to it, many have insisted on the association between sexual desire and cruelty. All that" is born of womanmustdie. Reproduction,birth,anddeathareindis- solubly associated ; the thought of untimely death awakens sexual desire in its fiercest form, as the determination to reproduce oneself. And so sexual union, considered ethi- cally, psychologically, and biologically, is allied to murder
;
it is the negation of the woman and the man ; in its extreme case it robs them of their consciousness to give life to the child. Thehighestformoferoticism,asmuchasthelowest form of sexuality, uses the woman not for herself but as means to an end--to preserve the individuality of the artist.
(ij'he artist has used the woman merely as the screen on which to project his own idea\
The real psychology of the loved woman is always a matter of indifference. In the moment when a man loves a woman, he neither understands her nor wishes to under- stand her, although understanding is the only moral basis
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of association in mankind. A human being cannot love another that he fully understands, because he would then necessarily see the imperfections which are an inevitable part of the human individual, and love can attach itself only to perfection/) Love of a woman is possible only when it does not consider her real qualities, and so is able to replace the actual psychical reality by a different and quite imaginary reality, ^he attempt to realise one's ideal in a woman, instead of the woman herself, is a necessary destruction of the empirical personality of the woman. And so the attempt is cruel to the woman ; it is the egoism of love that disregards the woman, and cares nothing for her
real inner life^>
Thus the parallel between sexuality and love is complete.
Love is murder. The sexual impulse destroys the body and mind of the woman, and the psychical eroticism destroys her psychical existence. Ordinary sexuality regards the woman only as a means of gratifying passion or of begetting children. The higher eroticism is merciless to the woman, requiring her to be merely the vehicle of a projected per- sonaHty, or the mother of psychical children. Love is not only anti-logical, as it denies the objective truth of the woman and requires only an illusory image of her, but it is anti-ethical with regard to her.
I am far from despising the heights to which this eroticism may reach, as, for instance, in Madonna worship. Who could blind his eyes to the amazing phenomenon presented by Dante ? It was an extraordinary transference of his own ideal to the person of a concrete woman whom the artist had seen only once and when she was a young girl, and who for all he knew might have grown up into a Xantippe. (The complete neglect of whatever worth the woman herself might have had, in order that she might better serve as the vehicle of his projected conception of worthiness, was never more clearly exhibitecjf^ And the three-fold immorality of this higher eroticism becomes more plain than ever. It is an unlimited selfishness with regard to the actual woman, as she is wholly" rejected for the ideal
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woman. It is a felony towards the lover himself, inasmuch as he detaches virtue and worthiness from himself ; and it is a deliberate turning away from the truth, a preferring of sham to reality.
The last form in which the immorality reveals itself is that love prevents the worthlessness of woman from being realised, inasmuch as it always replaced her by an imaginary projection. Madonna worship itself is fundamentally im- moral, inasmuch as it is a shutting of the eyes to truth. The Madonna worship of the great artists is a destruction of woman, and is possible only by a complete neglect of the women as they exist in experience, a replacement of actuality by a symbol, a re-creation of woman to serve the purposes of man, and a murder of woman as she exists.
^' Whenaparticularmanattractsaparticularwomanthe ir^fluence is not his beauty. Only man has an instinct for beauty, and the ideals of both manly beauty and of womanly beauty have been created by man, not by woman. N The qualities that appeal to a woman are the signs of developed sexuality; those that repel her are the qualities of the higher mind. Woman is essentially a phallus worshipper, and her worship is permeated with a fear like that of a bird for a snake, of a man for the fabled Medusa head, as she feels that the object of her adoration is the power that will destroy herj
The course of my argument is now apparent. As logic and ethics have a relation only to man, it was not to be expected that woman would stand in any better position with regard to aesthetics. Esthetics and logic are closely interconnected, as is apparent in philosophy, in mathe- matics, in artistic work, and in music. I have now shown the intimate relation of aesthetics to ethics. As Kant showed, aesthetics, just as much as ethics and logic, depend on the free will of the subject. As the woman has not free will, she cannot have the faculty of projecting beauty outside herself.
The foregoing involves the proposition that woman cannot love. Women have made no ideal of man to
? EROTICS AND iESTHETICS 251
correspond with the male conception of the Madonna. What woman requires from man is not purity, chastity, morahty, but something else, -d^oman is incapable of desiring virtue in a man^
It is almost an insoluble riddle that woman, herself incapable of love, should attract the love of man. It has seemed to me a possible myth or parable, that in the begin- ning, when men became men by some miraculous act of God,asoulwasbestowedonlyonthem. Men,whenthey love, are partly conscious of this deep injustice to woman, and make the fruitless but heroic effort to give her their own soul. But such a speculation is outside the limits of either science or philosophy.
[l have now shown what woman does not wish ; there remains to show what she does wish, and how this wi^h is diametrically opposed to the will of man}
? CHAPTER XII
The nature of woman and her significance in the universe
** Erst Mann und Weib zusammen Machen den Menschen aus,"--Kant.
The further we go in the analysis of woman's claim to esteem the more we must deny her of what is lofty and noble, great and beautiful. As this chapter is about to take the deciding and most extreme step in that direction, I should like to make a few remarks as to my position. The last thing I wish to advocate is the Asiatic standpoint with regard to the treatment of women. Those who have care- fully followed my remarks as to the injustice that all forms of sexuality and erotics visit on woman will surely see that this work is not meant to plead for the harem. But it is quite possible to desire the legal equality of men and women without believing in their moral and intellectual equality, just as in condemning to the utmost any harsh- ness in the male treatment of the female sex, one does not overlook the tremendous, cosmic, contrast and organic differences between them. There are no men in whom there is no trace of the transcendent, who are altogether bad ; and there is no woman of whom that could truly be said.
However degraded a man may be, he is immeasur- ably above the most superior woman, so much so that comparison and classification of the two are impossible
; but even so, no one has any right to denounce or defame
woman, however inferior she must be considered. A true adjustment of the claims for legal equality can be
? WOMAN AND HER SIGNIFICANCE
undertaken on no other basis than the recognition of a complete, deep-seated polar opposition of the sexes. I trust that I may escape confusion of my views as to woman with the superficial doctrine of P. J. Mo? bius--a doctrine only interesting as a brave reaction against the general tendency. Women are not " physiologically weak-minded," and I cannot share the view that women of conspicuous ability are to be regarded as morbid specimens.
From a moral point of view one should only be glad to recognise in these women (who are always more masculine than the rest) the exact opposite of degeneration, that is to say, it must be acknowledged that they have made a step forward and gained a victory over themselves ; from the biological standpoint they are just as little or as much phenomena of degeneration as are womanish men (unethi- cally considered). Intermediate sexual forms are normal, not pathological phenomena, in all classes of organisms, and their appearance is no proof of physical decadence.
/Woman is neither high-minded nor low-minded, strong- minded nor weak-minded. She is the opposite of all these. Mind cannot be predicated of her at all ; she is mindless. That, however, does not imply weak-mmdedness in the ordinary sense of the term, the absence of the capacity to "get her bearings" in ordinary everyday life. Cunning, calculation, "cleverness," are much more usual and con- stant in the woman than in the man, if there be a personal selfishendinview. Awomanisneversostupidasaman can be. \
But has woman no meaning at all ? Has she no general
purpose in the scheme of the world ? Has she not a
destiny and,inspiteofallhersenselessnessandemptiness, ;
a significance in the universe ?
Has she a mission, or is her existence an accident and
an absurdity ?
In order to understand her meaning, it is necessary to
start from a phenomenon which, although old and well recognised, has never received its proper meed of con- sideration. It is from nothing more nor less than the
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phenomenon of match-making from which we may be able to infer most correctly the real nature of woman.
Its analysis shows it to be the force which brings together and helps forward two people in their knowledge of one another, which helps them to a sexual union, whether in the form of marriage or not. This desire to brmg about an understanding between two people is possessed by all women from their earliest childhood ; the very youngest girls are always ready to act as messengers for their sisters' lovers. And if tlie instinct of match-making can be indulged in only after the particular woman in question has brought about her own consummation in marriage, it is none the less present before that time, and the only things which are at work against it are her jealousy of her contemporaries, and her anxiety about their chances with regard to her lover, until she has finally secured him by reason of her money,, her social position, and so forth.
As soon as women have got rid of their own case by their own marriage, they hasten to help the sons and daughters of their acquaintances to marry. The fact that older women, in whom the desire for sexual satisfaction has died out, are such match-makers is so fully recog- nised that the idea has wrongly spread that they are the only real match-makers.
They urge not only women but men to marry, a man's own mother often being the most active and persistent advocate of his marriage. It is the desire and purpose of every mother to see her son married, without any thought of his individual taste ; a wish which some have been blind enough to regard as another charm in maternal love, of which such a poor account was given in an earlier chapter. It is possible that many mothers may hope that their sons should obtain permanent happiness through marriage, however unfit they may be for it ; but un- doubtedly this hope is absent with the majority, and in any case it is the match-making instinct, the sheer objection to bachelordom, which is the strongest motive of all.
254
It is clear that women obey a purely instinctive,
? !
WOMANANDHERSIGNIFICANCE 255
inherent impulse, when they try to get their daughters married.
It is certainly not for logical, and only in a small degree for material reasons, that they go to such lengths to attain their ends, and it is certainly not because of any desire ex- pressed by their daughters (very often it is in direct opposi- tion to the girl's choice) ; and since the match-making instinct is not confined to the members of a woman's own family, it is impossible to speak of it as being part of the '* altruistic " or " moral " attitude of maternal love ; although most women if they were charged with match-making projects wouldundoubtedlyanswer"thatit istheirdutytothink of the future welfare of their dear children. "
A mother makes no difference in arranging a marriage for her own daughter and for any other girl, and is just as glad to do it for the latter if it does not mterfere with the interests of her own family ; it is the same thing, match- making throughout, and there is no psychological difference in making a match for her own daughter and doing the same thing for a stranger. I would even go so far as to say that a mother is not inconsolable if a <<stranger, however common and undesirable, desires and seduces her daughter.
The attitude of one sex to certain traits of the other can often be applied as a criterion as to how far certain pecu- liarities of character are exclusively the property of the one sex or are shared by the other. So far, we have had to deny to women many characters which they would gladly claim, but which are exclusively masculine ; in match-making^ however, we have a characteristic which is really and ex- clusively feminine, the exceptions being either in the case of very womanish men or else special instances which will be fully dealt with later on, in chap. xiii. Every real man will have nothing to do with this instinct in his wife, even when his own daughters, whom he would gladly see settled in life, are concerned ; he dislikes and despises the whole business, and leaves it entirely to his wife, as being altogether in her province. This is a striking instance of a purely feminine psychical characteristic, being not only unattractive
? SEX AND CHARACTER
to a man, but even repulsive to him when he is aware of it : while the male characteristics in themselves are sufficient to please the female, man has to denude woman of hers before he can love her.
But the match-making instinct exerts a much deeper and more important influence on the nature of woman than can be gathered from the little I have said on this subject. I wish now to draw attention to woman's attitude at a play : she is always waiting to see if the hero and heroine, the lovers in the piece, will quarrel. This is nothing but match- making, and psychologically does not differ a hair from it : it is the ever present desire to see the man and woman united. But that is not all ; the tremendous excitement with which women await the crucial point in a decent or indecent book is due to nothing less than the desire to see the sexual union of the principal characters, and is coupled with an actual excitation at the thought, and positive appreciation of the force which is behind sexual union. It is not possible to state this formally and logically, the only thing is to try and understand how it is that the two things are psychologically one with women. The mother's ex- citement on her daughter's wedding-day is of the same quality as that engendered by reading a story by Prevost, or Sudermann's ** Katzensteg. " It is quite true that men are very interested by novels which end in sexual union, but in quite a different way from women ; they thoroughly appreciate the sexual act in imagination, but they do not follow the gradual approach of the two people concerned from the very beginning ; and their interest does not grow, as woman's does, in constant proportion to the reciprocal value which the two people have for one another.
The breathless pleasure with which the various obstacles are overcome, the feeling of disappointment at each thwarting of the sexual purpose, is altogether womanish and unmanly ; but it is always present with woman. She is continually on the watch for sexual developments, whether in real life or in literature. Has no one ever wondered why women are so keen and " disinterested " about bringing
256
? WOMAN AND HER SIGNIFICANCE
other men and women together ? 'QThe satisfaction they derive from it arises from a personal stimulus at the thought of the sexual union of others>
But the full extent to which match-making influences the point of view of all women is not yet fully grasped. On a summer evening when lovers may be seen in dark corners of public places, or on the seats and banks round about, it is always the women who wilfully and curiously try to see what is happening, whilst men who have to pass that way do so unwillingly, looking the other way, because of a sense of intrusion. Just in the same way it is women who turn in the streets to look at nearly every couple they meet, and gaze after them. This espionage and turning round are none the less " match-making," because they are sub-conscious acts. If a man does not want to see a thing he turns his back on it, and does not look round ; but women are glad to see two people in love with one another, and take pleasure in surprising them in their love-making, because of their innate and super-personal desire that sexual union should occur.
But man, as was seen much further back, only cares for that which has a positive value. A woman when she sees two lovers together is always awaiting developments, that is to say, she expects, anticipates, hopes, and desires an outcome. I know an elderly married woman who listened expectantly at the door for some time, when a servant of hers had allowed her sweetheart to come into her room, before ? he walked in and gave her notice.
The idea of union is always eagerly grasped and never repelled whatever form it may take (even where animals are concerned). * Sheexperiencesnodisgustatthenauseating details of the subject, and makes no attempt to think of anything pleasanter. This accounts for a great deal of what is so apparently mysterious in the psychic life of woman. Her wish for the activity of her own sexual life is her strongest impulse, but it is only a special case of her
* The one apparent exception to this rule is fully discussed in this chapter.
R
257
;
? 258 SEX AND CHARACTER
deep, her only vital interest, the interest that sexual unions shall take place ; the wish that as much of it as possible shall occur, in all cases, places, and times.
This universal desire may either be concentrated on the act itself or on the (possible) child ; in the first case, the woman is of the prostitute type and participates merely for the sake of the act ; in the second, she is of the mother type, but not merely with the idea of bearing children herself
;
she desires that every marriage she knows of or has helped
to bring about should be fruitful, and the nearer she is to
theabsolutemotherthemoreconspicuousisthisidea; the
real mother is also the real grandmother (even if she remains
avirgin JohannTesman'smarvellousportrayalof"Tante ;
Jule" in Ibsen's " Hedda Gabler" is an example of what I mean). Every real mother has the same purpose, that of helping on matrimony ; she is the mother of all mankind she welcomes every pregnancy.
The prostitute does not want other women to be with child, but to be prostitutes like herself.
A woman's relations with married men show how she subordinates her own sexuality to her match-making in- stinct, the latter being the dominant power.
Woman objects more strongly to bachelordom than any- thing else, because she is altogether a match-maker, and this makes her try to get men to marry ; but if a man is already married she at once loses most of her interest in him, how- ever much she liked him before. If the woman herself is already married, that is to say, when each man she meets is not a possible solution to her own fate, one would not imagine that a married man would find less favour with her because he was married than when he was a bachelor if the woman herself is unfaithful ; but women seldom carry on an intrigue with another woman's husband, except when they wish to triumph over her by making him neglect her. Thisshowsthatthedispositionofwomanistowards
the fact of pairing ; when men are already paired she seldom attempts to make them unfaithful, for the fact of their being paired has satisfied her instinct.
? WOMAN AND HER SIGNIFICANCE
V^This match-making is the most common characteristic of the human female ; the wish to become a mother-in-law is much more general than even the desire to become a mother, the intensity and extent of which is usually over-rate(5i
My readers may possibly not understand the emphasis I have laid on a phenomenon which is usually looked upon as amusing as it is disgusting ; and it may be thought that I have given undue importance to it.
But let us see why I have done so. Match-making is essentially the phenomenon of all others which gives us the key to the nature of woman, and we must not, as has always been the case, merely acknowledge the fact and pass on, but we should try to analyse and explain it. One of our commonest phrases runs : " Every woman is a bit of a match-maker. "
But we must remember that in this, and nothing else, lies the actual essence of woman. After mature consideration of the most varied types of women and with due regard to the special classes besides those which I have dis- cussed, I am of opinion that the only positively general female characteristic is that of match-making,<^that is, her uniform willingness to further the idea of sexual unior^.
Any definition of the nature of woman which goes no further than to declare that she has the strong instinct for her own union would be too narrow ; any definition that would link her instincts to the child or to the husband, or toboth,wouldbetoowide. Themostgeneralandcom- prehensive statement of the nature of woman is that it is completely adapted and disposed for the special mission of aiding and abetting the bodily union of the sexes. All women are match-makers, and this property of the woman to be the advocate of the idea of pairing is the only one which is found in women of all ages, in youn^ girls, in adults, and in the aged. The old woman is no longer interested in her own union, but she devotes herself to the pairing of others. This habit of the old woman is nothing new, it is only the continuance of her enduring instinct surviving the complications that were caused when her
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? 26o SEX AND CHARACTER
personal interests came into conflict with her general desire ;
it is the now unselfish pursuit of the impersonal idea.
It is convenient to recapitulate at this point what my investigation has shown as to the sexuality of women. /I have shown that woman is engrossed exclusively by sexuality, not intermittently, but throughout her life ; that her whole being, bodily and mental, is nothing but sexu- ality itself. I added, moreover, that she was so constituted that her whole body and being continually were in sexual relations with her environment, and that just as the sexual organs were the centre of woman physically, so the sexual idea was the centre of her mental nature^ The idea of pairing is the only conception which has positive worth for women. The woman is the bearer of the thought of the continuity of the species. The high value which she attaches to the idea of pairing is not selfish and individual, it is super- individual, and, if I may be forgiven the desecration of the phrase, it is the transcendental function of woman. And just as femaleness is no more than the embodiment of the idea of pairing, so is it sexuality in the abstract. Pairing is the supreme good for the woman ; she seeks to effect it always and everywhere. Her personal sexuality is only a special case of this universal, generalised, impersonal
instinct.
The effort of woman to realise this idea of pairing is so
fundamentally opposed to that conception of innocence and purity, the higher virginity which man's erotic nature has demanded from women, that not all his erotic incense would have obscured her real nature but for one factor. I have now to explain this factor which has veiled from man the true nature of woman, and which in itself is one of the deepest problems of woman, I mean her absolute duplicity. Her pairing instinct and her duplicity, the latter so great as to conceal even from woman herself what is the real essence of her nature, must be explained together.
All that may have seemed like clear gain is now again called into question. Self-observation was found lacking in women, and yet there certainly are women who observe
? WOMAN AND HER SIGNIFICANCE
very closely all that happens to them. They were denied the love of truth, and yet one knows many women who would not tell a lie for anything. It has been said that they are lacking in consciousness of guilt ; but there are many women who reproach themselves bitterly for most trifling matters, besides " penitents " who mortify their flesh. Modesty was left to man, but what is to be said of the womanly modesty, that bashfulness, which, according to Hamerling, only women have ? Is there no foundation for the way in which the idea has grown and found such acceptance ? And then again : Can religion be absent, in spite ot so many " professing " women ? Are we to exclude all women from the moral purity, all the womanly virtues, which poets and historians have ascribed to her ? Are we to say that woman is merely sexual, that sexuality only receives its proper due from her when it is so well known that women are shocked at the slightest allusion to sexual matters, that instead of giving way to it they are often irritated and disgusted at the idea of impurity, and quite often detest sexual union for themselves and regard it just as many men do ?
It is, of course, manifest that one and the same point is bound up in all these antitheses, and on the answer given to them depends the finai and decisive judgment on woman. And it is clear that if only one single female creature were really asexual, or could be shown to have a real relationship to the idea of personal moral worth, every- thing that I have said about woman, its general value as psychically characteristic of the sex, would be irretrievably demolished, and the whole position which this book has taken up would be shattered at one blow.
These apparently contradictory phenomena must be satisfactorily explained, and it must be shown that what is at the bottom ot it ail and makes it seem so equivocal arises from the very nature of woman whicti 1 have been trying to explain all along.
In order to understand these fallacious contradictions one must first of all remember the tremendous " accessi-
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? 262 SEX AND CHARACTER
bility," to use another word, the " impressionability," of women, -^heir extraordinary aptitude for anything new, and their easy acceptance of other people's views have not yet been sufficiently emphasised in this bool^
/As a rule, the woman adapts herself to the man, his views become hers, his likes and dislikes are shared by her, every word he says is an incentive to her, and the stronger his sexual influence on her the more this is so. Woman does not perceive that this influence which man has on her causes her to deviate from the line of her own development ; she does not look upon it as a sort of unwarrantable intrusion ; she does not try to shake off what is really an invasion of her private life ; she is not ashamed of being receptive ; on the contrary, she is really pleased when she can be so, and prefer^ man to mould her mentally. She rejoices in being dependent, and her expectatioiis-fr? )m. m. an resolve themselves i nto the moment when she may_bg_p? if? cily43assi-ve.
But it is not only from her lover (although she would like that best), but also from her father and mother, uncles and aunts, brothers and sisters, near relations and distant ac- quaintances, that a woman takes what she thinks and believes, being only too glad to get her opinions " ready made. "
It is not only inexperienced girls but even elderly and married women who copy each other in everj'thing, from the nice new dress or pretty coiffure down to the places where they get their things, and the very recipes by which they cook.
And it never seems to occur to them that they are doing something derogatory on their part, as it ought to do if they possessed an individuality of their own and strove to work out their own salvation. A woman's thoughts and actions have no definite, independent relations to things in themselves ; they are not the result of the reaction of her individuality to the world. They accept what is imposed onthemgladly,andadheretoit withthegreatestfirmness. That is why woman is so intolerant when there has been a breach of conventional laws. I must guote an amusing
;
? WOMANANDHERSIGNIFICANCE 263
instance, bearing on this side of woman's character, from Herbert Spencer. It is the custom in various tribes of Indians in North and South America for the men to hunt and fight and leave all the laborious and menial tasks to theirwives. TheDakotanwomenaresoimbuedwiththe idea of the reasonableness and fitness of this arrangement that, instead of feeling injured by it, the greatest insult that one of these women can offer to another would be implied
in some such words as follows ; " You disgraceful creature. . . . I saw your husband carrying home wood for the fires. What was his wife doing that he had to demean himself by
"
doing woman's work ?
<^ The extraordinary way in which woman can be influenced
b^ external agencies is similar in its nature to her suggesti- bility, which is far greater and more general than man's they are both in accordance with woman's desire to play the passive and never the active part in the sexual act and all that leads to it. *. \
It is the universal passivity of woman's nature which makes her accept and assume man's valuations of things, although these are utterly at variance with her nature. The way in which woman can be impregnated with the masculine point of view, the saturation of her innermost thoughts with a foreign element, her false recognition of morahty, which cannot be called hypocrisy because it does not conceal anything anti-moral, her assumption and prac- tise of things which in themselves are not in her realm, are all very well if the woman does not try to use her own
judgment, and they succeed in keeping up the fiction of her superior morality. Complications first arise when these acquired valuations come into collision with the only inborn, genuine, and universally feminine valuation, the supreme value she sets on pairing.
Woman's acceptance of pairing as the supreme good is quite unconscious on her part. As she has no sense of
* The quiescent, inactive, large egg-cells are sought out by the mobile, active, and slender spermatozoa.
? 264 SEX AND CHARACTER
individuality she has nothing to contrast with oairing ; and so, unlike man, she cannot realise its significance, or even notice the presence in herself of this instinct.
No woman knows, or ever has known, or ever will know, what she does when she enters into association with man. Femaleness is identical with pairing, and a woman would have to get outside herself in order to see and under- stand that she pairs. Thus it is that the deepest desire of woman, all that she means, and all that she is, remain unrecognised by her. There is nothing, then, to prevent the male negative valuation of pairing overshadowing the female positive valuation of it in the consciousness of the woman. The susceptibility of woman is so great that she can even act in opposition to what she is, to the one thing on which she really sets a positive value !
But the imposture which she enacts when she allows herself to be incorporated with man's opinions of sexuality and shamelessness, even of the miposture itself, and when she uses the masculine standard for her actions, is such a colossal fraud that she is never conscious of it ; she has acquired a second nature, without even guessing that it is not her real one ; she takes herself seriously, believes she is something and that she believes in something ; she is con- vinced of the sincerity and originality of her moralisings and opinions; the lie is as deeply rooted as that; it is organic. I cannot do better than speak of the ontological untruthfulness of woman.
Wolfram von Eschenbach says of his hero :
" . . . So keusch und rein Ruht' er bei seiner Ko? nigin,
Dass kein Genu? gen fand' darin
So manches Weib beim lieben Mann. Dass doch so manche in Gedanken Zur U? ppigkeit will u? berschwanken, Die sonst sich spro? de zeigen kann ! Vor Fremden zu? chtig sie erscheinen. Doch ist des Herzens tiefstes Meinen Das Widerspiel vom a? ussern Schein. "
Wolfram indicates clearly enough what is at the bottom
WOMAN AND HER SIGNIFICANCE
265
of woman's heart, but he does not say all that is to be said. Women deceive themselves as well as others on this point. One cannot artificially suppress and supplant one's real nature, the physical as well as the other side, without some- thing happening. The hygienic penalty that must be paid for woman's denial of her real nature is hysteria.
Of all the neurotic and psychic phenomena, those of hysteria are the most fascinating for psychologists ; they represent a far more difficult and, therefore, a more interest- ing study than those observed in melancholia or in simple paranoia.
The majority of psychiatrists have a distrust of psycho- logical analyses which it is not easy for them to shake off every statement of pathological alteration of tissues or intoxication by certain means is for them a limine credible
;
it is only in psychical matters that they refuse to recognise a primary cause. But since no reason has so far been given why psychical phenomena should be of importance secondary to physical phenomena, it is quite justifiable to disregard such prejudices.
It is quite possible--there is nothing to prevent it being so--that a very great deal, perhaps everything, may depend on the proper interpretation of the " psychical mechanism " of hysteria. That this is so is proved by the fact that the few conclusions of any value with reference to hysteria so far discovered have been arrived at in this way ; the inves- tigations carried out by Pierre Janet, Oskar Vogt, and particularly by Breuer and S. Freud, show what I mean.
J.
All good work on hysteria will undoubtedly follow the lines
these men have worked on ; that is to say, by investigation of the psychological processes which led up to the disease.
I believe myself that what may be called a psycho- logical sexual traumatism is at the root of hysteria. The typical picture of a hysterical case is not very different from the following : A woman has always accepted the male views on sexual matters ; they are in reality totally foreign to her nature, and sometime, by some chance, out of the conflict between what her nature asserts to be true and
;
? ? SEX AND CHARACTER
what she has always accepted as true and beUeved to be true, there comes what may be called a " wounding of the mind. " It is thus possible for the person affected to declare a sexual desire to be an " extraneous body in her conscious- ness," a sensation which she thinks she detests, but which inrealityhasitsorigininherownnature. Thetremendous intensity with which she endeavours to suppress the desire (and which only serves to increase it) so that she may the more vehemently and indignantly reject the thought--these are the alternations which are seen in hysteria. And the chronic untruthfulness of woman becomes acute if the woman has ever allowed herself to be imbued with man's ethically negative valuation of sexuality. It is well known that hysterical women manifest the strongest suggestibility with men. Hysteria is the organic crisis of the organic
untruthfulness of woman.
I do not deny that there are hysterical men, but these are
comparatively few ; and since man's psychic possibilities are endless, that of becoming "female " is amongst them, and,therefore,hecanbehysterical. Thereareundoubtedly many untruthful men, but in them the crisis takes a different form, man's untruthfulness being of a different kind and never so hopeless in character as woman's.
This examination mto the organic untruthfulness of woman, into her inability to be honest about herself which alone makes it possible for her to think that she thinks what is really totally opposed to her nature, appears to me to offer a satisfactory explanation of those difficulties which the aetiology of hysteria present.
Hysteria shows that untruthfulness, however far it may reach,cannotsuppresseverything. Byeducationorenviron- ment woman adopts a whole system of ideas and valuations which are foreign to her, or, rather, has patiently submitted to have them impressed on her ; and it would need a tremendous shock to get rid of this strongly-rooted psychical complexity, and to transplant woman to that condition of intellectual helplessness which is so characteristic of hysteria.
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? WOMANANDHERSIGNIFICANCE 267
An extraordinary shock suffices to destroy the artificial structure, and to place woman in the arena to undertake a fight between her unconscious, oppressed nature, and her certainly conscious but unnatural mind. The see-sawing which now begins between the two explains the unusual psychic discontinuity during the hysterical phase, the con- tinual changes of mood, none of which are subject to the control of a dominant, central, controlling nucleus of indi- viduality. It is extraordinary how many contradictions can co-exist in the hysterical. Sometimes they are highly intelligent and able to judge correctly and keenly oppose hypnotism and so forth. Then, again, they are excited by most trivial causes, and are most subject to hypnotic trances. Sometimes they are abnormally chaste, at other times extremely sensual.
All this is no longer difficult to explain.