Before turning to feminine psychology I should like briefly to touch upon the use of the literature in our question and indicate that the poets’ results are not good for us so long as we are trying to satisfy our particular legal needs. We might, of course, refer to the poet for information concerning the feminine heart,—woman’s most important property,—but the historically famous knowers of the woman’s heart leave us in the lurch and even lead us into decided errors. We are not here concerned with the history of literature, nor with the solution of the “dear riddle of woman;” we are dry-souled lawyers who seek to avoid mistakes at the expense of the honor and liberty of others, and if we do not want to believe the poets it is only because of many costly mistakes. Once we were all young and had ideals. What the poets told us we supposed to be the wisdom of life—nobody else ever offers any—and we wanted compulsorily to solve the most urgent of human problems with our poetical views. Illusions, mistakes, and guiltless remorse, were the consequence of this topsy-turvy work.
Of course I do not mean to drag our poets to court and accuse them of seducing our youth with false gods—I am convinced that if the poets were asked they would tell us that their poetry was intended for all save for physicians and criminalists. But it is conceivable that they have introduced points of view that do not imply real life. Poetical forms do not grow up naturally, and then suddenly come together in a self-originated idea. The poet creates the idea first, and in order that this may be so the individual form must evolve according to sense. The more natural and inevitable this process becomes the better the poem, but it does not follow that since we do not doubt it because it seems so natural, it mirrors the process of life. Not one of us criminalists has ever seen a form as described in a poem—least of all a woman. Obviously, in our serious and dry work, we may be able to interpret many an observation and assertion of the poet as a golden truth, but only when we have tested its correctness for the daily life. But it must be understood that I am not saying here, that we ourselves might have been able to make the observation, or to abstract a truth from the flux of appearances, or at least to set it in beautiful, terse, and I might say convincing, form. I merely assert, that we must be permitted to examine whether what has been beautifully said may be generalized, and whether we then have found the same, or a similar thing, in the daily life. Paradoxical as it sounds, we must never forget that there is a kind of evidentiality in the form of beauty itself. One of Klopstock’s remarkable psalms begins: “Moons wander round the earth, earths round suns, the whole host of suns wander round a greater sun, Our Father, that art thou.” In this inexpressibly lofty verse there is essentially, and only in an extremely intensified fashion, evidence of the existence of God, and if the convinced atheist should read this verse he would, at least for the moment, believe in his existence. At the same time, a real development of evidence is neither presented nor intended. There are magnificent images, unassailable true propositions: the moon goes round about the earth, the earth about the sun, the whole system around a central sun—and now without anything else, the fourth proposition concerning the identity of the central sun with our heavenly Father is added as true. And the reader is captivated for at least a minute! What I have tried here to show by means of a drastic example occurs many times in poems, and is especially evident where woman is the subject, so that we may unite in believing that the poet can not teach us that subject, that he may only lead us into errors.
To learn about the nature of woman and its difference from that of man we must drop everything poetical. Most conscientiously we must drop all cynicism and seek to find illumination only in serious disciplines. These disciplines may be universal history and the history of culture, but certainly not memoirs, which always represent subjective experience and one-sided views. Anatomy, physiology, anthropology, and serious special literature, presupposed, may give us an unprejudiced outlook, and then with much effort we may observe, compare, and renew our tests of what has been established, sine ira et studio, sine odio et gratia.
I subjoin a list of sources and of especial literature which also contains additional references.[253]
Section 64. 2. Difference between Man and Women.
There are many attempts to determine the difference between the feminine and masculine psyche. Volkmar in his “Textbook of Psychology” has attempted to review these experiments. But the individual instances show how impossible is clear and definite statement concerning the matter. Much is too broad, much too narrow; much is unintelligible, much at least remotely correct only if one knows the outlook of the discoverer in question, and is inclined to agree with him. Consider the following series of contrasts.
| Male | Female |
| Individuality | Receptivity (Burdach, Berthold) |
| Activity | Passivity (Daub, Ulrici, Hagemann) |
| Leadership | Imitativeness (Schleiermacher) |
| Vigor | Sensitivity to stimulation (Beneke) |
| Conscious activity | Unconscious activity (Hartmann) |
| Conscious deduction | Unconscious induction (Wundt) |
| Will | Consciousness (Fischer) |
| Independence | Completeness (Krause, Lindemann) |
| Particularity | Generally generic (Volkmann) |
| Negation | Affirmation (Hegel and his school) |
None of these contrasts are satisfactory, many are unintelligible. Burdach’s is correct only within limits and Hartmann’s is approximately true if you accept his point of view. I do not believe that these explanations would help anybody or make it easier for him to understand woman. Indeed, to many a man they will appear to be saying merely that the psyche of the male is masculine, that of the female feminine. The thing is not to be done with epigrams however spirited. Epigrams merely tend to increase the already great confusion.
Hardly more help toward understanding the subject is to be derived from certain expressions which deal with a determinate and also with a determining trait of woman. For example, the saying, “On forbidden ground woman is cautious and man keen,” may, under some circumstances, be of great importance in a criminal case, particularly when it is necessary to fix the sex of the criminal. If the crime was cautiously committed a woman may be inferred, and if swiftly, a man. But that maxim is deficient in two respects. Man and woman deal in the way described, not only in forbidden fields, but generally. Again, such characteristics may be said to be ordinary but in no wise regulative: there are enough cases in which the woman was much keener than the man and the man much more cautious than the woman.
The greatest danger of false conceptions lies in the attribution of an unproved peculiarity to woman, by means of some beautifully expressed, and hence, apparently true, proverb. Consider the well known maxim: Man forgives a beautiful woman everything, woman nothing. Taken in itself the thing is true; we find it in the gossip of the ball-room, and in the most dreadful of criminal cases. Men are inclined to reduce the conduct of a beautiful sinner to the mildest and least offensive terms, while her own sex judge her the more harshly in the degree of her beauty and the number of its partisans. Now it might be easy in an attempt to draw the following consequences from the correctness of this proposition: Men are generally inclined to forgive in kindness, women are the unforgiving creatures. This inference would be altogether unjustified, for the maxim only incidentally has woman for its subject; it might as well read: Woman forgives a handsome man everything, man nothing. What we have at work here is the not particularly remarkable fact that envy plays a great rôle in life.