Speaking generally, the sexual sensibility of woman is, as we have seen, of quite a different nature from that of man; but in intensity it is at least as great as that of man.
[24] The hermaphroditic idea of antiquity has repeatedly fascinated the human spirit. It certainly cannot be denied that something great and noble underlay this idea of overcoming sex. As long as eighty years before, Weininger and the modern apostles of bisexuality, Johann Michael Leupoldt, Professor of Medicine at the University of Erlangen, made the following prophecy: “The reconciliation of the sexual contrast in every human individual will some day proceed so far that, dynamically understood, with the general attainment of a kind of hermaphroditism, humanity, having reached its earthly goal, will become totally extinct” (“Eubiotik oder Grundzüge der Kunst, als Mensch richtig, tüchtig, wohl und lang zu leben”—“Eubiotics, or Principles of the Art of Living as Man Rightly, Virtuously, Well, and Long,” pp. 232, 233; Berlin and Leipzig, 1828). This would amount to a kind of natural realization of E. von Hartmann’s ideal of conscious self-annihilation at the end of time!
[25] G. Hirth, “Entropy of the Germinal System and Hereditary Enfranchisement,” pp. 89, 90 (Munich, 1900).
[26] See note ([36]), [p. 94].
[27] The “ulu” is a kind of knife used by Eskimo women.
[28] Cf. in this connexion, Alice Salomon, “The Choice of a Profession for Girls”; Josephine Levy-Rathenau, “A Consideration of the Various Professions for Women, Qualifications and Prospects”; Elizabeth Altmann-Gottheiner, “A Study of Woman.” These are all published in “Das Buch vom Kinde” (“The Book of the Child”), edited by Adele Schreiber, Leipzig and Berlin, 1907, vol. ii., Div. 2, pp. 182-188, 189-209, 210-216 (contains an abstract of the most important literature of the subject).
[29] On this subject one of our most celebrated economists writes as follows: “Let us observe what to-day a good housewife of the middle class is able to get through in the way of domestic and hygienic activity, and of the education of children, and by means of the knowledge and employment of domestic machines; let us not overlook in what a one-sided way the great advances in natural science and in the mechanical arts have hitherto been devoted to the service of the great industries, what enormous economies are still possible if the same knowledge and intelligence are devoted to the amelioration of domestic service. Only the rough, barbarous housewife of the lower classes can say, ‘I have no more to-day to do in the house.’ When the mode of life is a healthy one, when to every dwelling-house is attached a garden, the housewife even to-day is fully occupied, and in the future will be still more so, notwithstanding all the schools that come to her assistance, all the shops, all the trades; notwithstanding all the products, including food-products, which nowadays she buys ready-made. And besides her domestic activity, she has to find time for lectures, for culture, for music, and for various socially useful activities—even women of quite the lower classes. Without this no social cure is possible.”—G. Schmoller, “Elements of General Domestic Economy,” vol. i., p. 253 (Leipzig, 1901).
The Simplification of Household Duties.—English readers will find the questions briefly touched upon in this note—the enslavement of woman by an unceasing round of petty domestic toil, the necessity for devoting the same amount of finished intelligence to these domestic problems that has been devoted to “labour-saving” in most departments of masculine activity, and the lines on which future progress may be expected to move, bringing about in this way alone a much-needed “emancipation” of women—fully discussed by Mr. H. G. Wells in his sociological studies. See “Anticipations,” “Mankind in the Making,” “A New Utopia,” “In the Days of the Comet.”—Translator.
[30] Noteworthy is the following utterance of a clergyman regarding the sensuality of country girls: “Young women are in no way behind young men in the strength of their fleshly lusts; they are only too willing to be seduced—so willing that even older girls frequently give themselves to half-grown boys, and girls give themselves to several men in brief succession. Moreover, it is by no means always the young men by whom the seduction is effected. Often enough it is the girls who lure the lads to sexual intercourse, in which case they do not wait till the lads come to their rooms, but they go themselves to the young men’s bedrooms, or wait for them in their beds.”—C. Wagner, “The State of Affairs as Regards Sexual Morality among the Evangelical Agricultural Population of the German Empire,” vol. i., sec. 2, p. 213 (Leipzig, 1897).