Sex & Character / Authorised Translation from the Sixth German Edition

by Otto Weininger

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 qualities there has been so much controversy, are mixtures of the types in different proportions. Sexually intermediate forms, which are the only actually existing individuals, were dealt with in a more or less schematic fashion in the first part of this book. Consideration of the general biological application 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 conditions. In plants and animals the presence of hermaphroditism 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 individual, 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 another individual “woman” or “man.”[8] This uni-sexuality 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 psychical roll of the man, and in cases of prolonged intercourse 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 sufficiently characteristic—receives it from the former.

[8] 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.

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 one of two things, either male or female. There is a deep 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 investigation are very great, if only on account of the complexity of 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 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 arise and almost forbid the attempt to make types. 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 a multitude of intermediate conditions. The characterological differences appear to follow this rule in a fashion not dissimilar to the suggestion of the Pythagorean, Alcmæon 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 extremes, and multiply this determination by discovering it for a great many characters, would this complex system of co-ordinate lines really give us a conception of the individual? 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 doctrine of particulate determinants, a mosaic psychology.

This brings us in a new way directly against the old, over-ripe problem. Is there in a man a single and simple existence, 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 theory of knowledge itself with regard to its postulates, claims, and objects, and will have to attempt to obtain information 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 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 actualities 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 mind of small doses of caffein. It is a lamentable testimony 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 sensations of the skin and muscles, although, indeed, all modern psychology does depend upon study of sensations. Dilthey did not lay enough stress on his argument that existing psychology does nothing towards problems that are eminently psychological, such as murder, friendship, loneliness, 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 characterology we must seek the permanent, existing something through the fleeting changes.