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 complete 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 meaning of the word, having concerned itself almost entirely with the motley world, the changing field of sensations, and overlooked 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 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.
The 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 continue. 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.”
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 character. What is left for characterology, the science of character? On the one hand, there are those who cry, “De individuo nulla scientia,” and “Individuum est ineffabile”; 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.
By 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 unconscious 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.