Sex & Character / Authorised Translation from the Sixth German Edition

by Otto Weininger

And so one cannot describe particular henids; one can only be conscious of their existence.

None the less henids are things as vital as elements and characters. Each henid is an individual and can be distinguished from other henids. Later on I shall show that probably the mental data of early childhood (certainly of the first fourteen months) are all henids, although perhaps not in the absolute sense. Throughout childhood these data do not reach far from the henid stage; in adults there is always a certain process of development going on. Probably the perceptions of some plants and animals are henids. In the case of mankind the development from the henid to the completely differentiated perception and idea is always possible, although such an ideal condition may seldom be attained. Whilst expression in words is impossible in the case of the absolute henid, as words imply articulated thoughts, there are also in the highest stages of the intellect possible to man some things still unclarified and, therefore, unspeakable.

The theory of henids will help in the old quarrel between the spheres of perception and sensation, and will replace by a developmental conception the ideas of element and character which Avenarius and Petzoldt deduced from the process of clarification. It is only when the elements become distinct that they can be distinguished from the characters. Man is disposed to humours and sentimentalities only so long as the contours of his ideas are vague; when he sees things in the light instead of the dark his process of thinking will become different.

Now what is the relation between the investigation I have been making and the psychology of the sexes? What is the distinction between the male and the female (and to reach this has been the object of my digression) in the process of clarification?

Here is my answer:

The male has the same psychical data as the female, but in a more articulated form; where she thinks more or less in henids, he thinks in more or less clear and detailed presentations in which the elements are distinct from the tones of feeling. With the woman, thinking and feeling are identical, for man they are in opposition. The woman has many of her mental experiences as henids, whilst in man these have passed through a process of clarification. Woman is sentimental, and knows emotion but not mental excitement.

The greater articulation of the mental data in man is reflected in the more marked character of his body and face, as compared with the roundness and vagueness of the woman. In the same connection it is to be remembered that, notwithstanding the popular belief, the senses of the male are much more acute than those of the woman. The only exception is the sense of touch, an exception of great interest to which I shall refer later. It has been established, moreover, that the sensibility to pain is much more acute in man, and we have now learned to distinguish between that and the tactile sensations.

A weaker sensibility is likely to retard the passage of mental data through the process of clarification, although we cannot quite take it for granted that it must be so. Perhaps a more trustworthy proof of the less degree of articulation in the mental data of the woman may be drawn from consideration of the greater decision in the judgments made by men, although indeed it may be the case that this distinction rests on a deeper basis. It is certainly the case that whilst we are still near the henid stage we know much more certainly what a thing is not than what it is. What Mach has called instinctive experience depends on henids. While we are near the henid stage we think round about a subject, correct ourselves at each new attempt, and say that that was not yet the right word. Naturally that condition implies uncertainty and indecision in judgment. Judgment comes towards the end of the process of clarification; the act of judgment is in itself a departure from the henid stage.

The most decisive proof for the correctness of the view that attributes henids to woman and differentiated thoughts to man, and that sees in this a fundamental sexual distinction, lies in the fact that wherever a new judgment is to be made, (not merely something already settled to be put into proverbial form) it is always the case that the female expects from man the clarification of her data, the interpretation of her henids. It is almost a tertiary sexual character of the male, and certainly it acts on the female as such, that she expects from him the interpretation and illumination of her thoughts. It is from this reason that so many girls say that they could only marry, or, at least, only love a man who was cleverer than themselves; that they would be repelled by a man who said that all they thought was right, and did not know better than they did. In short, the woman makes it a criterion of manliness that the man should be superior to herself mentally, that she should be influenced and dominated by the man; and this in itself is enough to ridicule all ideas of sexual equality.

The male lives consciously, the female lives unconsciously. This is certainly the necessary conclusion for the extreme cases. The woman receives her consciousness from the man; the function to bring into consciousness what was outside it is a sexual function of the typical man with regard to the typical woman, and is a necessary part of his ideal completeness.