Sex & Character / Authorised Translation from the Sixth German Edition

by Otto Weininger

It must not be forgotten that quite ordinary men in moments of excitement, in anger at some underhanded deed, have found words with which they never would have been credited. The greater part of what is called expression in art as in language depends (if the reader will remember what I have said about the process of “clarification”) on the fact that some individual more richly endowed clarifies, organises, and exhibits some idea almost instantaneously, an idea which to a less endowed person was still in the henid form. The course of clarification is much shortened in the mind of the second person.

If it really were the case, as popular opinion has tried to establish, that the genius were separated from ordinary men by a thick wall through which no sound could penetrate, then all understanding of the efforts of genius would be denied to ordinary men, and their works would fail to make any impression on them. All hopes of progress depend on this being untrue. And it is untrue. The difference between men of genius and the others is quantitative not qualitative, of degree not of kind.

There is, moreover, very little sense in preventing young people from giving expression to their ideas on the pretext that they have less experience than have older persons. There are many who may live a thousand years without encountering experience of any value. It could only be in a society of persons equally gifted that such an idea could have any meaning.

Because the life of the genius is more intense even in his earliest years than that of other children, his memory can go further back. In extreme cases the memory may be complete and vivid back to the third year of life, whereas in most recollection begins much later. I know some people whose earliest recollections date only from their eighth year, and there are instances of an even later beginning of the conscious life. I do not maintain that the date at which active memory begins can be taken as a measure of relative genius, that he who remembers from his second year is so much the more of a genius than he who can go back only to his fourth or fifth year. But in a general way, I believe the parallel to hold good.

Even in the cases of the greatest men, some time, greater or shorter, elapsed between the date of their earliest recollection and the time from which onwards they remember everything, from the time, in fact, in which their genius was ripe. But in the case of most men there is forgetfulness of the greater part of their lives; they are conscious only that they themselves and none other have lived their lives. Out of their whole lives there only remain certain moments, and scattered recollections, which serve as sign-posts. If they are asked about any particular thing they can only tell, for instance, because in such and such a month they were so old, or they wore such and such clothes, they lived at this place, or that their income was so much.

If one has lived with them in former years, it is only after great trouble that the past can be brought to their mind. In such cases one is surely justified in saying that such a person is ungifted, or at least in not considering him conspicuously able.

The request for an autobiography would put most men into a most painful position; they could scarcely tell if they were asked what they had done the day before. Memory with most people is quite spasmodic and purely associative. In the case of the man of genius every impression that he has received endures; he is always under the influence of impressions; and so nearly all men of genius tend to suffer from fixed ideas. The psychical condition of men’s minds may be compared with a set of bells close together, and so arranged that in the ordinary man a bell rings only when one beside it sounds, and the vibration lasts only a moment. In the genius, when a bell sounds it vibrates so strongly that it sets in action the whole series, and remains in action throughout life. The latter kind of movement often gives rise to extraordinary conditions and absurd impulses, that may last for weeks together and that form the basis of the supposed kinship of genius with insanity.

For similar reasons gratitude is apparently the rarest human virtue. People are often very conscious of how much they have borrowed, but they neither can nor will try to remember the necessity in which they stood, nor the freedom which that help brought them. Even if want of memory were really the cause of ingratitude, it would not be sufficient for a man to possess a marvellous memory to have a like spirit of gratitude. A special condition is also necessary, but its description cannot be undertaken here.

From the connection between giftedness and memory which is so often mistaken and denied because it is not sought where it is to be found, from the power of self recollection, a further fact is to be deduced. The poet who feels urged to write without premeditation, without reflection, without having willingly pressed the pedal; the musician to whom the desire to compose has come, so that he must create whether he will or no, even if he feels more inclined to sleep or to rest; these, in such moments, will simply reproduce thoughts they have carried in their heads all their lives. A composer who can remember none of his songs or subjects by heart, or a poet who cannot recollect any of his poems—without having carefully learned them—such men are in no sense really great.

Before we apply these remarks to the consideration of the mental differences of the sexes, we must make yet one more distinction between different kinds of memory. The individual moments in the life of a gifted man are not remembered as disconnected points, not as different particles of time, each one separated and defined from the following one, as the numerals one, two, and so on.