Sex & Character / Authorised Translation from the Sixth German Edition

by Otto Weininger

The difficulty is easy to resolve. It is just because a living creature—not necessarily a human being—by being endowed with memory is not wholly absorbed by the experiences of the moment that it can, so to speak, oppose itself to time, take cognisance of it, and make it the subject of observation. Were the being wholly abandoned to the experience of the moment and not saved from it by memory then it would change with time and be a floating bubble in the stream of events; it could never be conscious of time, for consciousness implies duality. The mind must have transcended time to grasp it, it must have stood outside it in order to be able to reflect upon it. This does not apply merely to special moments of time, as, for instance, to the case that we cannot be conscious of sorrow until the sorrow is over, but it is a part of the conception of time. If we could not free ourselves from time, we could have no knowledge of time.

In order to understand the condition of timelessness let us reflect on what memory rescues from time. What transcends time is only what is of interest to the individual, what has meaning for him; in fact, all that he assigns value to. We remember only the things that have some value for us even if we are unconscious of the value. It is the value that creates the timelessness. We forget everything that has no value for us even if we are unconscious of that absence of value.

What has value, then, is timeless; or, to put it the other way, a thing has the more value the less it is a function of time. In all the world value is in proportion to independence of time; only things that are timeless have a positive value. Although this is not what I take to be the deepest and fullest meaning of value, it is, at least, the first special law of the theory of values.

A hasty survey of common facts will suffice to prove this relation between value and duration. We are always inclined to pay little attention to the views of those whom we have known only for a short time, and, as a rule, we think little of the hasty judgments of those who easily change their ideas. On the other hand, uncompromising fixedness gains respect, even if it assume the form of vindictiveness or obstinacy. The ære perennius of the Roman poets and the Egyptian pyramids lasting for forty centuries are favourite images. The reputation a man leaves behind him would soon be depreciated were it suspected that it would soon disappear instead of being handed down the centuries. A man dislikes to be told that he is always changing; but let it be put that he is simply showing new sides of his character and he will be proud of the permanence through the changes. He who is tired of life, for whom life has ceased to be of interest, is interesting to no one. The fear of the extinction of a name or of a family is well known.

So also statute laws and customs lose in value if their validity is expressly limited in time; and if two people are making a bargain, they will be the more ready to distrust one another if the bargain is to be only of short duration. In fact, the value that we attach to things depends to a large extent on our estimate of their durability.

This law of values is the chief reason why men are interested in their death and their future. The desire for value shows itself in the efforts to free things from time, and this pressure is exerted even in the case of things which sooner or later must change, as, for instance, riches and position and everything that we call the goods of this world. Here lies the psychological motive for the making of wills and the bestowal of property. The motive is not care for relatives, because a man without relatives very often is more anxious to settle his goods, not feeling, perhaps, like the head of a family, that in any event his existence will have some kind of permanence, that traces of him will be left after his own death.

The great politician or ruler, and especially the despot, whose rule ends with his death, seeks to increase his own value by making it independent of time. He may attempt it through a code of laws or a biography like that of Julius Cæsar, by some great philosophical undertaking, by the founding of museums or collections, or (and this perhaps is the favourite way) by alterations of the calendar. And he seeks to extend his power to the utmost during his life-time, to preserve it and make it stable by enduring contracts and diplomatic marriages, and most of all by attacking and removing everything that could endanger the permanence of his kingdom. And so the politician becomes a conqueror.

Psychological and philosophical investigations of the theory of values have neglected the time element. Perhaps this is because they have been very much under the influence of political economy. I believe, however, that the application of my principle to political economy would be of considerable value. Very slight reflection will lead one to see that in commercial affairs the time element is a most important factor in estimating value. The common definition of value, that it is in proportion to the power of the thing valued to relieve our wants, is quite incomplete without the element of time. Such things as air and water have no value only in so far as they are not localised and individualised; but as soon as they have been localised and individualised, and so received form, they have received a quality that may not last, and with the idea of duration comes the idea of value. Form and timelessness, or individuation and duration, are the two factors which compose value.

Thus it can be shown that the fundamental law of the theory of value applies both to individual psychology and to social psychology. And now I can return to what is, after all, the special task of this chapter.

The first general conclusion to be made is that the desire for timelessness, a craving for value, pervades all spheres of human activity. And this desire for real value, which is deeply bound up with the desire for power, is completely absent in the woman. It is only in comparatively rare cases that old women trouble to make exact directions about the disposition of their property, a fact in obvious relation with the absence in them of the desire for immortality.