| Page | ||
|---|---|---|
| Author’s Preface to the First German Edition | [ix] | |
| FIRST OR PREPARATORY PART SEXUAL COMPLEXITY | ||
| Introduction | [1] | |
| On the development of general conceptions — Male and female — Contradictions — Transitionalforms — Anatomy and natural endowment — Uncertainty of anatomy | ||
| CHAPTER I | ||
| Males and Females | [5] | |
| Embryonic neutral condition — Rudiments in the adult — Degrees of “gonochorism” —Principle of intermediate forms — Male and female — Need for typical conceptions — Resumé — Earlyanticipations | ||
| CHAPTER II | ||
| Male and Female Plasmas | [11] | |
| Position of sexuality — Steenstrup’s view adopted — Sexual characters — Internal secretions— Idioplasm — Arrhenoplasm — Thelyplasm — Variations — Proofs from the effects of castration —Transplantation and transfusion — Organotherapy — Individual differences between cells — Origin of intermediate sexualconditions — Brain — Excess of male births — Determination of sex — Comparative pathology | ||
| CHAPTER III | ||
| The Laws of Sexual Attraction | [26] | |
| Sexual preference — Probability of these being controlled by a law — First formula — Firstinterpretation — Proofs — Heterostylism — Interpretation of heterostylism — Animal kingdom — Further laws— Second formula — Chemotaxis — Resemblances and differences — Goethe, “elective affinities” —Marriage and free love — Effects on progeny | ||
| CHAPTER IV | ||
| Homo-sexuality and Pederasty | [45] | |
| Homo-sexuals as intermediate forms — Inborn or acquired, healthy or diseased? — A special instance ofthe law of attraction — All men have the rudiments of homo-sexuality — Friendship and sexuality — Animals —Failure of medical treatment — Homo-sexuality, punishment and ethics — Distinction between homo-sexuality and pederasty | ||
| CHAPTER V | ||
| The Science of Character and the Science of Form | [53] | |
| Principle of sexually intermediate forms as fundamental principle of the psychology of individuals —Simultaneity or periodicity? — Methods of psychological investigation — Examples — Individualised education —Conventionalising — Parallelism between morphology and characterology — Physiognomy and the principles of psycho-physics— Method of the doctrine of variation — A new way of stating the problem — Deductive morphology — Correlation— Outlook | ||
| CHAPTER VI | ||
| Emancipated Women | [64] | |
| The woman question — Claim for emancipation and maleness — Emancipation and homo-sexuality — Sexualpreferences of emancipated women — Physiognomy of emancipated women — Other celebrated women — Femaleness andemancipation — Practical rules — Genius essentially male — Movementsof women in historical times — Periodicity — Biology and the conception of history — Outlook of the woman movement— Its fundamental error | ||
| SECOND OR PRINCIPAL PART THE SEXUAL TYPES | ||
| CHAPTER I | ||
| Man and Woman | [79] | |
| Bisexuality and unisexuality — Man or woman, male or female — Fundamental difficulty in characterology— Experiment, analysis of sensation and psychology — Dilthey — Conception of empirical character — What is andwhat is not the object of psychology — Character and individuality — Problem of characterology and the problem of thesexes | ||
| CHAPTER II | ||
| Male and Female Sexuality | [85] | |
| The problem of a female psychology — Man as the interpreter of female psychology — Differences in thesexual impulse — The absorbing and liberating factors — Intensity and activity — Sexual irritability of women —Larger field of the sexual life in woman — Local differences in the perception of sexuality — Local and periodical cessationof male sexuality — Differences in the degrees of consciousness of sexuality | ||
| CHAPTER III | ||
| Male and Female Consciousness | [93] | |
| Sensation and feeling — Avenarius’ division into “element” and “character”— These inseparable at the earliest stage — Process of “clarification” — Presentiments — Grades ofunderstanding — Forgetting — Paths and organisation — Conception of “henids” — The henid as thesimplest, psychical datum — Sexual differences in the organisation of thecontents of the mind — Sensibility — Certainty of judgment — Developed consciousness as a male character | ||
| CHAPTER IV | ||
| Talent and Genius | [103] | |
| Genius and talent — Genius and giftedness — Methods — Comprehension of many men — What ismeant by comprehending men — Great complexity of genius — Periods in psychic life — No disparagement of famous men— Understanding and noticing — Universal consciousness of genius — Greatest distance from the henid stage — Ahigher grade of maleness — Genius always universal — The female devoid of genius or of hero-worship — Giftedness andsex | ||
| CHAPTER V | ||
| Talent and Memory | [114] | |
| Organisation and the power of reproducing thoughts — Memory of experiences a sign of genius — Remarksand conclusions — Remembrance and apperception — Capacity for comparison and acquisition — Reasons for the masculinityof music, drawing and painting — Degrees of genius — Relation of genius to ordinary men — Autobiography — Fixedideas — Remembrance of personal creations — Continuous and discontinuance memory — Continuity and piety — Pastand present — Past and future — Desire for immortality — Existing psychological explanations — True origin —Inner development of man until death — Ontogenetic psychology or theoretical biography — Woman lacking in the desire forimmortality — Further extension of relation of memory to genius — Memory and time — Postulate of timelessness —Value as a timeless quality — First law of the theory of value — Proofs — Individuation and duration constituents ofvalue — Desire for immortality a special case — Desire for immortality in genius connected with timelessness, by his universalmemory and the duration of his creations — Genius and history — Genius and nations — Genius and language — Men ofaction and men of science, not to be called men of genius — Philosophers, founders of religion and artists have genius | ||
| CHAPTER VI | ||
| Memory, Logic and Ethics | [142] | |
| Psychology and “psychologismus” — Value of memory — Theory of memory — Doctrines ofpractice and of association — Confusion with recognition — Memory peculiar to man — Moral significance — Lies— Transition to logic — Memory and the principle of identity — Memory and the syllogism — Woman non-logical andnon-ethical — Intellectual and moral knowledge — The intelligible ego | ||
| CHAPTER VII | ||
| Logic, Ethics and the Ego | [153] | |
| Critics of the conception of the Ego — Hume: Lichtenberg, Mach — The ego of Mach and biology —Individuation and individuality — Logic and ethics as witnesses for the existence of the ego — Logic — Laws of identityand of contraries — Their use and significance — Logical axioms as the laws of essence — Kant and Fichte — Freedomof thought and freedom of the will — Ethics — Relation to logic — The psychology of the Kantian ethics — Kant andNietzsche | ||
| CHAPTER VIII | ||
| The “I” Problem and Genius | [163] | |
| Characterology and the belief in the “I” — Awakening of the ego — Jean Paul, Novalis,Schelling — The awakening of the ego and the view of the world — Self-consciousness and arrogance — The view of thegenius to be more highly valued than that of other men — Final statements as to the idea of genius — The personality of thegenius as the perfectly-conscious microcosm — The naturally-synthetic activity of genius — Significant and symbolical —Definition of the genius in relation to ordinary men — Universality as freedom — Morality or immorality of genius? —Duties towards self and others — What duty to another is — Criticism of moral sympathy and social ethics — Understandingof other men as the one requirement of morality and knowledge — I and thou —Individualism and universalism — Morality only in monads — The man of greatest genius as the most moral man — Why manis ζωον πολιτικον — Consciousness and morality — The greatcriminal — Genius as duty and submission — Genius and crime — Genius and insanity — Man as his own creator | ||
| CHAPTER IX | ||
| Male and Female Psychology | [186] | |
| Soullessness of woman — History of this knowledge — Woman devoid of genius — No masculine women inthe true sense — The unconnectedness of woman’s nature due to her want of an ego — Revision of the henid-theory —Female “thought” — Idea and object — Freedom of the object — Idea and judgment — Nature of judgment— Woman and truth as a criterion of thought — Woman and logic — Woman non-moral, not immoral — Woman and solitude— Womanly sympathy and modesty — The ego of women — Female vanity — Lack of true self-appreciation — Memoryfor compliments — Introspection and repentance — Justice and jealousy — Name and individuality — Radicaldifference between male and female mental life — Psychology with and without soul — Is psychology a science? — Souland psychology — Problem of the influence of the psychical sexual characters of the male or the female | ||
| CHAPTER X | ||
| Motherhood and Prostitution | [214] | |
| Special characterology of woman — Mother and prostitute — Relation of two types to the child —Woman polygamous — Analogies between motherhood and sexuality — Motherhood and the race — Maternal love ethicallyindifferent — The prostitute careless of the race — The prostitute, the criminal and the conqueror — Emperor andprostitute — Motive of the prostitute — Coitus an end in itself — Coquetry — The sensations of the woman incoitus in relation to the rest of her life — The prostitute as the enemy — The friend of life and its enemy — Noprostitution amongst animals — Its origin a mystery | ||
| CHAPTER XI | ||
| Erotics and Æsthetics | [236] | |
| Women, and the hatred of women — Erotics and sexuality — Platonic love — The idea of love —Beauty of women — Relation to sexual impulse — Love and beauty — Difference between æsthetics, logic and ethics— Modes of love — Projection phenomena — Beauty and morality — Nature and ethics — Natural and artisticbeauty — Sexual love as guilt — Hate, love and morality — Creation of the devil — Love and sympathy — Loveand shyness — Love and vanity — Love of woman as a means to an end — Relation between the child and love, the child andsexuality — Love and murder — Madonna-worship — Madonna, a male idea, without basis in womanhood — Woman sexual,not erotic — Sense of beauty in women — How man acts on woman — The fate of the woman — Why man loves woman | ||
| CHAPTER XII | ||
| The Nature of Woman and Her Significance in the Universe | [252] | |
| Meaning of womanhood — Instinct for pairing or matchmaking — Man, and matchmaking — High valuationof coitus — Individual sexual impulse, a special case — Womanhood as pairing or universal sexuality — Organic falsenessof woman — Hysteria — Difference between man and beast, woman and man — The higher and lower life — Birth anddeath — Freedom and happiness — Happiness and man — Happiness and woman — Woman and the problem of existence— Non-existence of woman — Male and female friendship — Pairing identical with womanhood — Why women must beregarded as human — Contrast between subject — Object, matter, form, man, woman — Meaning of henids — Formationof woman by man — Significance of woman in the universe — Man as something, woman as nothing — Psychological problemof the fear of woman — Womanhood and crime — Creation of woman by man’s crime — Woman as his own sexualityaccepted by man — Woman as the guilt of man — What man’s love of woman is, in its deepest significance | ||
| CHAPTER XIII | ||
| Judaism | [301] | |
| Differences amongst men — Intermediate forms and racial anthropology — Comparison of Judaism andfemaleness — Judaism as an idea — Antisemitism — Richard Wagner — Similarities between Jews and women —Judaism in science — The Jew not a monad — The Jew and the Englishman — Nature of humour — Humour and satire— The Jewess — Deepest significance of Judaism — Want of faith — The Jew not non-mystical, yet impious —Want of earnestness, and pride — The Jew as opposed to the hero — Judaism and Christianity — Origin of Christianity— Problem of the founders of religion — Christ as the conqueror of the Judaism in Himself — The founders of religions asthe greatest of men — Conquest of inherent Judaism necessary for all founders of religion — Judaism and the present time— Judaism, femaleness, culture and humanity | ||
| CHAPTER XIV | ||
| Woman and Mankind | [331] | |
| The idea of humanity, and woman as the match-maker — Goethe-worship — Womanising of man — Virginityand purity — Male origin of these ideas — Failure of woman to understand the erotic — Woman’s relation tosexuality — Coitus and love — Woman as the enemy of her own emancipation — Asceticism immoral — Sexual impulse asa want of respect — Problem of the Jew — Problem of the woman — Problem of slavery — Moral relation to women— Man as the opponent of emancipation — Ethical postulates — Two possibilities — The problem of women as theproblem of humanity — Subjection of women — Persistence or disappearance of the human race — True ground of theimmorality of the sexual impulse — Earthly paternity — Inclusion of women in the conception of humanity — The mother andthe education of the human race — Last questions | ||
| Index | [351] | |
FIRST OR PREPARATORY PART
SEXUAL COMPLEXITY
INTRODUCTION
All thought begins with conceptions to a certain extent generalised, and thence is developed in two directions. On the one hand, generalisations become wider and wider, binding together by common properties a larger and larger number of phenomena, and so embracing a wider field of the world of facts. On the other hand, thought approaches more closely the meeting-point of all conceptions, the individual, the concrete complex unit towards which we approach only by thinking in an ever-narrowing circle, and by continually being able to add new specific and differentiating attributes to the general idea, “thing,” or “something.” It was known that fishes formed a class of the animal kingdom distinct from mammals, birds, or invertebrates, long before it was recognised on the one hand that fishes might be bony or cartilaginous, or on the other that fishes, birds and mammals composed a group differing from the invertebrates by many common characters.
The self-assertion of the mind over the world of facts in all its complexity of innumerable resemblances and differences has been compared with the rule of the struggle for existence among living beings. Our conceptions stand between us and reality. It is only step by step that we can control them. As in the case of a madman, we may first have to throw a net over the whole body so that some limit may be set to his struggles; and only after the whole has been thus secured, is it possible to attend to the proper restraint of each limb.
Two general conceptions have come down to us from primitive mankind, and from the earliest times have held our mental processes in their leash. Many a time these conceptions have undergone trivial corrections; they have been sent to the workshop and patched in head and limbs; they have been lopped and added to, expanded here, contracted there, as when new needs pierce through and through an old law of suffrage, bursting bond after bond. None the less, in spite of all amendment and alteration, we have still to reckon with the primitive conceptions, male and female.
It is true that among those we call women are some who are meagre, narrow-hipped, angular, muscular, energetic, highly mentalised; there are “women” with short hair and deep voices, just as there are “men” who are beardless and gossiping. We know, in fact, that there are unwomanly women, man-like women, and unmanly, womanish, woman-like men. We assign sex to human beings from their birth on one character only, and so come to add contradictory ideas to our conceptions. Such a course is illogical.
In private conversation or in society, in scientific or general meetings, we have all taken part in frothy discussions on “Man and Woman,” or on the “Emancipation of Women.” There is a pitiful monotony in the fashion according to which, on such occasions, “men” and “women” have been treated as if, like red and white balls, they were alike in all respects save colour. In no case has the discussion been confined to an individual case, and as every one had different individuals in their mind, a real agreement was impossible. As people meant different things by the same words, there was a complete disharmony between language and ideas. Is it really the case that all women and men are marked off sharply from each other, the women, on the one hand, alike in all points, the men on the other? It is certainly the case that all previous treatment of the sexual differences, perhaps unconsciously, has implied this view. And yet nowhere else in nature is there such a yawning discontinuity. There are transitional forms between the metals and non-metals, between chemical combinations and mixtures, between animals and plants, between phanerogams and cryptogams, and between mammals and birds. It is only in obedience to the most general, practical demand for a superficial view that we classify, make sharp divisions, pick out a single tune from the continuous melody of nature. But the old conceptions of the mind, like the customs of primitive commerce, become foolish in a new age. From the analogies I have given, the improbability may henceforward be taken for granted of finding in nature a sharp cleavage between all that is masculine on the one side and all that is feminine on the other; or that a living being is so simple in this respect that it can be put wholly on one side or the other of the line. Matters are not so clear.