358 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



self-subordination to heroes and mob rule, are thus marks of defective 

 development and of abnormal growth. 



Sexual attraction is strongest between two people of the same stock 

 with different defects. Whoever has a character of normal excellence 

 will arouse, stimulate and subordinate one of the opposite sex who has 

 this character in some retarded or abnormal form. If two people of 

 the same stock have different defects each will control and arouse the 

 other where he is normal and his mate is abnormal. The feeling of 

 affinity is greatest when half of the faculties of each is dormant, while 

 the normal part of each complements that of the other. Weininger 

 asserts that two affinities taken together would show the characters of 

 a normal man and a normal woman. I contend that the sum of their 

 characters equals that of one normal person. He thinks that the chil- 

 dren of these affinities will be stronger and better than the average of 

 mankind because the qualities of their parents make a normal man 

 and a normal woman. I contend that these children will be below 

 the average because both of the parents are defective and the children 

 will be subject to even more retardation in development. Let us as- 

 sume that in two families on intimate terms the wife of one finds that 

 the other man is her affinity and wants a child by him and that her 

 husband assents promising to raise the child as his own. Weinmyer 

 would say that this love child would be above the average of the two 

 families, stronger in intellect and body. In my opinion it would be 

 weaker and more defective. From his position this act should be 

 commended; from mine it should be punished. 



If I am right, Weininger is also in error in regard to woman's 

 emancipation. He starts with the thought that the characters of men 

 and women are different and that the emancipated woman is an inter- 

 mediate form having masculine qualities. In the development of his 

 thesis, however, he shifts over to the assumption that all positive char- 

 acters are masculine and that the pure woman is nothing more than 

 sexuality. This failure to find definite characters in woman shows the 

 falsity of the assumption that characters are the result of sex heredity. 

 The undeveloped man is dominated as much by sexual impulses as is 

 the retarded woman. Positive characters that raise them above their 

 sexual appetites come to women as to men only by the process of devel- 

 opment. The environment of women, however, is more defective than 

 that of men and the drains on her system are more severe. Few women 

 go far in their development before defects become so numerous as to 

 check further progress. If they escape these set-backs they develop 

 the same characters that appear in men who have an unobstructed 

 development. The emancipated woman is thus not the hysterical 

 woman out of her normal place, but the woman with a more favorable 

 environment than her sisters have. Her gains in character due to these 



