INCA IES SIS, 
481 
THURSDAY, MARCH 21, 1907. 
SEX AND CHARACTER. 
Sex and Character. By Otto Weininger. Authorised 
translation from the sixth German edition. Pp. 
xxii+356. (London: W. Heinemann, 1906.) Price 
17s. net. 
EININGER’S interest in his problem is much 
more philosophical than scientific, but he 
finds the basis of his theory in a biological idea, and 
thus challenges scientific criticism. His philosophy 
is of the non-empirical type, and he is strongly in- 
fluenced by Plato and the transcendentalism of Kant. 
His psychology and ethics are thus static and non- 
evolutionary, and he is the less likely to find any 
strong support from modern thinkers; for whatever 
in these days may be our views as to the method 
by which it has come about, the fact of organic evolu- 
tion is beyond dispute, and the application of 
evolutionary ideas to psychology and ethics hardly 
less compelling. 
The book is an attempt to reduce the relation of 
the sexes to a single principle, and Weininger brings 
arguments from biology, psychology, logic, and ethics 
to enforce his claim to have established it. He begins 
by predicating a permanent bisexual condition in 
human beings, pointing out that the sexual condition 
in the embryo is derived from an earlier indeterminate 
stage, and that there are always traces of bisexuality 
in the adult, e.g. the down on a woman’s face in the 
position of the beard, and the presence of glandular 
tissue connected with the nipples in man. 
‘The fact is that males and females are like two 
substances combined in different proportions, but with 
either element never wholly missing. We find, so 
to speak, neither a man nor a woman, but only the 
male condition and the female condition. Any in- 
dividual ‘A’ or ‘ B’ is never to be designated merely 
as a man or as a woman, but by a formula showing 
that it is a composite of male and female character 
combined in different proportions, for instance as 
follows :— 
aM _6W 
aS 'W B= aM 
always remembering that each of the factors a, a’, 
b, b’ must be greater than o and less than unity.” 
Weininger elaborates this biological idea and carries 
it into the field of psychology and ethics. He seeks 
to explain the periodic movements for the emancipa- 
tion of women by the periodic appearance of unusual 
numbers of women approaching the male standard 
(his so-called hermaphrodites), and supposes that all 
such movements die out because the hermaphrodite 
individuals who create the demand for emancipation 
after a certain time are no longer produced, an argu- 
ment which he supports by biological analogies; but 
though there have been such movements in the past, 
they were doomed to failure, because it is onty in 
our own epoch that the fear of rape, which is the 
real reason for the suppression and_ prohibitions 
accorded to women, has become so small a probability 
that it may be disregarded in view of the enormous 
NOMIGS U, VOL. 75)| 
gain to intellect and character afforded by the fullest 
possible freedom. 
Weininger proceeds to inquire what are the 
essentials of the ideal maleness and the ideal female- 
ness which form the ends of his series, and on his 
way elaborates his theories of psychology and ethics. 
Memory he takes as the basis of logic and of ethics; 
for without memory there can be no perception of 
identity, and hence no possibility of a syllogism. 
The perception of identity necessitates the supposition 
of a transcendental ego which is out of time; for the 
ego must be permanent and the same at all times 
to be able to recognise identity when it turns up. 
James, however, has shown that for the purposes 
of psychology all that is necessary is the present 
thought which contains and remembers and recog- 
nises all past thoughts. The thought, then, is the 
thinker, and the transcendental ego a needless and 
cumbersome abstraction. 
How does this male psychology apply to woman? 
Thus dogmatically Weininger:—Woman has no 
memory, and hence no perception of identity, hence 
she is illogical and non-moral. She is incapable of 
forming concepts; all her ideas are in the vague 
stage in which the object perceived is inseparable 
from the character or feeling with which it is per- 
ceived. That is to say, in general, her mentality is 
in a less differentiated or articulated stage than man’s. 
Here again we might find some grounds for seeing 
a partial truth in our author’s contentions, if he were 
content to say that, on the whole, this was true of 
the average woman as compared with the average 
man, all due allowance being made for education 
and logical training, but he goes very much farther 
than this. ‘‘ Woman has no ego,’’ and, moreover, 
‘“T must again assert that the woman of the highest 
standard is immeasurably below the man of lowest 
standard.’’ Here common-sense observation and all 
anthropological, psychological, and ethical investi- 
gations give him an emphatic negative. 
Woman, then, according to Weininger, is nothing 
(Nichts), the complete antithesis of man, who 1s 
something, an ego, a microcosm (All), though con- 
taining within him the possibility of nothingness 
(Nichts), of chaos, of insanity, of crime. What, then, 
is her place in humanity? “Woman is sexuality, 
man is sexuality and something more.’’ Here, then, 
we have the secret of woman. She is nothing but 
the instrument of a blind instinct to perpetuate the 
race; all her practical interests are in sexual con- 
gress (the courtesan type), in procreation (the mother 
type), in match-making. ‘‘ The idea of pairing is 
the only conception which has positive worth for 
women.’’ ‘The female is concerned altogether with 
one class of recollections, those connected with the 
sexual impulse and reproduction.” 
The women of history and of daily experience 
clearly cannot be fitted into Weininger’s conception 
of them; but that, he would say, is because of their 
extraordinary capacity for assimilating man’s ideas, 
his morality, his ideals of chastity, of honour, and 
his respect for logic. When a woman accepts man’s 
standards too thoroughly her nature (sexuality) re- 
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