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  Transcriber’s Notes

  Text printed in italics has been transcribed _between underscores_.
  Small capitals have been replaced with ALL CAPITALS. A caret followed
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  More Transcriber’s Notes may be found at the end of this text.

SEX & CHARACTER

THE GERMAN PRESS

ON “SEX AND CHARACTER.”

_Die Umschau._--“Dr. Otto Weininger’s book is destined to place the
relation of the sexes in a new light. He traces the contrast between man
and woman to a single principle, and makes an attempt to reduce the
spiritual differences of the sexes to a system.”

_Allgemeine Wiener Medizinische Zeitung._--“An extraordinary book, that
called forth the learned criticism of two faculties, and had appeared in
a third edition a few months after its publication, before the
scientific world had been able to pronounce upon it seriously, not to
say finally.... A book that will henceforth be in the hands of every
doctor who has occasion to study the antithetical character of the two
sexes.”

_Der Volkserzieher._--“There is no aspect of modern thought which he
(Weininger) has not touched upon in the course of his investigations, no
recess of the labyrinthine modern soul into which he does not invite us
to glance with him, no question on which he has not touched, or to which
he has not, indeed, offered a solution in accordance with his own
philosophy.”

_Allgemeine Zeitung._--“This book... is a sensational work, both by
reason of its contents and of the tragic fate of its author. Weininger,
as is commonly known, shot himself in the autumn of 1903 at the early
age of twenty-three, in the house in Vienna where Beethoven had died....
But it is the book itself, even more than its author’s individuality,
which is abnormal. It is nothing less than an attempt to construct a
system of sexual characterology on the broadest scientific basis, with
all the resources of the most modern philosophy.”

_Münchener Neueste Nachrichten._--“‘Sex and Character,’ by Dr.
Weininger, has none of the character of a youthful work. The learning
revealed in this book, and indeed its whole conception, are such that we
might take it for the strenuous achievement of a lifetime.”

_Neues Wiener Tageblatt._--“A great philosophical, biological, and
social question is here treated by a gifted and learned author with
perfect freedom and breadth, yet with a seriousness, a wealth of
scientific knowledge, that would ensure the book a place in the front
rank, even were the style less excellent, vivacious, and individual than
it is.”

_Die Wage._--“The author is a brilliant stylist. On every page I find
aphorisms, in which the form fits the thought like a veil of silver. And
these thoughts are no ordinary ones. The writer goes his own way, he
knows secret paths which no man has yet trodden, and he shrinks from no
obstacles. He lets himself down cautiously into the abyss, for he has
determined to sound the deepest depths; from time to time, however, he
looks up from the pit and rejoices in the light of the eternal stars,
even though they lie hid from his mortal vision. He carries his
arguments to their ultimate conclusion. We rebel against these
conclusions, but we admire the uncompromising logic of the thinker.”

  SEX & CHARACTER

  BY
  OTTO WEININGER

  AUTHORISED TRANSLATION FROM THE
  SIXTH GERMAN EDITION

  LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN
  NEW YORK: G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
  1906

  _All rights reserved_

  _Copyright, London: William Heinemann, 1906_

  _Copyright, New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1906_

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

On October 4, 1903, Otto Weininger died by his own hand, at the age of
twenty-three and a half years. There is perhaps in all history no other
instance of a man who had produced a work so mature in its scientific
character, and so original in its philosophical aspect as “Sex and
Character” when he was no more than twenty-one years old. We will not
attempt to decide whether this was the case of a genius, who, instead of
developing his intellectual powers gradually in the course of a
lifetime, concentrated them in one mighty achievement, and then cast off
the worn-out husk of the flesh, or of an unhappy youth, who could no
longer bear the burden of his own ghastly knowledge.

“Sex and Character” is undoubtedly one of those rare books that will be
studied long after its own times, and whose influence will not pass
away, but will penetrate deeper and deeper, compelling amazement and
inviting reflection in steadily expanding circles. It may be noted with
satisfaction that the book is by no means in harmony with contemporary
thought. The discussions, so much in favour nowadays, concerning the
emancipation of women, sexuality, the relation of women to culture, and
so forth, are deprived of their data by this publication; for here, laid
down with all the penetrating acumen of the trained logician, is a
characterisation of sexual types, “M” (the ideal man), and “W” (the
ideal woman), which traces all the much discussed psychological
phenomena back to a final source, and actually gives a definitive
solution to the feminine problem, a solution altogether alien to the
field of inquiry wherein the answer has hitherto been sought. In the
science of characterology, here formulated for the first time, we have a
strenuous scientific achievement of the first importance. All former
psychologies have been the psychology of the male, written by men, and
more or less consciously applicable only to man as distinguished from
humanity. “Woman does not betray her secret,” said Kant, and this has
been true till now. But now she has revealed it--by the voice of a man.
The things women say about themselves have been suggested by men; they
repeat the discoveries, more or less real, which men have made about
them. By a highly original method of analysis, a man has succeeded for
the first time in giving scientific and abstract utterance to that which
only some few great artists have suggested by concrete images hitherto.
Weininger, working out an original system of characterology
(psychological typology) rich in prospective possibilities, undertook
the construction of a universal psychology of woman which penetrates to
the nethermost depths, and is based not only on a vast systematic
mastery of scientific knowledge, but on what can only be described as an
appalling comprehension of the feminine soul in its most secret
recesses. This newly created method embraces the whole domain of human
consciousness; research must be carried out on the lines laid down by
Nature--in three stages, and from three distinct points of view: the
biologico-physiological, the psychologically descriptive, and the
philosophically appreciative. I will not dwell here on the equipment
essential for such a task, the necessary combination of a comprehensive
knowledge of natural history with a minute and exhaustive mastery of
psychological and philosophical science--a combination destined,
perhaps, to prove unique.

The general characterisation of the ideal woman, “W,” is followed by the
construction of individual types, which are finally resolved into two
elemental figures (Platonic conceptions to some extent), the Courtesan
and the Mother. These are differentiated by their pre-occupation with
the sexual act (the main, and in the ultimate sense, sole interest of
“W”), in the first case, as an end in itself, in the second as the
process which results in the possession of a child. The abnormal type,
the hysterical woman, leads up to a masterly psychological (not
physiological) theory of hysteria, which is acutely and convincingly
defined as “the organic mendacity of woman.”

Weininger himself attached the highest importance to the
ethico-philosophical chapters that conclude his work, in which he passes
from the special problem of sexuality to the problems of individual
talent, genius, æsthetics, memory, the _ego_, the Jewish race, and many
others, rising finally to the ultimate logical and moral principles of
judgment. From his most universal standpoint he succeeds in estimating
woman as a part of humanity, and, above all, subjectively. Here he
deliberately comes into sharp conflict with the fashionable tendencies
towards an unscientific monism and its accompanying phenomena,
pan-sexuality and the ethics of species, and characterises very aptly
the customary superficialities of the many non-philosophical modern
apostles, of whom Wilhelm Bölsche and Ellen Key are perhaps the most
representative types. Weininger, in defiance of all reigning fashions,
represents a consolidated dualism, closely related to the eternal
systems of Plato, of Christianity, and of Kant, which finds an original
issue in a bitterly tragic conception of the universe. Richard Wagner
(whom Weininger calls the greatest of human beings after Jesus) gives
artistic expression in his _Parsifal_ to the conception Weininger sets
forth scientifically. It is, in fact, the old doctrine of the divine
life and of redemption to which the whole book, with its array of
detail, is consecrated. In Kundry, Weininger recognises the most
profound conception of woman in all literature. In her redemption by the
spotless Parsifal, the young philosopher sees the way of mankind marked
out; he contrasts with this the programme of the modern feminist
movement, with its superficialities and its lies; and so, in conclusion,
the book returns to the problem, which, in spite of all its wealth of
thought, remains its governing idea: the problem of the sexes and the
possibility of a moral relation between them--a moral relation
fundamentally different from what is commonly understood by the term, of
course. In the two chapters: “The Nature of Woman and her significance
in the Universe,” and “Woman and Mankind,” we drink from a fountain of
the ripest wisdom. A tragic and most unhappy mind reveals itself here,
and no thoughtful man will lay down this book without deep emotion and
admiration; many, indeed, will close it with almost religious
reverence.

AUTHOR’S PREFACE

This book is an attempt to place the relations of Sex in a new and
decisive light. It is an attempt not to collect the greatest possible
number of distinguishing characters, or to arrange into a system all the
results of scientific measuring and experiment, but to refer to a single
principle the whole contrast between man and woman. In this respect the
book differs from all other works on the same subject. It does not
linger over this or that detail, but presses on to its ultimate goal; it
does not heap investigation on investigation, but combines the psychical
differences between the sexes into a system; it deals not with women,
but with woman. It sets out, indeed, from the most common and obvious
facts, but intends to reach a single, concrete principle. This is not
“inductive metaphysics”; it is a gradual approach to the heart of
psychology.

The investigation is not of details, but of principles; it does not
despise the laboratory, although the help of the laboratory, with regard
to the deeper problems, is limited as compared with the results of
introspective analysis. An artist who wishes to represent the female
form can construct a type without actually giving formal proof by a
series of measurements. The artist does not despise experimental
results; on the contrary, he regards it as a duty to gain experience;
but for him the collection of experimental knowledge is merely a
starting-point for self-exploration, and in art self-exploration is
exploration of the world.

The psychology used in this exposition is purely philosophical, although
its characteristic method, justified by the subject, is to set out from
the most trivial details of experience. The task of the philosopher
differs from that of the artist in one important respect. The one deals
in symbols, the other in ideas. Art and philosophy stand to one another
as expression and meaning. The artist has breathed in the world to
breathe it out again; the philosopher has the world outside him and he
has to absorb it.

There is always something pretentious in theory; and the real
meaning--which in a work of art is Nature herself and in a philosophical
system is a much condensed generalisation, a thesis going to the root of
the matter and proving itself--appears to strike against us harshly,
almost offensively. Where my exposition is anti-feminine, and that is
nearly everywhere, men themselves will receive it with little heartiness
or conviction; their sexual egoism makes them prefer to see woman as
they would like to have her, as they would like her to be.

I need not say that I am prepared for the answer women will have to the
judgment I have passed on their sex. My investigation, indeed, turns
against man in the end, and although in a deeper sense than the
advocates of women’s rights could anticipate, assigns to man the
heaviest and most real blame. But this will help me little and is of
such a nature that it cannot in the smallest way rehabilitate me in the
minds of women.

The analysis, however, goes further than the assignment of blame; it
rises beyond simple and superficial phenomena to heights from which
there opens not only a view into the nature of woman and its meaning in
the universe, but also the relation to mankind and to the ultimate and
most lofty problems. A definite relation to the problem of Culture is
attained, and we reach the part to be played by woman in the sphere of
ideal aims. There, also, where the problems of Culture and of Mankind
coincide, I try not merely to explain but to assign values, for, indeed,
in that region explanation and valuation are identical.

To such a wide outlook my investigation was as it were driven, not
deliberately steered, from the outset. The inadequacy of all empirical
psychological philosophy follows directly from empirical psychology
itself. The respect for empirical knowledge will not be injured, but
rather will the meaning of such knowledge be deepened, if man recognises
in phenomena, and it is from phenomena that he sets out, any elements
assuring him that there is something behind phenomena, if he espies the
signs that prove the existence of something higher than phenomena,
something that supports phenomena. We may be assured of such a first
principle, although no living man can reach it. Towards such a principle
this book presses and will not flag.

Within the narrow limits to which as yet the problem of woman and of
woman’s rights has been confined, there has been no place for the
venture to reach so high a goal. None the less the problem is bound
intimately with the deepest riddles of existence. It can be solved,
practically or theoretically, morally or metaphysically, only in
relation to an interpretation of the cosmos.

Comprehension of the universe, or what passes for such, stands in no
opposition to knowledge of details; on the other hand all special
knowledge acquires a deeper meaning because of it. Comprehension of the
universe is self-creative; it cannot arise, although the empirical
knowledge of every age expects it, as a synthesis of however great a sum
of empirical knowledge.

In this book there lie only the germs of a world-scheme, and these are
allied most closely with the conceptions of Plato, Kant and
Christianity. I have been compelled for the most part to fashion for
myself the scientific, psychological, philosophical, logical, ethical
groundwork. I think that at the least I have laid the foundations of
many things into which I could not go fully. I call special attention to
the defects of this part of my work because I attach more importance to
appreciation of what I have tried to say about the deepest and most
general problems than to the interest which will certainly be aroused by
my special investigation of the problem of woman.

The philosophical reader may take it amiss to find a treatment of the
loftiest and ultimate problems coinciding with the investigation of a
special problem of no great dignity; I share with him this distaste. I
may say, however, that I have treated throughout the contrast between
the sexes as the starting-point rather than the goal of my research. The
investigation has yielded a harvest rich in its bearing on the
fundamental problems of logic and their relations to the axioms of
thought, on the theory of æsthetics, of love, and of the beautiful and
the good, and on problems such as individuality and morality and their
relations, on the phenomena of genius, the craving for immortality and
Hebraism. Naturally these comprehensive interrelations aid the special
problem, for, as it is considered from so many points of view, its scope
enlarges. And if in this wider sense it be proved that culture can give
only the smallest hope for the nature of woman, if the final results are
a depreciation, even a negation of womanhood, there will be no attempt
in this to destroy what exists, to humble what has a value of its own.
Horror of my own deed would overtake me were I here only destructive and
had I left only a clean sheet. Perhaps the affirmations in my book are
less articulate, but he that has ears to hear will hear them.

The treatise falls into two parts, the first biological-psychological,
the second logical-philosophical. It may be objected that I should have
done better to make two books, the one treating of purely physical
science, the other introspective. It was necessary to be done with
biology before turning to psychology. The second part treats of certain
psychical problems in a fashion totally different from the method of any
contemporary naturalist, and for that reason I think that the removal of
the first part of the book would have been at some risk to many readers.
Moreover, the first part of the book challenges an attention and
criticism from natural science possible in a few places only in the
second part, which is chiefly introspective. Because the second part
starts from a conception of the universe that is anti-positivistic, many
will think it unscientific (although there is given a strong proof
against Positivism). For the present I must be content with the
conviction that I have rendered its due to Biology, and that I have
established an enduring position for non-biological, non-physiological
psychology.

My investigation may be objected to as in certain points not being
supported by enough proof, but I see little force in such an objection.
For in these matters what can “proof” mean? I am not dealing with
mathematics or with the theory of cognition (except with the latter in
two cases); I am dealing with empirical knowledge, and in that one can
do no more than point to what exists; in this region proof means no more
than the agreement of new experience with old experience, and it is much
the same whether the new phenomena have been produced experimentally by
men, or have come straight from the creative hand of nature. Of such
latter proofs my book contains many.

Finally, I should like to say that my book, if I may be allowed to judge
it, is for the most part not of a quality to be understood and absorbed
at the first glance. I point out this myself, to guide and protect the
reader.

The less I found myself able in both parts of the book (and especially
in the second) to confirm what now passes for knowledge, the more
anxious I have been to point out coincidences where I found myself in
agreement with what has already been known and said.

I have to thank Professor Dr. Laurenz Müllner for the great assistance
he has given me, and Professor Dr. Friedrich Jodl for the kindly
interest he has taken in my work from the beginning. I am specially
indebted to the kind friends who have helped me with correction of the
proofs.

CONTENTS

                                                                  _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 -- Transitional forms -- 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 -- Early
  anticipations

  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 sexual conditions -- Brain -- Excess of male births
  -- Determination of sex -- Comparative pathology

  THE LAWS OF SEXUAL ATTRACTION                                       26

  Sexual preference -- Probability of these being controlled by a
  law -- First formula -- First interpretation -- 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 of the 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 -- Sexual preferences of
  emancipated women -- Physiognomy of emancipated women -- Other
  celebrated women -- Femaleness and emancipation -- Practical
  rules -- Genius essentially male -- Movements of 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 and what is not the object of
  psychology -- Character and individuality -- Problem of
  characterology and the problem of the sexes

  CHAPTER II

  MALE AND FEMALE SEXUALITY                                           85

  The problem of a female psychology -- Man as the interpreter of
  female psychology -- Differences in the sexual 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 cessation of male sexuality -- Differences
  in the degrees of consciousness of sexuality

  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 of
  understanding -- Forgetting -- Paths and organisation --
  Conception of “henids” -- The henid as the simplest, psychical
  datum -- Sexual differences in the organisation of the contents
  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 is meant 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 -- A higher grade of maleness -- Genius always
  universal -- The female devoid of genius or of hero-worship --
  Giftedness and sex

  CHAPTER V

  TALENT AND MEMORY                                                  114

  Organisation and the power of reproducing thoughts -- Memory of
  experiences a sign of genius -- Remarks and conclusions --
  Remembrance and apperception -- Capacity for comparison and
  acquisition -- Reasons for the masculinity of music, drawing and
  painting -- Degrees of genius -- Relation of genius to ordinary
  men -- Autobiography -- Fixed ideas -- Remembrance of personal
  creations -- Continuous and discontinuance memory -- Continuity
  and piety -- Past and 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 for immortality -- 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 of
  value -- Desire for immortality a special case -- Desire for
  immortality in genius connected with timelessness, by his
  universal memory and the duration of his creations -- Genius and
  history -- Genius and nations -- Genius and language -- Men of
  action 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 of practice 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 and
  non-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 identity and of contraries --
  Their use and significance -- Logical axioms as the laws of
  essence -- Kant and Fichte -- Freedom of thought and freedom of
  the will -- Ethics -- Relation to logic -- The psychology of the
  Kantian ethics -- Kant and Nietzsche

  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 the genius to be more highly valued than that of other
  men -- Final statements as to the idea of genius -- The
  personality of the genius 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 --
  Understanding of 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 man is ζωον πολιτικον -- Consciousness and
  morality -- The great criminal -- 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 in the 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 -- Memory for
  compliments -- Introspection and repentance -- Justice and
  jealousy -- Name and individuality -- Radical difference between
  male and female mental life -- Psychology with and without soul
  -- Is psychology a science? -- Soul and 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 ethically indifferent -- The prostitute
  careless of the race -- The prostitute, the criminal and the
  conqueror -- Emperor and prostitute -- Motive of the prostitute
  -- Coitus an end in itself -- Coquetry -- The sensations of the
  woman in coitus in relation to the rest of her life -- The
  prostitute as the enemy -- The friend of life and its enemy --
  No prostitution 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 artistic beauty -- Sexual love as guilt -- Hate, love and
  morality -- Creation of the devil -- Love and sympathy -- Love
  and shyness -- Love and vanity -- Love of woman as a means to an
  end -- Relation between the child and love, the child and
  sexuality -- 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 valuation of coitus -- Individual
  sexual impulse, a special case -- Womanhood as pairing or
  universal sexuality -- Organic falseness of woman -- Hysteria --
  Difference between man and beast, woman and man -- The higher
  and lower life -- Birth and death -- 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 be regarded as human -- Contrast between subject --
  Object, matter, form, man, woman -- Meaning of henids --
  Formation of woman by man -- Significance of woman in the
  universe -- Man as something, woman as nothing -- Psychological
  problem of the fear of woman -- Womanhood and crime -- Creation
  of woman by man’s crime -- Woman as his own sexuality accepted
  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 and femaleness -- 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 as the 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 -- Virginity and purity --
  Male origin of these ideas -- Failure of woman to understand the
  erotic -- Woman’s relation to sexuality -- Coitus and love --
  Woman as the enemy of her own emancipation -- Asceticism immoral
  -- Sexual impulse as a 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 the
  problem of humanity -- Subjection of women -- Persistence or
  disappearance of the human race -- True ground of the immorality
  of the sexual impulse -- Earthly paternity -- Inclusion of women
  in the conception of humanity -- The mother and the 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.

In the controversy as to the woman question, appeal has been made to the
arbitration of anatomy, in the hope that by that aid a line could be
drawn between those characters of males or females that are unalterable
because inborn, and those that are acquired. (It was a strange adventure
to attempt to decide the differences between the natural endowment of
men and women on anatomical results; to suppose that if all other
investigation failed to establish the difference, the matter could be
settled by a few more grains of brain-weight on the one side.) However,
the answer of the anatomists is clear enough, whether it refer to the
brain or to any other portion of the body; absolute sexual distinctions
between all men on the one side and all women on the other do not exist.
Although the skeleton of the hand of most men is different from that of
most women yet the sex cannot be determined with certainty either from
the skeleton or from an isolated part with its muscles, tendons, skin,
blood and nerves. The same is true of the chest, sacrum or skull. And
what are we to say of the pelvis, that part of the skeleton in which, if
anywhere, striking sexual differences exist? It is almost universally
believed that in the one case the pelvis is adapted for the act of
parturition, in the other case is not so adapted. And yet the character
of the pelvis cannot be taken as an absolute criterion of sex. There are
to be found, and the wayfarer knows this as well as the anatomist, many
women with narrow male-like pelves and many men with the broad pelves
of women. Are we then to make nothing of sexual differences? That would
imply, almost, that we could not distinguish between men and women.

From what quarter are we to seek help in our problem? The old doctrine
is insufficient, and yet we cannot make shift without it. If the
received ideas do not suffice, it must be our task to seek out new and
better guides.

CHAPTER I

“MALES” AND “FEMALES”

In the widest treatment of most living things, a blunt separation of
them into males or females no longer suffices for the known facts. The
limitations of these conceptions have been felt more or less by many
writers. The first purpose of this work is to make this point clear.

I agree with other authors who, in a recent treatment of the facts
connected with this subject, have taken as a starting-point what has
been established by embryology regarding the existence in human beings,
plants, and animals of an embryonic stage neutral as regards sex.

In the case of a human embryo of less than five weeks, for instance, the
sex to which it would afterwards belong cannot be recognised. In the
fifth week of fœtal life processes begin which, by the end of the fifth
month of pregnancy, have turned the genital rudiments, at first alike in
the sexes, into one sex and have determined the sex of the whole
organism. The details of these processes need not be described more
fully here. It can be shown that however distinctly unisexual an adult
plant, animal or human being may be, there is always a certain
persistence of the bisexual character, never a complete disappearance of
the characters of the undeveloped sex. Sexual differentiation, in fact,
is never complete. All the peculiarities of the male sex may be present
in the female in some form, however weakly developed; and so also the
sexual characteristics of the woman persist in the man, although perhaps
they are not so completely rudimentary. The characters of the other sex
occur in the one sex in a vestigial form. Thus, in the case of human
beings, in which our interest is greatest, to take an example, it will
be found that the most womanly woman has a growth of colourless hair,
known as “lanugo” in the position of the male beard; and in the most
manly man there are developed under the skin of the breast masses of
glandular tissue connected with the nipples. This condition of things
has been minutely investigated in the true genital organs and ducts, the
region called the “urino-genital tract,” and in each sex there has been
found a complete but rudimentary set of parallels to the organs of the
other sex.

These embryological conclusions can be brought into relation with
another set of facts. Haeckel has used the word “gonochorism” for the
separation of the sexes, and in different classes and groups of
creatures different degrees of gonochorism may be noted. Different kinds
of animals and plants may be distinguished by the extent to which the
characters of one sex are rudimentary in the other. The most extreme
case of sexual differentiation, the sharpest gonochorism, occurs in
sexual dimorphism, that is to say, in that condition of affairs in which
(as for instance in some water-fleas) the males and females of the same
species differ as much or even more from each other as the members of
different species, or genera. There is not so sharply marked gonochorism
amongst vertebrates as in the case of crustacea or insects. Amongst the
former there does not exist a distinction between males and females so
complete as to reach sexual dimorphism. A condition much more frequent
amongst them is the occurrence of forms intermediate in regard to sex,
what is called abnormal hermaphroditism; whilst in certain fishes
hermaphroditism is the normal condition.

I must point out here that it must not be assumed that there exist only
extreme males with scanty remnants of the female condition, extreme
females with traces of the male, hermaphrodite or transitional forms,
and wide gaps between these conditions. I am dealing specially with
human beings, but what I have to say of them might be applied, with
more or less modification, to nearly all creatures in which sexual
reproduction takes place.

Amongst human beings the state of the case is as follows: There exist
all sorts of intermediate conditions between male and female--sexual
transitional forms. In physical inquiries an “ideal gas” is assumed,
that is to say, a gas, the behaviour of which follows the law of
Boyle-Gay-Lussac exactly, although, in fact, no such gas exists, and
laws are deduced from this so that the deviations from the ideal laws
may be established in the case of actually existing gases. In the same
fashion we may suppose the existence of an ideal man, M, and of an ideal
woman, W, as sexual types although these types do not actually exist.
Such types not only can be constructed, but must be constructed. As in
art so in science, the real purpose is to reach the type, the Platonic
Idea. The science of physics investigates the behaviour of bodies that
are absolutely rigid or absolutely elastic, in the full knowledge that
neither the one nor the other actually exists. The intermediate
conditions actually existing between the two absolute states of matter
serve merely as a starting-point for investigation of the “types” and in
the practical application of the theory are treated as mixtures and
exhaustively analysed. So also there exist only the intermediate stages
between absolute males and females, the absolute conditions never
presenting themselves.

Let it be noted clearly that I am discussing the existence not merely of
embryonic sexual neutrality, but of a permanent bisexual condition. Nor
am I taking into consideration merely those intermediate sexual
conditions, those bodily or psychical hermaphrodites upon which, up to
the present, attention has been concentrated. In another respect my
conception is new. Until now, in dealing with sexual intermediates, only
hermaphrodites were considered; as if, to use a physical analogy, there
were in between the two extremes a single group of intermediate forms,
and not an intervening tract equally beset with stages in different
degrees of transition.

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, never either a man or a woman, but only the male
condition and the female condition. Any individual, “A” or “B,” is never
to be designated merely as a man or a woman, but by a formula showing
that it is a composite of male and female characters in different
proportions, for instance, as follows:

      { α M        { β W
  A = {        B = {
      { α´W        { β´M

always remembering that each of the factors α, α´, β, β´ must be greater
than 0 and less than unity.

Further proofs of the validity of this conception are numerous, and I
have already given, in the preface, a few of the most general. We may
recall the existence of “men” with female pelves and female breasts,
with narrow waists, overgrowth of the hair of the head; or of “women”
with small hips and flat breasts, with deep bass voices and beards (the
presence of hair on the chin is more common than is supposed, as women
naturally are at pains to remove it; I am not speaking of the special
growth that often appears on the faces of women who have reached middle
age). All such peculiarities, many of them coinciding in the same
individuals, are well known to doctors and anatomists, although their
general significance has not been understood.

One of the most striking proofs of the view that I have been unfolding
is presented by the great range of numerical variation to be found where
sexual characters have been measured either by the same or by different
anthropological or anatomical workers. The figures obtained by measuring
female characters do not begin where those got from males leave off, but
the two sets overlap. The more obvious this uncertainty in the theory of
sexual intermediate forms may be, the more is it to be deplored in the
interests of true science. Anatomists and anthropologists of the
ordinary type have by no means striven against the scientific
representation of the sexual types, but as for the most part they
regarded measurements as the best indications, they were overwhelmed
with the number of exceptions, and thus, so far, measurement has brought
only vague and indefinite results.

The course of statistical science, which marks off our industrial age
from earlier times, although perhaps on account of its distant relation
to mathematics it has been regarded as specially scientific, has in
reality hindered the progress of knowledge. It has dealt with averages,
not with types. It has not been recognised that in pure, as opposed to
applied, science it is the type that must be studied. And so those who
are concerned with the type must turn their backs on the methods and
conclusions of current morphology and physiology. The real measurements
and investigations of details have yet to be made. Those that now exist
are inapplicable to true science.

Knowledge must be obtained of male and female by means of a right
construction of the ideal man and the ideal woman, using the word ideal
in the sense of typical, excluding judgment as to value. When these
types have been recognised and built up we shall be in a position to
consider individual cases, and their analysis as mixtures in different
proportions will be neither difficult not fruitless.

I shall now give a summary of the contents of this chapter. Living
beings cannot be described bluntly as of one sex or the other. The real
world from the point of view of sex may be regarded as swaying between
two points, no actual individual being at either point, but somewhere
between the two. The task of science is to define the position of any
individual between these two points. The absolute conditions at the two
extremes are not metaphysical abstractions above or outside the world of
experience, but their construction is necessary as a philosophical and
practical mode of describing the actual world.

A presentiment of this bisexuality of life (derived from the actual
absence of complete sexual differentiation) is very old. Traces of it
may be found in Chinese myths, but it became active in Greek thought. We
may recall the mythical personification of bisexuality in the
Hermaphroditos, the narrative of Aristophanes in the Platonic dialogue,
or in later times the suggestion of a Gnostic sect (Theophites) that
primitive man was a “man-woman.”

CHAPTER II

MALE AND FEMALE PLASMAS

The first thing expected of a book like this, the avowed object of which
is a complete revision of facts hitherto accepted, is that it should
expound a new and satisfactory account of the anatomical and
physiological characters of the sexual types. Quite apart from the
abstract question as to whether the complete survey of a subject so
enormous is not beyond the powers of one individual, I must at once
disclaim any intention of making the attempt. I do not pretend to have
made sufficient independent investigations in a field so wide, nor do I
think such a review necessary for the purpose of this book. Nor is it
necessary to give a compilation of the results set out by other authors,
for Havelock Ellis has already done this very well. Were I to attempt to
reach the sexual types by means of the probable inferences drawn from
his collected results, my work would be a mere hypothesis and science
might have been spared a new book. The arguments in this chapter,
therefore, will be of a rather formal and general nature; they will
relate to biological principles, but to a certain extent will lay stress
on the need for a closer investigation of certain definite points, work
which must be left to the future, but which may be rendered more easy by
my indications.

Those who know little of Biology may scan this section hastily, and yet
run little risk of failing to understand what follows.

The doctrine of the existence of different degrees of masculinity and
femininity may be treated, in the first place, on purely anatomical
lines. Not only the anatomical form, but the anatomical position of
male and female characters must be discussed. The examples already given
of sexual differences in other parts of the body showed that sexuality
is not limited to the genital organs and glands. But where are the
limits to be placed? Do they not reach beyond the primary and secondary
sexual characters? In other words, where does sex display itself, and
where is it without influence?

Many points came to light in the last decade, which bring fresh support
to a theory first put forward in 1840, but which at the time found
little support since it appeared to be in direct opposition to facts
held as established alike by the author of the theory and by his
opponents. The theory in question, first suggested by the zoologist J.
J. S. Steenstrup, of Copenhagen, but since supported by many others, is
that sexual characters are present in every part of the body.

Ellis has collected the results of investigations on almost every tissue
of the body, which serve to show the universal presence of sexual
differences. It is plain that there is a striking difference in the
coloration of the typical male and female. This fact establishes the
existence of sexual differences in the skin (cutis) and in the
blood-vessels, and also in the bulk of the colouring-matter in the blood
and in the number of red corpuscles to the cubic centimetre of the blood
fluid. Bischoff and Rudinger have proved the existence of sexual
differences in brain weight, and more recently Justus and Alice Gaule
have obtained a similar result with regard to such vegetative organs as
the liver, lungs and spleen. In fact, all parts of a woman, although in
different degrees in different zones, have a sexual stimulus for the
male organism, and similarly all parts of the male have their effect on
the female.

The direct logical inference may be drawn, and is supported by abundant
facts, that every cell in the body is sexually characteristic and has
its definite sexual significance. I may now add to the principle already
laid down in this book, of the universal presence of sexually
intermediate conditions, that these conditions may present different
degrees of development. Such a conception of the existence of different
degrees of development in sexuality makes it easy to understand cases of
false hermaphroditism or even of the true hermaphroditism, which, since
the time of Steenstrup, has been established for so many plants and
animals, although not certainly in the case of man. Steenstrup wrote:
“If the sex of an animal has its seat only in the genital organs, then
one might think it possible for an animal really to be bisexual, if it
had at the same time two sets of sexual organs. But sex is not limited
to one region, it manifests itself not merely by the presence of certain
organs; it pervades the whole being and shows itself in every point. In
a male body, everything down to the smallest part is male, however much
it may resemble the corresponding female part, and so also in the female
the smallest part is female. The presence of male and female sexual
organs in the same body would make the body bisexual only if both sexes
ruled the whole body and made themselves manifest in every point, and
such a condition, as the manifestations of the sexes are opposing
forces, would result simply in the negation of sex in the body in
question.” If, however, the principle of the existence of innumerable
sexually transitional conditions be extended to all the cells of the
body, and empirical knowledge supports such a view, Steenstrup’s
difficulty is resolved, and hermaphroditism no longer appears to be
unnatural. There may be conceived for every cell all conditions, from
complete masculinity through all stages of diminishing masculinity to
its complete absence and the consequent presence of complete femininity.
Whether we are to think of these gradations in the scale of sexual
differentiation as depending on two real substances united in different
proportions, or as a single kind of protoplasm modified in different
ways (as, for instance, by different spatial dispositions of its
molecules), it were wiser not to guess. The first conception is
difficult to apply physiologically; it is extremely difficult to imagine
that two sets of conditions should be able to produce the essential
physiological similarities of two bodies, one with a male and the other
a female diathesis. The second view recalls too vividly certain
unfortunate speculations on heredity. Perhaps both views are equally far
from the truth. At present empirical knowledge does not enable us to say
wherein the masculinity or the femininity of a cell really lies, or to
define the histological, molecular or chemical differences which
distinguish every cell of a male from every cell of a female. Without
anticipating any discovery of the future (it is plain already, however,
that the specific phenomena of living matter are not going to be
referred to chemistry and physics), it may be taken for granted that
individual cells possess sexuality in different degrees quite apart from
the sexuality of the whole body. Womanish men usually have the skin
softer, and in them the cells of the male organs have a lessened power
of division upon which depends directly the poorer development of the
male macroscopic characters.

The distribution of sexual characters affords an important proof of the
appearance of sexuality in different degrees. Such characters (at least
in the animal kingdom) may be arranged according to the strength of
their exciting influence on the opposite sex. To avoid confusion, I
shall make use of John Hunter’s terms for classifying sexual characters.
The primordial sexual characters are the male and female genital glands
(testes and epididymis, ovaries and epoophoron); the primary sexual
characters are the internal appendages of the sexual glands (vasa
deferentia vesiculæ seminales, oviducts and uterus), which may have
sexual characters quite distinct from those of the glands and the
external sexual organs, according to which alone the sex of human beings
is reckoned at birth (sometimes quite erroneously, as I shall show) and
their consequent fate in life decided. After the primary, come all those
sexual characters not directly necessary to reproduction. Such secondary
sexual characters are best defined as those which begin to appear at
puberty, and which cannot be developed except under the influence on the
system of the internal secretions of the genital glands. Examples of
these are the beards in men, the luxuriant growth of hair in women, the
development of the mammary glands, the character of the voice. As a
convenient mode of treatment, and for practical rather than theoretical
reasons, certain inherited characters, such as the development of
muscular strength or of mental obstinacy may be reckoned as tertiary
sexual characters. Under the designation “quaternary sexual characters”
may be placed such accessories as relative social position, difference
in habit, mode of livelihood, the smoking and drinking habit in man, and
the domestic duties of women. All these characters possess a potent and
direct sexual influence, and in my opinion often may be reckoned with
the tertiary characters or even with the secondary. This classification
of sexual characters must not be taken as implying a definite chain of
sequence, nor must it be assumed that the mental sexual characters
either determine the bodily characters or are determined by them in some
causal nexus. The classification relates only to the strength of the
exciting influence on the other sex, to the order in time in which this
influence is exerted, and to the degree of certainty with which the
extent of the influence may be predicted.

Study of secondary sexual characters is bound up with consideration of
the effect of internal secretions of the genital glands on general
metabolism. The relation of this influence or its absence (as in the
case of artificially castrated animals) has been traced out in the
degree of development of the secondary characters. The internal
secretions, however, undoubtedly have an influence on all the cells of
the body. This is clearly shown by the changes which occur at puberty in
all parts of the body, and not only in the seats of the secondary sexual
characters. As a matter of fact, the internal secretions of all the
glands must be regarded as affecting all the tissues.

The internal secretions of the genital glands must be regarded as
completing the sexuality of the individual. Every cell must be
considered as possessing an original sexuality, to which the influence
of the internal secretion in sufficient quantity is the final
determining condition under the influence of which the cell acquires its
final determinate character as male or female.

The genital glands are the organs in which the sex of the individual is
most obvious, and in the component cells of which it is most
conspicuously visible. At the same time it must be noted that the
distinguishing characters of the species, race and family to which an
organism belongs are also best marked in the genital cells. Just as
Steenstrup, on the one hand, was right in teaching that sex extends all
over the body and is not confined to the genital organs, so, on the
other hand, Naegeli, de Vries, Oskar Hertwig and others have propounded
the important theory, and supported it by weighty arguments, that every
cell in a multi-cellular organism possesses a combination of the
characters of its species and race, but that these characters are, as it
were, specially condensed in the sexual cells. Probably this view of the
case will come to be accepted by all investigators, since every living
being owes its origin to the cleavage and multiplication of a single
cell.

Many phenomena, amongst which may be noticed specially experiments on
the regeneration of lost parts and investigations into the chemical
differences between the corresponding tissues of nearly allied animals,
have led the investigators to whom I have just referred to conceive the
existence of an “Idioplasm,” which is the bearer of the specific
characters, and which exists in all the cells of a multi-cellular
animal, quite apart from the purposes of reproduction. In a similar
fashion I have been led to the conception of an “Arrhenoplasm” (male
plasm) and a “Thelyplasm” (female plasm) as the two modes in which the
idioplasm of every bisexual organism may appear, and which are to be
considered, because of reasons which I shall explain, as ideal
conditions between which the actual conditions always lie. Actually
existing protoplasm is to be thought of as moving from an ideal
arrhenoplasm through a real or imaginary indifferent condition (true
hermaphroditism) towards a protoplasm that approaches, but never
actually reaches, an ideal thelyplasm. This conception brings to a point
what I have been trying to say. I apologise for the new terms, but they
are more than devices to call attention to a new idea.

The proof that every single organ, and further, that every single cell
possesses a sexuality lying somewhere between arrhenoplasm and
thelyplasm, and further, that every cell received an original sexual
endowment definite in kind and degree, is to be found in the fact that
even in the same organism the different cells do not always possess
their sexuality identical in kind and degree. In fact each cell of a
body neither contains the same proportion of M and W nor is at the same
approximation to arrhenoplasm or thelyplasm; similar cells of the same
body may indeed lie on different sides of the sexually neutral point.
If, instead of writing “masculinity” and “femininity” at length, we
choose signs to express these, and without any malicious intention
choose the positive sign (+) for M and the negative (-) for W, then our
proposition may be expressed as follows: The sexuality of the different
cells of the same organism differs not only in absolute quantity but is
to be expressed by a different sign. There are many men with a poor
growth of beard and a weak muscular development who are otherwise
typically males; and so also many women with badly developed breasts are
otherwise typically womanly. There are womanish men with strong beards
and masculine women with abnormally short hair who none the less possess
well-developed breasts and broad pelves. I know several men who have the
upper part of the thigh of a female with a normally male under part, and
some with the right hip of a male and the left of a female. In most
cases these local variations of the sexual character affect both sides
of the body, although of course it is only in ideal bodies that there is
complete symmetry about the middle line. The degree to which sexuality
displays itself, however, as, for instance, in the growth of hair, is
very often unsymmetrical. This want of uniformity (and the sexual
manifestations never show complete uniformity) can hardly depend on
differences of the internal secretion; for the blood goes to all the
organs, having in it the same amount of the internal secretion; although
different organs may receive different quantities of blood, in all
normal cases its quality and quantity being proportioned to the needs of
the part.

Were we not to assume as the cause of these variations the presence of a
sexual determinant generally different in every cell but stable from its
earliest embryonic development, then it would be simple to describe the
sexuality of any individual by estimating how far its sexual glands
conformed to the normal type of its sex, and the facts would be much
simpler than they really are. Sexuality, however, cannot be regarded as
occurring in an imaginary normal quantity distributed equally all over
an individual so that the sexual character of any cell would be a
measure of the sexual characters of any other cells. Whilst, as an
exception, there may occur wide differences in the sexual characters of
different cells or organs of the same body, still as a rule there is the
same specific sexuality for all the cells. In fact it may be taken as
certain that an approximation to a complete uniformity of sexual
character over the whole body is much more common than the tendency to
any considerable divergences amongst the different organs or still more
amongst the different cells. How far these possible variations may go
can be determined only by the investigation of individual cases.

There is a popular view, dating back to Aristotle and supported by many
doctors and zoologists, that the castration of an animal is followed by
the sudden appearance of the characters of the other sex; if the gelding
of a male were to bring about the appearance of female characteristics
then doubt would be thrown on the existence in every cell of a
primordial sexuality independent of the genital glands. The most recent
experimental results of Sellheim and Foges, however, have shown that the
type of a gelded male is distinct from the female type, that gelding
does not induce the feminine character. It is better to avoid too
far-reaching and radical conclusions on this matter; it may be that a
second latent gland of the other sex may awake into activity and
sexually dominate the deteriorating organism after the removal or
atrophy of the normal gland. There are many cases (too readily
interpreted as instances of complete assumption of the male character)
in which after the involution of the female sexual glands at the
climacteric the secondary sexual characters of the male are acquired.
Instances of this are the beard of the human grandam, the occasional
appearance of short antlers in old does, or of a cock’s plumage in an
old hen. But such changes are practically never seen except in
association with senile decay or with operative interference.

In the case of certain crustacean parasites of fish, however (the genera
_Cymothoa_, _Anilocra_ and _Nerocila_ of the family _Cymothoidæ_), the
changes I have just mentioned are part of the normal life history. These
creatures are hermaphrodites of a peculiar kind; the male and female
organs co-exist in them but are not functional at the same period. A
sort of protandry exists; each individual exercises first the functions
of a male and afterwards those of the female. During the time of their
activity as males they possess ordinary male reproductive organs which
are cast off when the female genital ducts and brood organs develop.
That similar conditions may exist in man has been shown by those cases
of “eviratio” and “effeminatio” which the sexual pathology of the old
age of men has brought to light. So also we cannot deny altogether the
actual occurrence of a certain degree of effeminacy when the crucial
operation of extirpation of the human testes has been performed.[1] On
the other hand, the fact that the relation is not universal or
inevitable, that the castration of an individual does not certainly
result in the appearance of the characters of the other sex, may be
taken as a proof that it is necessary to assume the original presence
throughout the body of cells determined by arrhenoplasm or thelyplasm.

  [1] So also in the opposite case; it cannot be wholly denied that
  ovariotomy is followed by the appearance of masculine characters.

The possession by every cell of primitive sexuality on which the
secretion of the sexual glands has little effect might be shown further
by consideration of the effects of grafting male genital glands on
female organisms. For such an experiment to be accurate it would be
necessary that the animal from which the testis was to be transplanted
should be as near akin as possible to the female on which the testis was
to be grafted, as, for instance, in the case of a brother and sister;
the idioplasm of the two should be as alike as possible. In this
experiment much would depend on limiting the conditions of the
experiment as much as possible so that the results would not be confused
by conflicting factors. Experiments made in Vienna have shown that when
an exchange of the ovaries has been made between unrelated female
animals (chosen at random) the atrophy of the ovaries follows, but that
there is no failure of the secondary sexual characters (_e.g._,
degeneration of the mammæ). Moreover, when the genital glands of an
animal are removed from their natural position and grafted in a new
position in the same animal (so that it still retains its own tissues)
the full development of the secondary sexual characters goes on
precisely as if there had been no interference, at least in cases where
the operation is successful. The failure of the transplantation of
ovaries from one animal to another may be due to the absence of family
relationship between the tissues; the influence of the idioplasm
probably is of primary importance.

These experiments closely resemble those made in the transfusion of
alien blood. It is a practical rule with surgeons that when a dangerous
loss of blood has to be made good, the blood required for transfusion
must be obtained from an individual not only of the same species and
family, but also of the same sex as that of the patient. The parallel
between transfusion and transplantation is at once evident. If I am
correct in my views, when surgeons seek to transfuse blood, instead of
being content with injections of normal salt solution they must take
the blood not merely from one of the same species, family and sex, but
of a similar degree of masculinity or femininity.

Experiments on transfusion not only lend support to my belief in the
existence of sex characters in the blood corpuscles, but they furnish
additional explanations of the failure of experiments in grafting
ovaries or testis on individuals of the opposite sex. The internal
secretions of the genital glands are operative only in their appropriate
environment of arrhenoplasm or thelyplasm.

In this connection, I may say a word as to the curative value of
organotherapy. Although, as I have shown to be the case, the
transplantation of freshly extirpated genital glands into subjects of
the opposite sex has no effect, it does not follow that the injection of
the ovarian secretion into the blood of a male might not have a most
injurious effect. On the other hand, the principle of organotherapy has
been opposed on the ground that organic preparations procured from
non-allied species could not possibly be expected to yield good results.
It is more than likely that the medical exponents of organotherapy have
lost many valuable discoveries in healing because of their neglect of
the biological theory of idioplasm.

The theory of an idioplasm, the presence of which gives the specific
race characters to those tissues and cells which have lost the
reproductive faculty, is by no means generally accepted. But at the
least all must admit that the race characters are collected in the
genital glands, and that if experiments with extracts from these are to
provide more than a good tonic, the nearest possible relationship
between the animals experimented upon must be observed. Parallel
experiments might be made as to the effect of transplantation of the
genital glands and injections of their extracts on two castrated cocks
of the same strain. For instance, the effects of the transplantation of
the testes of one of them into any other part of its own body or
peritoneal cavity or into any similar part of the other cock might be
compared with the effects of intravenous injection of testis extract of
the one on the other. Such parallel investigations would also increase
our knowledge as to the most suitable media and quantities of the
extracts. It is also to be desired, from the theoretical point of view,
that knowledge may be gained as to whether the internal secretion of the
genital glands enters into chemical union with the protoplasm of the
cells or whether it acts as a physiological stimulus independent of the
quantity supplied. So far we know nothing that would enable us to come
to a definite opinion on this point.

The limited influence of the internal secretions of the sexual glands in
forming the sexual characters must be realised to warrant the theory of
a primary, generally slight, difference in each cell, but still
determinate sexual influence.[2] If the existence of distinct
graduations of these primary characteristics in all the cells and
tissues can be recognised, there follow many important and far-reaching
conclusions. The individual egg-cells and spermatozoa may be found to
possess different degrees of maleness and femaleness, not only in
different individuals, but in the ovaries and testes of the same
individual, especially at different times; for instance, the spermatozoa
differ in size and activity. We are still quite ignorant on these
matters, as no one has worked on the requisite lines.

  [2] The existence of sexual distinctions before puberty shows that the
  power of the internal secretions of the sexual glands does not account
  for everything.

It is extremely interesting to recall in this connection that many times
different investigators have observed in the testes of amphibia not only
the different stages in the development of spermatozoa, but mature eggs.
This interpretation of the observations was at first disputed, and it
was suggested that the presence of unusually large cells in the tubes of
the testes had given rise to the error, but the matter has now been
fully confirmed. Moreover, in these Amphibia, sexually intermediate
conditions are very common, and this should lead us to be careful in
making statements as to the uniform presence of arrhenoplasm or
thelyplasm in a body. The methods of assigning sex to a new-born infant
seem most unsatisfactory in the light of these facts. If the child is
observed to possess a male organ, even although there may be complete
epi- or hypo-spadism, or a double failure of descent of the testes, it
is at once described as a boy and is henceforth treated as one, although
in other parts of the body, for instance in the brain, the sexual
determinant may be much nearer thelyplasm than arrhenoplasm. The sooner
a more exact method of sex discrimination is insisted upon the better.

As a result of these long inductions and deductions we may rest assured
that all the cells possess a definite primary sexual determinant which
must not be assumed to be alike or nearly alike throughout the same
body. Every cell, every cell-complex, and every organ have their
distinctive indices on the scale between thelyplasm and arrhenoplasm.
For the exact definition of the sex, an estimation of the indices over
the whole body would be necessary. I should be content to bear the blame
of all the theoretical and practical errors in this book did I believe
myself to have made the working out of a single case possible.

Differences in the primary sexual determinants, together with the
varying internal secretions (which differ in quantity and quality in
different individuals) produce the phenomena of sexually intermediate
forms. Arrhenoplasm and thelyplasm, in their countless modifications,
are the microscopic agencies which, in co-operation with the internal
secretions, give rise to the macroscopic differences cited in the last
chapter.

If the correctness of the conclusions so far stated may be assumed, the
necessity is at once evident for a whole series of anatomical,
physiological, histological and histo-chemical investigations into those
differences between male and female types, in the structure and function
of the individual organs by which the dowers of arrhenoplasm and
thelyplasm express themselves in the tissues. The knowledge we possess
at the present time on these matters comes from the study of averages,
but averages fail to satisfy the modern statistician, and their
scientific value is very small. Investigations into the sex-differences
in the weight of the brain, for instance, have so far proved very
little, probably because no care was taken to choose typical conditions,
the assignment of sex being dependent on baptismal certificates or on
superficial glances at the outward appearance. As if every “John” or
“Mary” were representative of their sexes because they had been dubbed
“male” and “female!” It would have been well, even if exact
physiological data were thought unnecessary, at least to make certain as
to a few facts as to the general condition of the body, which might
serve as guides to the male or female condition, such as, for instance,
the distance between the great trochanters, the iliac spines, and so
forth, for a sexual harmony in the different parts of the body is
certainly more common than great sexual divergence.

This source of error, the careless acceptance of sexually intermediate
forms as representative subjects for measurement, has maimed other
investigations and seriously retarded the attainment of genuine and
useful results. Those, for instance, who wish to speculate about the
cause of the superfluity of male births have to reckon with this source
of error. In a special way this carelessness will revenge itself on
those who are investigating the ultimate causes that determine sex.
Until the exact degree of maleness or femaleness of all the living
individuals of the group on which he is working can be determined, the
investigator will have reason to distrust both his methods and his
hypotheses. If he classify sexually intermediate forms, for instance,
according to their external appearance, as has been done hitherto, he
will come across cases which fuller investigation would show to be on
the wrong side of his results, whilst other instances, apparently on the
wrong side, would right themselves. Without the conception of an ideal
male and an ideal female, he lacks a standard according to which to
estimate his real cases, and he gropes forward to a superficial and
doubtful conclusion. Maupas, for instance, who made experiments on the
determination of sex in _Hydatina senta_, a Rotifer, found that there
was always an experimental error of from three to five per cent. At low
temperatures the production of females was expected, but always about
the above proportion of males appeared; so also at the higher
temperatures a similar proportion of females appeared. It is probable
that this error was due to sexually intermediate stages, arrhenoplasmic
females at the high temperature, thelyplasmic males at the low
temperature. Where the problem is more complicated, as in the case of
cattle, to say nothing of human beings, the process of investigation
will yield still less harmonious results, and the correction of the
interpretation which will have to be made by allowing for the
disturbance due to the existence of sexually intermediate forms will be
much more difficult.

The study of comparative pathology of the sexual types is as necessary
as their morphology, physiology and development. In this region of
inquiry as elsewhere, statistics would yield certain results. Diseases
manifestly much more abundant in one sex might be described as peculiar
to or idiopathic of thelyplasm or arrhenoplasm. Myxœdema, for instance,
is idiopathic of the female, hydrocele of the male.

But no statistics, however numerous and accurate, can be regarded as
avoiding a source of theoretical error until it has been shown from the
nature of any particular affection dealt with that it is in
indissoluble, functional relation with maleness or femaleness. The
theory of such associated diseases must supply a reason why they occur
almost exclusively in the one sex, that is to say, in the phrase of this
treatise, why they are thelyplasmic or arrhenoplasmic.

THE LAWS OF SEXUAL ATTRACTION

  CARMEN:

  “L’amour est un oiseau rebelle,
  Que nul ne peut apprivoiser:
  Et c’est bien en vain qu’on l’appelle
  S’il lui convient de refuser.
  Rien n’y fait; menace ou prière:
  L’un parle, l’autre se tait;
  Et c’est l’autre que je préfère;
  Il n’a rien dit, mais il me plaît.

  L’amour est enfant de Bohême
  Il n’a jamais connu de loi.”

It has been recognised from time immemorial that, in all forms of
sexually differentiated life, there exists an attraction between males
and females, between the male and the female, the object of which is
procreation. But as the male and the female are merely abstract
conceptions which never appear in the real world, we cannot speak of
sexual attraction as a simple attempt of the masculine and the feminine
to come together. The theory which I am developing must take into
account all the facts of sexual relations if it is to be complete;
indeed, if it is to be accepted instead of the older views, it must give
a better interpretation of all these sexual phenomena. My recognition of
the fact that M and F (maleness and femaleness) are distributed in the
living world in every possible proportion has led me to the discovery of
an unknown natural law, of a law not yet suspected by any philosopher, a
law of sexual attraction. As observations on human beings first led me
to my results, I shall begin with this side of the subject.

Every one possesses a definite, individual taste of his own with regard
to the other sex. If we compare the portrait of the women which some
famous man has been known to love, we shall nearly always find that they
are all closely alike, the similarity being most obvious in the contour
(more precisely in the “figure”) or in the face, but on closer
examination being found to extend to the minutest details, _ad unguem_,
to the finger-tips. It is precisely the same with every one else. So,
also, every girl who strongly attracts a man recalls to him the other
girls he has loved before. We see another side of the same phenomenon
when we recall how often we have said of some acquaintance or another,
“I can’t imagine how that type of woman pleases him.” Darwin, in the
“Descent of Man,” collected many instances of the existence of this
individuality of the sexual taste amongst animals, and I shall be able
to show that there are analogous phenomena even amongst plants.

Sexual attraction is nearly always, as in the case of gravitation,
reciprocal. Where there appear to be exceptions to this rule, there is
nearly always evidence of the presence of special influences which have
been capable of preventing the direct action of the special taste, which
is almost always reciprocal, or which have left an unsatisfied craving,
if the direct taste were not allowed its play.

The common saying, “Waiting for Mr. Right,” or statements such as that
“So-and-so are quite unsuitable for one another,” show the existence of
an obscure presentiment of the fact that every man or woman possesses
certain individual peculiarities which qualify or disqualify him or her
for marriage with any particular member of the opposite sex; and that
this man cannot be substituted for that, or this woman for the other
without creating a disharmony.

It is a common personal experience that certain individuals of the
opposite sex are distasteful to us, that others leave us cold; whilst
others again may stimulate us until, at last, some one appears who
seems so desirable that everything in the world is worthless and empty
compared with union with such a one. What are the qualifications of that
person? What are his or her peculiarities? If it really be the case--and
I think it is--that every male type has its female counterpart with
regard to sexual affinity, it looks as if there were some definite law.
What is this law? How does it act? “Like poles repel, unlike attract,”
was what I was told when, already armed with my own answer, I resolutely
importuned different kinds of men for a statement, and submitted
instances to their power of generalisation. The formula, no doubt, is
true in a limited sense and for a certain number of cases. But it is at
once too general and too vague; it would be applied differently by
different persons, and it is incapable of being stated in mathematical
terms.

This book does not claim to state all the laws of sexual affinity, for
there are many; nor does it pretend to be able to tell every one exactly
which individual of the opposite sex will best suit his taste, for that
would imply a complete knowledge of all the laws in question. In this
chapter only one of these laws will be considered--the law which stands
in organic relation to the rest of the book. I am working at a number of
other laws, but the following is that to which I have given most
investigation, and which is most elaborated. In criticising this work,
allowance must be made for the incomplete nature of the material
consequent on the novelty and difficulty of the subject.

Fortunately it is not necessary for me to cite at length either the
facts from which I originally derived this law of sexual affinity or to
set out in detail the evidence I obtained from personal statements. I
asked each of those who helped me, to make out his own case first, and
then to carry out observations in his circle of acquaintances. I have
paid special attention to those cases which have been noticed and
remembered, in which the taste of a friend has not been understood, or
appeared not to be present, or was different from that of the observer.
The minute degree of knowledge of the external form of the human body
which is necessary for the investigation is possessed by every one.

I have come to the law which I shall now formulate by a method the
validity of which I shall now have to prove.

The law runs as follows: “For true sexual union it is necessary that
there come together a complete male (M) and a complete female (F), even
although in different cases the M and F are distributed between the two
individuals in different proportions.”

The law may be expressed otherwise as follows:

If we take μ, any individual regarded in the ordinary way as a male, and
denote his real sexual constitution as Mμ, so many parts really male,
plus Wμ, so many parts really female; if we also take ω, any individual
regarded in the ordinary way as a female, and denote _her_ real sexual
constitution as Wω, so many parts really female, plus Mω, so many parts
really male; then, if there be complete sexual affinity, the greatest
possible sexual attraction between the two individuals, μ and ω,

  (1) Mμ (the truly male part in the “male”) + Mω (the truly male part
  in the “female”) will equal a constant quantity, M, the ideal male;
  and

  (2) Wμ + Wω (the ideal female parts in respectively the “male” and the
  “female”) will equal a second constant quantity, W, the ideal female.

This statement must not be misunderstood. Both formulas refer to one
case, to a single sexual relation, the second following directly from
the first and adding nothing to it, as I set out from the point of view
of an individual possessing just as much femaleness as he lacks of
maleness. Were he completely male, his requisite complement would be a
complete female, and _vice versâ_. If, however, he is composed of a
definite inheritance of maleness, and also an inheritance of femaleness
(which must not be neglected), then, to complete the individual, his
maleness must be completed to make a unit; but so also must his
femaleness be completed.

If, for instance, an individual be composed thus:

    { ³⁄₄ M
  μ { and
    { ¹⁄₄ W,

then the best sexual complement of that individual will be another
compound as follows:

    { ¹⁄₄ M
  ω { and
    { ³⁄₄ W.

It can be seen at once that this view is wider in its reach than the
common statement of the case. That male and female, as sexual types,
attract each other is only one instance of my general law, an instance
in which an imaginary individual,

    { 1 M
  χ {
    { 0 W,

finds its complement in an equally imaginary individual,

    { 0 M
  γ {
    { 1 W.

There can be no hesitation in admitting the existence of definite,
individual sexual preferences, and such an admission carries with it
approval of the necessity of investigating the laws of the preference,
and its relation to the rest of the bodily and mental characters of an
individual. The law, as I have stated it, can encounter no initial sense
of impossibility, and is contrary neither to scientific nor common
experience. But it is not self-evident. It might be that the law, which
cannot yet be regarded as fully worked out, might run as follows:

  Mμ - Mω = a constant;

that is to say, it may be the difference between the degrees of
masculinity and not the sum of the degrees of masculinity that is a
constant quality, so that the most masculine man would stand just as far
removed from his complement (who in this case would lie nearly midway
between masculinity and femininity) as the most feminine man would be
removed from his complement who would be near the extreme of femininity.
Although, as I have said, this is conceivable, it is not borne out by
experience. Recognising that we have to do here with an empirical law,
and trying to observe a wise scientific restraint, we shall do well to
avoid speaking as if there were any “force” pulling the two individuals
together as if they were puppets; the law is no more than the statement
that an identical relation can be made out in each case of maximum
sexual attraction. We are dealing, in fact, with what Ostwald termed an
“invariant” and Avenarius a “multiponible”; and this is the constant sum
formed by the total masculinity and the total femininity in all cases
where a pair of living beings come together with the maximum sexual
attraction.

In this matter we may neglect altogether the so-called æsthetic factor,
the stimulus of beauty. For does it not frequently happen that one man
is completely captivated by a particular woman and raves about her
beauty, whilst another, who is not the sexual complement of the woman in
question, cannot imagine what his friend sees in her to admire. Without
discussing the laws of æsthetics or attempting to gather together
examples of relative values, it may readily be admitted that a man may
consider a woman beautiful who, from the æsthetic standpoint, is not
merely indifferent but actually ugly, that in fact pure æsthetics deal
not with absolute beauty, but merely with conceptions of beauty from
which the sexual factor has been eliminated.

I have myself worked out the law in, at the lowest, many hundred cases,
and I have found that the exceptions were only apparent. Almost every
couple one meets in the street furnishes a new proof. The exceptions
were specially instructive, as they not only suggested but led to the
investigation of other laws of sexuality. I myself made special
investigations in the following way. I obtained a set of photographs of
æsthetically beautiful women of blameless character, each of which was
a good example of some definite proportion of femininity, and I asked a
number of my friends to inspect these and select the most beautiful. The
selection made was invariably that which I had predicted. With other
male friends, who knew on what I was engaged, I set about in another
fashion. They provided me with photographs from amongst which I was to
choose the one I should expect them to think most beautiful. Here, too,
I was uniformly successful. With others, I was able to describe most
accurately their ideal of the opposite sex, independently of any
suggestions unconsciously given by them, often in minuter detail than
they had realised. Sometimes, too, I was able to point out to them, for
the first time, the qualities that repelled them in individuals of the
opposite sex, although for the most part men realise more readily the
characters that repel them than the characters that attract them.

I believe that with a little practice any one could readily acquire and
exercise this art on any circle of friends. A knowledge of other laws of
sexual affinity would be of great importance. A number of special
constants might be taken as tests of the existence of complementary
individuals. For instance, the law might be caricatured so as to require
that the sum of the length of the hairs of any two perfect lovers should
always be the same. But, as I have already shown in chapter ii., this
result is not to be expected, because all the organs of the same body do
not necessarily possess the same degree of maleness or femaleness. Such
heuristic rules would soon multiply and bring the whole subject into
ridicule, and I shall therefore abstain from further suggestions of the
kind.

I do not deny that my exposition of the law is somewhat dogmatical and
lacks confirmation by exact detail. But I am not so anxious to claim
finished results as to incite others to the study, the more so as the
means for scientific investigations are lacking in my own case. But even
if much remains theoretical, I hope that I shall have firmly riveted the
chief beams in my edifice of theory by showing how it explains much
that hitherto has found no explanation, and so shall have, in a fashion,
proved it retrospectively by showing how much it would explain if it
were true.

A most remarkable confirmation of my law may be found in the vegetable
kingdom, in a group of facts hitherto regarded as isolated and to be so
strange as to have no parallel. Every botanist must have guessed already
that I have in mind the phenomena of heterostylism, first discovered by
Persoon, then described by Darwin and named by Hildebrand. Many
Dicotyledons, and a few Monocotyledons, for instance, species of
Primulaceæ and Geraneaceæ and many Rubiaceæ, phanerogams in the flowers
of which both the pollen and the stigma are functional, although only in
cross-fertilisation, so that the flowers are hermaphrodite in structure
but unisexual physiologically, display the peculiarity that in different
individuals the stamens and the stigma have different lengths. The
individuals, all the flowers of which have long styles and therefore
high stigmas and short anthers, are, in my judgment, the more female,
whilst the individuals with short styles and long anthers are more male.
In addition to such dimorphic plants, there are also trimorphic plants,
such as _Lythrum salicaria_, in which the sexual organs display three
forms differing in length. There are not only long-styled and
short-styled forms, but flowers with styles of a medium length.

Although only dimorphism and trimorphism have been recognised in the
books, these conditions do not exhaust the actual complexities of
structure. Darwin himself pointed out that if small differences were
taken into account, no less than five different situations of the
anthers could be distinguished. Alongside such plain cases of
discontinuity, of the separation of the different degrees of maleness
and femaleness in plainly distinct individuals, there are also cases in
which the different degrees grade into each other without breaks in the
series. There are analogous cases of discontinuity in the animal
kingdom, although they have always been thought of as unique and
isolated phenomena, as the parallel with heterostylism had not been
suggested. In several genera of insects, as, for instance, some Earwigs
(_Forficulæ_) and Lamellicorn Beetles (_Lucanus cervus_), the
Stag-beetle (_Dynastes Hercules_), and _Xylotrupes gideon_, there are
some males in which the antennæ, the secondary sexual characters by
which they differ most markedly from the females, are extremely long,
and others in which they are very short. Bateson, who has written most
on this subject, distinguishes the two forms as “high males” and “low
males.” It is true that a continuous series of intermediate forms links
the extreme types, but, none the less, the vast majority of the
individuals are at one extreme or the other. Unfortunately, Bateson did
not investigate the relations between these different types of males and
the females, and so it is not known if there be female types with
special sexual affinity for these male types. Thus these observations
can be taken only as a morphological parallel to heterostylism and not
as cases of the law of complementary sexual attraction.

Heterostylous plants may possibly be the means of establishing my view
that the law of sexual complements holds good for every kind of living
thing. Darwin first, and after him many other investigators have proved
that in heterostylous plants fertilisation has the best results, or,
indeed, may be possible only when the pollen from a macrostylous flower
(a flower with the shortest form of anthers and longest pistil) falls on
the stigma of a microstylous blossom (one where the pistil is the
shortest possible and the stamens at their greatest length), or _vice
versâ_. In other words, if the best result is to be attained by the
cross-fertilisation of a pair of flowers, one flower with a long pistil,
and therefore high degree of femaleness, and short stamens must be mated
with another possessing a correspondingly short pistil, and so, with the
amount of femaleness complementary to the first flower, and with long
stamens complementary to the short stamens of the first flower. In the
case of flowers where there are three pistil lengths, the best results
may be expected when the pollen of one blossom is transmitted to another
blossom in which the stigma is the nearest complement of the stigma of
the flower from which the pollen came; if another combination is made,
either naturally or by artificial fertilisation, then, if a result
follows at all, the seedlings are scanty, dwarfed and sometimes
infertile, much as when hybrids between species are formed.

It is to be noticed that the authors who have discussed heterostylism
are not satisfied with the usual explanation, which is that the insects
which visit the flowers carry the pollen at different relative positions
on their bodies corresponding to the different lengths of the sexual
organs and so produce the wonderful result. Darwin, moreover, admits
that bees carry all sorts of pollen on every part of their bodies; so
that it has still to be made clear how the female organs dusted with two
or three kinds of pollen make their choice of the most suitable. The
supposition of a power of choice, however interesting and wonderful it
is, does not account for the bad results which follow artificial dusting
with the wrong kind of pollen (so-called “illegitimate fertilisation”).
The theory that the stigmas can only make use of, or are capable of
receiving only “legitimate pollen” has been proved by Darwin to be
erroneous, inasmuch as the insects which act as fertilisers certainly
sometimes start various cross-breedings.

The hypothesis that the reason for this selective retention on the part
of individuals is a special quality, deep-seated in the flowers
themselves, seems more probable. We have probably here to do with the
presence, just as in human beings, of a maximum degree of sexual
attraction between individuals, one of which possesses just as much
femaleness as the other possesses maleness, and this is merely another
mode of stating my sexual law. The probability of this interpretation is
increased by the fact that in the short-styled, long-anthered, more male
flowers, the pollen grains are larger and the papillæ on the stigmas are
smaller than the corresponding parts of the long-styled, short-anthered,
more female flowers. Here we have certainly to do with different degrees
of maleness and femaleness. These circumstances supply a strong
corroboration of my law of sexual affinity, that in the vegetable
kingdom as well as in the animal kingdom (I shall return later to this
point) fertilisation has the best results when it occurs between parents
with maximum sexual affinity.[3]

  [3] For special purposes the breeder, whose object frequently is to
  modify natural tendencies, will often disregard this law.

Consideration of sexual aversion affords the readiest proof that the law
holds good throughout the animal kingdom. I should like to suggest here
that it would be extremely interesting to make observations as to
whether the larger, heavier and less active egg-cells exert a special
attraction on the smaller and more active spermatozoa, whilst those
egg-cells with less food-yolk attract more strongly the larger and less
active spermatozoa. It may be the case, as L. Weill has already
suggested in a speculation as to the factors that determine sex, that
there is a correlation between the rates of motion or kinetic energies
of conjugating sexual cells. It has not yet been determined, although
indeed it would be difficult to determine, if the sexual cells, apart
from the streams and eddies of their fluid medium, approach each other
with equal velocities or sometimes display special activity. There is a
wide field for investigation here.

As I have repeatedly remarked, my law is not the only law of sexual
affinity, otherwise, no doubt, it would have been discovered long ago.
Just because so many other actors are bound up with it,[4] because
another, perhaps many other laws sometimes overshadow it, cases of
undisturbed action of sexual affinity are rare. As the necessary
investigations have not yet been finished, I will not speak at length of
such laws, but rather by way of illustration I shall refer to a few
factors which as yet cannot be demonstrated mathematically.

  [4] In speaking of the sexual taste in men and women, one thinks at
  once of the usual but not invariable preference individuals show for a
  particular colour of hair. It would certainly seem as if the reason
  for so strongly marked a preference must lie deep in human nature.

I shall begin with some phenomena which are pretty generally
recognised. Men when quite young, say under twenty, are attracted by
much older women (say those of thirty-five and so on), whilst men of
thirty-five are attracted by women much younger than themselves. So
also, on the other hand, quite young girls (sweet seventeen) generally
prefer much older men, but, later in life, may marry striplings. The
whole subject deserves close attention and is both popular and easily
noticed.

In spite of the necessary limitation of this work to the consideration
of a single law, it will make for exactness if I try to state the
formula in a more definite fashion, without the deceptive element of
simplicity. Even without being able to state in definite quantities the
other factors and the co-operating laws, we may reach a satisfactory
exactness by the use of a variable factor.

The first formula was only an abstract general statement of what is
common to all cases of maximum sexual attraction so far as the sexual
relation is governed by the law. I must now try to find an expression
for the strength of the sexual affinity in any conceivable case, an
expression which on account of its general form, can be used to describe
the relationship between any two living beings, even if these belong to
different species or to the same sex.

If

    { α M          { β W
  χ {       and  γ {
    { α´ W         { β´ M

(where α, α´, β, and β´ are each greater than 0 and less than unity)
define the sexual constitutions of any two living beings between which
there is an attraction, then the strength of the attraction may be
expressed thus:

        K
  A = -----_f^t_
      α - β

where _f^t_ is an empirical or analytical function of the period during
which it is possible for the individuals to act upon one another, what
may be called the “reaction-time”; whilst K is the variable factor in
which we place all the known and unknown laws of sexual affinity, and
which also varies with the degree of specific, racial and family
relationship, and with the health and absence of deformity in the two
individuals, and which, finally, will become smaller as the actual
spacial distance between the two is greater, and which can be determined
in any individual case.

When in this formula α = β A must be infinity; this is the extreme case;
it is sexual attraction as an elemental force, as it has been described
with a weird mastercraft by Lynkeus in the novel “Im Postwagen.” Such
sexual attraction is as much a natural law as the downward growth of a
rootlet towards the earth, or the migration of bacteria to the oxygen at
the edge of a microscopic cover-glass. But it takes some time to grow
accustomed to such a view. I shall refer to this point again.

If α - β has its maximum value, which is when it equals unity, then A =
K. _f^t_.

This would be the extreme case of the action of all the sympathetic and
antipathetic relations between human beings (leaving out of account
social relations in their narrowest sense, which are merely the
safeguards of communities) which are not included in the law of sexual
affinity. As K generally increases with the strength of congenital
relationship, A has a greater value when the individuals are of the same
nationality than when they belong to different nationalities. The value
of _f^t_ is great in this case, and one can investigate its
fluctuations, as, for instance, when two domestic animals of different
species are in association; at first it usually stands for violent
enmity, or fear of each other (and A has a negative value), whilst later
on a friendship may come about.

When K = 0 in the formula

      K . _f^t_
  A = ---------,
        α - β

then A = 0, which means that between two living beings of origin too
remote there may be no trace of sexual attraction.

The provisions of the criminal statute-books, however, in reference to
sodomy and bestiality show plainly that even in the case of very remote
species K has a value greater than nothing. The formula may apply to two
individuals not only not of the same species, but even not of the same
order.

It is a new theory that the union of male and female organisms is no
mere matter of chance, but is guided by a definite law; and the actual
complexities which I have merely suggested show the need for complete
investigation into the mysterious nature of sexual attraction.

The experiments of Wilhelm Pfeffer have shown that the male cells of
many cryptogams are naturally attracted not merely by the female cells,
but also by substances which they have come in contact with under
natural conditions, or which have been introduced to them
experimentally, in the latter case the substances being sometimes of a
kind with which they could not possibly have come in contact, except
under the conditions of experiment. Thus the male cells of ferns are
attracted not only by the malic acid secreted naturally by the
archegonia, but by synthetically prepared malic acid, whilst the male
cells of mosses are attracted either by the natural acid of the female
cells or by acid prepared from cane sugar. A male cell, which, we know
not how, is influenced by the degree of concentration of a solution,
moves towards the most concentrated part of the fluid. Pfeffer named
such movements “chemotactic” and coined the word “chemotropism” to
include these and many other asexual cases of motion stimulated by
chemical bodies. There is much to support the view that the attraction
exercised by females on males which perceive them at a distance by sense
organs is to be regarded as analogous in certain respects with
chemotropism.

It seems highly probable that chemotropism is also the explanation of
the restless and persistent energy with which for days together the
mammalian spermatozoa seek the entrance to the uterus, although the
natural current produced from the mucous membrane of the uterus is from
within outwards. The spermatozoon, in spite of all mechanical and other
hindrances, makes for the egg-cell with an almost incredible certainty.
In this connection we may call to mind the prodigious journeys made by
many fish; salmon travel for months together, practically without taking
any food, from the open sea to the sources of the Rhine, against the
current of the river, in order to spawn in localities that are safe and
well provided with food.

I have recently been looking at the beautiful sketches which P.
Falkenberg has made of the processes of fertilisation in some of the
Mediterranean seaweeds. When we speak of the lines of force between the
opposite poles of magnets we are dealing with a force no more natural
than that which irresistibly attracts the spermatozoon and the egg-cell.
The chief difference seems to be that in the case of the attraction
between the inorganic substances, strains are set up in the media
between the two poles, whilst in the living matter the forces seem
confined to the organisms themselves. According to Falkenberg’s
observations, the spermatozoa, in moving towards the egg-cells, are able
to overcome the force which otherwise would be exercised upon them by a
source of light. The sexual attraction, the chemotactic force, is
stronger than the phototactic force.

When a union has taken place between two individuals who, according to
my formula, are not adapted to each other, if later, the natural
complement of either appears the inclination to desert the makeshift at
once asserts itself in accordance with an inevitable law of nature. A
divorce takes place, as much constitutional, depending on the nature of
things, as when, if iron sulphate and caustic potash are brought
together, the SO₄ ions leave the iron to unite with the potassium. When
in nature an adjustment of such differences of potential is about to
take place, he who would approve or disapprove of the process from the
moral point of view would appear to most to play a ridiculous part.

This is the fundamental idea in Goethe’s “Wahlverwandtschaften”
(Elective Affinities), and in the fourth chapter of the first part of
that work he makes it the subject of a playful introduction which was
full of undreamed of future significance, and the full force of which he
was fated himself to experience in later life. I must confess to being
proud that this book is the first work to take up his ideas. None the
less, it is as little my intention as it was the intention of Goethe to
advocate divorce; I hope only to explain it. There are human motives
which indispose man to divorce and enable him to withstand it. This I
shall discuss later on. The physical side of sex in man is less
completely ruled by natural law than is the case with lower animals. We
get an indication of this in the fact that man is sexual throughout the
year, and that in him there is less trace than even in domestic animals
of the existence of a special spring breeding-season.

The law of sexual affinity is analogous in another respect to a
well-known law of theoretical chemistry, although, indeed, there are
marked differences. The violence of a chemical reaction is proportionate
to the mass of the substances involved, as, for instance, a stronger
acid solution unites with a stronger basic solution with greater
avidity, just as in the case of the union of a pair of living beings
with strong maleness and femaleness. But there is an essential
difference between the living process and the reaction of the lifeless
chemical substances. The living organism is not homogeneous and
isotropic in its composition; it is not divisible into a number of small
parts of identical properties. The difference depends on the principle
of individuality, on the fact that every living thing is an individual,
and that its individuality is essentially structural. And so in the
vital process it is not as in inorganic chemistry; there is no
possibility of a larger proportion forming one compound, a smaller
proportion forming another. The organic chemotropism, moreover, may be
negative. In certain cases the value of A may result in a negative
quantity, that is to say, the sexual attraction may appear in the form
of sexual repulsion. It is true that in purely chemical processes the
same reaction may take place at different rates. Taking, however, the
total failure of some reaction by catalytic interference as the
equivalent of a sexual repulsion, it never happens, according to the
latest investigations at least, that the interference merely induces the
reaction after a longer or shorter interval. On the other hand, it
happens frequently that a compound which is formed at one temperature
breaks up at another temperature. Here the “direction” of the reaction
is a function of the temperature, as, in the vital process, it may be a
function of time.

In the value of the factor “_t_,” the time of reaction, a final analogy
of sexual attraction with chemical processes may be found, if we are
willing to trace the comparison without laying too much stress upon it.
Consider the formula for the rapidity of the reaction, the different
degrees of rapidity with which a sexual attraction between two
individuals is established, and reflect how the value of “A” varies with
the value of “_t_.” However, what Kant termed mathematical vanity must
not tempt us to read into our equations complicated and difficult
processes, the validity of which is uncertain. All that can be implied
is simple enough; sensual desire increases with the time during which
two individuals are in propinquity; if they were shut up together, it
would develop if there were no repulsion, or practically no repulsion
between them, in the fashion of some slow chemical process which takes
much time before its result is visible. Such a case is the confidence
with which it is said of a marriage arranged without love, “Love will
come later; time will bring it.”

It is plain that too much stress must not be laid on the analogy between
sexual affinity and purely chemical processes. None the less, I thought
it illuminating to make the comparison. It is not yet quite clear if the
sexual attraction is to be ranked with the “tropisms,” and the matter
cannot be settled without going beyond mere sexuality to discuss the
general problem of erotics. The phenomena of love require a different
treatment, and I shall return to them in the second part of this book.
None the less, there are analogies that cannot be denied when human
attractions and chemotropism are compared. I may refer as an instance to
the relation between Edward and Ottilie in Goethe’s
“Wahlverwandtschaften.”

Mention of Goethe’s romance leads naturally to a discussion of the
marriage problem, and I may here give a few of the practical inferences
which would seem to follow from the theoretical considerations of this
chapter. It is clear that a natural law, not dissimilar to other natural
laws, exists with regard to sexual attraction; this law shows that,
whilst innumerable gradations of sexuality exist, there always may be
found pairs of beings the members of which are almost perfectly adapted
to one another. So far, marriage has its justification, and, from the
standpoint of biology, free love is condemned. Monogamy, however, is a
more difficult problem, the solution of which involves other
considerations, such as periodicity, to which I shall refer later, and
the change of the sexual taste with advancing years.

A second conclusion may be derived from heterostylism, especially with
reference to the fact that “illegitimate fertilisation” almost
invariably produces less fertile offspring. This leads to the
consideration that amongst other forms of life the strongest and
healthiest offspring will result from unions in which there is the
maximum of sexual suitability. As the old saying has it, “love-children”
turn out to be the finest, strongest, and most vigorous of human beings.
Those who are interested in the improvement of mankind must therefore,
on purely hygienic grounds, oppose the ordinary mercenary marriages of
convenience.

It is more than probable that the law of sexual attraction may yield
useful results when applied to the breeding of animals. More attention
will have to be given to the secondary sexual characters of the animals
which it is proposed to mate. The artificial methods made use of to
secure the serving of mares by stallions unattractive to them do not
always fail, but are followed by indifferent results. Probably an
obvious result of the use of a substituted stallion in impregnating a
mare is the extreme nervousness of the progeny, which must be treated
with bromide and other drugs. So, also, the degeneration of modern Jews
may be traced in part to the fact that amongst them marriages for other
reasons than love are specially common.

Amongst the many fundamental principles established by the careful
observations and experiments of Darwin, and since confirmed by other
investigators, is the fact that both very closely related individuals,
and those whose specific characters are too unlike, have little sexual
attraction for each other, and that if in spite of this sexual union
occurs, the offspring usually die at an early stage or are very feeble,
or are practically infertile. So also, in heterostylous plants
“legitimate fertilisation” brings about more numerous and vigorous seeds
than come from other unions.

It may be said in general that the offspring of those parents which
showed the greatest sexual attraction succeed best.

This rule, which is certainly universal, implies the correctness of a
conclusion which might be drawn from the earlier part of this book. When
a marriage has taken place and children have been produced, these have
gained nothing from the conquest of sexual repulsion by the parents, for
such a conquest could not take place without damage to the mental and
bodily characters of the children that would come of it. It is certain,
however, that many childless marriages have been loveless marriages. The
old idea that the chance of conception is increased where there is a
mutual participation in the sexual act is closely connected with what we
have been considering as to the greater intensity of the sexual
attraction between two complementary individuals.

CHAPTER IV

HOMO-SEXUALITY AND PEDERASTY

The law of Sexual Attraction gives the long-sought-for explanation of
sexual inversion, of sexual inclination towards members of the same sex,
whether or no that be accompanied by aversion from members of the
opposite sex. Without reference to a distinction which I shall deal with
later on, I may say at once that it is exceedingly probable that, in all
cases of sexual inversion, there will be found indications of the
anatomical characters of the other sex. There is no such thing as a
genuine “psycho-sexual hermaphroditism”; the men who are sexually
attracted by men have outward marks of effeminacy, just as women of a
similar disposition to those of their own sex exhibit male characters.
That this should be so is quite intelligible if we admit the close
parallelism between body and mind, and further light is thrown upon it
by the facts explained in the second chapter of this book; the facts as
to the male or female principle not being uniformly present all over the
same body, but distributed in different amounts in different organs. In
all cases of sexual inversion, there is invariably an anatomical
approximation to the opposite sex.

Such a view is directly opposed to that of those who would maintain that
sexual inversion is an acquired character, and one that has superseded
normal sexual impulses. Schrenk-Notzing, Kraepelin, and Féré are amongst
those writers who have urged the view that sexual inversion is an
acquired habit, the result of abstinence from normal intercourse and
particularly induced by example. But what about the first offender? Did
the god Hermaphroditos teach him? It might equally be sought to prove
that the sexual inclination of a normal man for a normal woman was an
unnatural, acquired habit--a habit, as some ancient writers have
suggested, that arose from some accidental discovery of its agreeable
nature. Just as a normal man discovers for himself what a woman is, so
also, in the case of a sexual “invert” the attraction exercised on him
by a person of his own sex is a normal product of his development from
his birth. Naturally the opportunity must come in which the individual
may put in practice his desire for inverted sexuality, but the
opportunity will be taken only when his natural constitution has made
the individual ready for it. That sexual abstinence (to take the second
supposed cause of inversion) should result in anything more than
masturbation may be explained by the supposition that inversion is
acquired, but that it should be coveted and eagerly sought can only
happen when the demand for it is rooted in the constitution. In the same
fashion normal sexual attraction might be said to be an acquired
character, if it could be proved definitely that, to fall in love, a
normal man must first see a woman or a picture of a woman. Those who
assert that sexual inversion is an acquired character, are making a
merely incidental or accessory factor responsible for the whole
constitution of an organism.

There is little reason for saying that sexual inversion is acquired, and
there is just as little for regarding it as inherited from parents or
grandparents. Such an assertion, it is true, has not been made, and
seems contrary to all experience; but it has been suggested that it is
due to a neuropathic diathesis, and that general constitutional weakness
is to be found in the descendants of those who have displayed sexual
inversion. In fact sexual inversion has usually been regarded as
psycho-pathological, as a symptom of degeneration, and those who exhibit
it have been considered as physically unfit. This view, however, is
falling into disrepute, especially as Krafft-Ebing, its principal
champion, abandoned it in the later editions of his work. None the
less, it is not generally recognised that sexual inverts may be
otherwise perfectly healthy, and with regard to other social matters
quite normal. When they have been asked if they would have wished
matters to be different with them in this respect, almost invariably
they answer in the negative.

It is due to the erroneous conceptions that I have mentioned that
homo-sexuality has not been considered in relation with other facts. Let
those who regard sexual inversion as pathological, as a hideous anomaly
of mental development (the view accepted by the populace), or believe it
to be an acquired vice, the result of an execrable seduction, remember
that there exist all transitional stages reaching from the most
masculine male to the most effeminate male and so on to the sexual
invert, the false and true hermaphrodite; and then, on the other side,
successively through the sapphist to the virago and so on until the most
feminine virgin is reached. In the interpretation of this volume, sexual
inverts of both sexes are to be defined as individuals in whom the
factor α (see page 8, chap. i.) is very nearly 0.5 and so is practically
equal to α´; in other words, individuals in whom there is as much
maleness as femaleness, or indeed who, although reckoned as men, may
contain an excess of femaleness, or as women and yet be more male than
female. Because of the want of uniformity in the sexual characters of
the body, it is fairly certain that many individuals have their sex
assigned them on account of the existence of the primary male sexual
characteristic, even although there may be delayed _descensus
testiculorum_, or epi- or hypo-spadism, or, later on, absence of active
spermatozoa, or even, in the case of assignment of the female sex,
absence of the vagina, and thus male avocations (such as compulsory
military service) may come to be assigned to those in whom α is less
than 0.5 and α´ greater than 0.5. The sexual complement of such
individuals really is to be found on their own side of the sexual line,
that is to say, on the side on which they are reckoned, although in
reality they may belong to the other.

Moreover, and this not only supports my view but can be explained only
by it, there are no inverts who are completely sexually inverted. In all
of them there is from the beginning an inclination to both sexes; they
are, in fact, bisexual. It may be that later on they may actively
encourage a slight leaning towards one sex or the other, and so become
practically unisexual either in the normal or in the inverted sense, or
surrounding influence may bring about this result for them. But in such
processes the fundamental bisexuality is never obliterated and may at
any time give evidence of its suppressed presence.

Reference has often been made, and in recent years has increasingly been
made, to the relation between homo-sexuality and the presence of
bisexual rudiments in the embryonic stages of animals and plants. What
is new in my view is that according to it, homo-sexuality cannot be
regarded as an atavism or as due to arrested embryonic development, or
incomplete differentiation of sex; it cannot be regarded as an anomaly
of rare occurrence interpolating itself in customary complete separation
of the sexes. Homo-sexuality is merely the sexual condition of these
intermediate sexual forms that stretch from one ideally sexual condition
to the other sexual condition. In my view all actual organisms have both
homo-sexuality and hetero-sexuality.