Otto Weininger

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 foetal 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:

A = {

a Ma´ W

always remembering that each of the factors a, a´, , ´ 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.

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.

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. Myxoedema, 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.

CHAPTER III
THE LAWS OF SEXUAL ATTRACTION

Carmen:

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 , any individual regarded in the ordinary way as a male, and denote his real sexual constitution as M, so many parts really male, plus W, so many parts really female; if we also take ?, any individual regarded in the ordinary way as a female, and denote her real sexual constitution as W?, so many parts really female, plus M?, so many parts really male; then, if there be complete sexual affinity, the greatest possible sexual attraction between the two individuals, and ?,

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:

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

? {

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,

finds its complement in an equally imaginary individual,

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:

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]

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.

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

(where a, a´, , and ´ 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:

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 a = 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 a - 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

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 a (see page 8, chap. i.) is very nearly 0.5 and so is practically equal to a´; 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 a is less than 0.5 and a´ 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.

That the rudiment of homo-sexuality, in however weak a form, exists in every human being, corresponding to the greater or smaller development of the characters of the opposite sex, is proved conclusively from the fact that in the adolescent stage, while there is still a considerable amount of undifferentiated sexuality, and before the internal secretions have exerted their stimulating force, passionate attachments with a sensual side are the rule amongst boys as well as amongst girls.

A person who retains from that age onwards a marked tendency to “friendship” with a person of his own sex must have a strong taint of the other sex in him. Those, however, are still more obviously intermediate sexual forms, who, after association with both sexes, fail to have aroused in them the normal passion for the opposite sex, but still endeavour to maintain confidential, devoted affection with those of their own sex.

There is no friendship between men that has not an element of sexuality in it, however little accentuated it may be in the nature of the friendship, and however painful the idea of the sexual element would be. But it is enough to remember that there can be no friendship unless there has been some attraction to draw the men together. Much of the affection, protection, and nepotism between men is due to the presence of unsuspected sexual compatibility.

An analogy with the sexual friendship of youth may be traced in the case of old men, when, for instance, with the involution following old age, the latent amphisexuality of man appears. This may be the reason why so many men of fifty years and upwards are guilty of indecency.

Homo-sexuality has been observed amongst animals to a considerable extent. F. Karsch has made a wide, if not complete, compilation from other authors. Unfortunately, practically no observations were made as to the grades of maleness or femaleness to be observed in such cases. But we may be reasonably certain that the law holds good in the animal world. If bulls are kept apart from cows for a considerable time, homo-sexual acts occur amongst them; the most female are the first to become corrupted, the others later, some perhaps never. (It is amongst cattle that the greatest number of sexually intermediate forms have been recorded.) This shows that the tendency was latent in them, but that at other times the sexual demand was satisfied in normal fashion. Cattle in captivity behave precisely as prisoners and convicts in these matters. Animals exhibit not merely onanism (which is known to them as to human beings), but also homo-sexuality; and this fact, together with the fact that sexually intermediate forms are known to occur amongst them, I regard as strong evidence for my law of sexual attraction.

Inverted sexual attraction, then, is no exception to my law of sexual attraction, but is merely a special case of it. An individual who is half-man, half-woman, requires as sexual complement a being similarly equipped with a share of both sexes in order to fulfil the requirements of the law. This explains the fact that sexual inverts usually associate only with persons of similar character, and rarely admit to intimacy those who are normal. The sexual attraction is mutual, and this explains why sexual inverts so readily recognise each other. This being so, the normal element in human society has very little idea of the extent to which homo-sexuality is practised, and when a case becomes public property, every normal young profligate thinks that he has a right to condemn such “atrocities.” So recently as the year 1900 a professor of psychiatry in a German university urged that those who practised homo-sexuality should be castrated.

The therapeutical remedies which have been used to combat homo-sexuality, in cases where such treatment has been attempted, are certainly less radical than the advice of the professor; but they serve to show only how little the nature of homo-sexuality was understood. The method used at present is hypnotism, and this can rest only on the theory that homo-sexuality is an acquired character. By suggesting the idea of the female form and of normal congress, it is sought to accustom those under treatment to normal relations. But the acknowledged results are very few.

The failure is to be expected from our standpoint. The hypnotiser suggests to the subject the image of a “typical” woman, ignorant of the innate differences in the subject and unaware that such a type is naturally repulsive to him. And as the normal typical woman is not his complement, it is fruitless of the doctor to advise the services of any casual Venus, however attractive, to complete the cure of a man who has long shunned normal intercourse. If our formula were used to discover the complement of the male invert, it would point to the most man-like woman, the Lesbian or Sapphist type. Probably such is the only type of woman who would attract the sexual invert or please him. If a cure for sexual inversion must be sought because it cannot be left to its own extinction, then this theory offers the following solution. Sexual inverts must be brought to sexual inverts, from homo-sexualists to Sapphists, each in their grades. Knowledge of such a solution should lead to repeal of the ridiculous laws of England, Germany and Austria directed against homo-sexuality, so far at least as to make the punishments the lightest possible. In the second part of this book it will be made clear why both the active and the passive parts in male homo-sexuality appear disgraceful, although the desire is greater than in the case of the normal relation of a man and woman. In the abstract there is no ethical difference between the two.

In spite of all the present-day clamour about the existence of different rights for different individualities, there is only one law that governs mankind, just as there is only one logic and not several logics. It is in opposition to that law, as well as to the theory of punishment according to which the legal offence, not the moral offence, is punished, that we forbid the homo-sexualist to carry on his practices whilst we allow the hetero-sexualist full play, so long as both avoid open scandal. Speaking from the standpoint of a purer state of humanity and of a criminal law untainted by the pedagogic idea of punishment as a deterrent, the only logical and rational method of treatment for sexual inverts would be to allow them to seek and obtain what they require where they can, that is to say, amongst other inverts.

My theory appears to me quite incontrovertible and conclusive, and to afford a complete explanation of the entire set of phenomena. The exposition, however, must now face a set of facts which appear quite opposed to it, and which seem absolutely to contradict my reference of sexual inversion to the existence of sexually intermediate types, and my explanation of the law governing the attraction of these types for each other. It is probably the case that my explanation is sufficient for all female sexual inverts, but it is certainly true that there are men with very little taint of femaleness about them who yet exert a very strong influence on members of their own sex, a stronger influence than that of other men who may have more femaleness—an influence which can be exerted even on very male men, and an influence which, finally, often appears to be much greater than the influence any woman can exert on these men. Albert Moll is justified in saying as follows: “There exist psycho-sexual hermaphrodites who are attracted by members of both sexes, but who in the case of each sex appear to care only for the characters peculiar to that sex; and, on the other hand, there are also psycho-sexual (?) hermaphrodites who, in the case of each sex, are attracted, not by the characteristics peculiar to that sex, but by those which are either sexually indifferent or even antagonistic to the sex in question.” Upon this distinction depends the difference between the two sets of phenomena indicated in the title of this chapter—Homo-sexuality and Pederasty. The distinction may be expressed as follows: The homo-sexualist is that type of sexual invert who prefers very female men or very male women, in accordance with the general law of sexual attraction. The pederast, on the other hand, may be attracted either by very male men or by very female women, but in the latter case only in so far as he is not pederastic. Moreover, his inclination for the male sex is stronger than for the female sex, and is more deeply seated in his nature. The origin of pederasty is a problem in itself and remains unsolved by this investigation.

CHAPTER V
THE SCIENCE OF CHARACTER AND THE SCIENCE OF FORM

In view of the admitted close correspondence between matter and mind, we may expect to find that the conception of sexually intermediate forms, if applied to mental facts, will yield a rich crop of results. The existence of a female mental type and a male mental type can readily be imagined (and the quest of these types has been made by many investigators), but such perfect types never occur as actual individuals, simply because in the mind, as in the body, all sorts of sexually intermediate conditions exist. My conception will also be of great service in helping us to discriminate between the different mental qualities, and to throw some light into what has always been a dark corner for psychologists—the differences between different individuals. A great step will be made if we are able to supply graded categories for the mental diathesis of individuals; if it shall cease to be scientific to say that the character of an individual is merely male or female; but if we can make a measured judgment and say that such and such an one is so many parts male and so many parts female. Which element in any particular individual has done, said, or thought this or the other? By making the answer to such a question possible, we shall have done much towards the definite description of the individual, and the new method will determine the direction of future investigation. The knowledge of the past, which set out from conceptions which were really confused averages, has been equally far from reaching the broadest truths as from searching out the most intimate detailed knowledge. This failure of past methods gives us hope that the principle of sexually intermediate forms may serve as the foundation of a scientific study of character and justifies the attempt to make of it an illuminating principle for the psychology of individual differences. Its application to the science of character, which, so far, has been in the hands of merely literary authors, and is from the scientific point of view an untouched field, is to be greeted more warmly as it is capable of being used quantitatively, so that we venture to estimate the percentage of maleness and femaleness which an individual possesses even in the mental qualities. The answer to this question is not given even if we know the exact anatomical position of an organism on the scale stretching from male to female, although as a matter of fact congruity between bodily and mental sexuality is more common than incongruity. But we must remember what was stated in chap. ii. as to the uneven distribution of sexuality over the body.

The proportion of the male to the female principle in the same human being must not be assumed to be a constant quantity. An important new conclusion must be taken into account, a conclusion which is necessary to the right application of the principle which clears up in a striking fashion earlier psychological work. The fact is that every human being varies or oscillates between the maleness and the femaleness of his constitution. In some cases these oscillations are abnormally large, in other cases so small as to escape observation, but they are always present, and when they are great they may even reveal themselves in the outward aspect of the body. Like the variations in the magnetism of the earth, these sexual oscillations are either regular or irregular. The regular forms are sometimes minute; for instance, many men feel more male at night. The large and regular oscillations correspond to the great divisions of organic life to which attention is only now being directed, and they may throw light upon many puzzling phenomena. The irregular oscillations probably depend chiefly upon the environment, as for instance on the sexuality of surrounding human beings. They may help to explain some curious points in the psychology of a crowd which have not yet received sufficient attention.

In short, bi-sexuality cannot be properly observed in a single moment, but must be studied through successive periods of time. This time-element in psychological differences of sexuality may be regularly periodic or not. The swing towards one pole of sexuality may be greater than the following swing to the other side. Although theoretically possible, it seems to be extremely rare for the swing to the male side to be exactly equal to the swing towards the female side.

It may be admitted in principle, before proceeding to detailed investigation, that the conception of sexually intermediate forms makes possible a more accurate description of individual characters in so far as it aids in determining the proportion of male and female in each individual, and of measuring the oscillations to each side of which any individual is capable. A point of method must be decided at once, as upon it depends the course the investigation will pursue. Are we to begin by an empirical investigation of the almost innumerable intermediate conditions in mental sexuality, or are we to set out with the abstract sexual types, the ideal psychological man and woman, and then investigate deductively how far such ideal pictures correspond with concrete cases? The former method is that which the development of psychological knowledge has pursued; ideals have been derived from facts, sexual types constructed from observation of the manifold complexity of nature; it would be inductive and analytic. The latter mode, deductive and synthetic, is more in accordance with formal logic.

I have been unwilling to pursue the second method as fully as is possible, because every one can apply for himself to concrete facts the two well-defined extreme types; once it is understood that actual individuals are mixtures of the types, it is simple to apply theory to practice, and the actual pursuit of detailed cases would involve much repetition and bring little theoretical advantage. The second method, however, is impracticable. The collection of the long series of details from which the inductions would be made would simply weary the reader.

In the first or biological part of my work, I give little attention to the extreme types, but devote myself to the fullest investigation of the intermediate stages. In the second part, I shall endeavour to make as full a psychological analysis as possible of the characters of the male and female types, and will touch only lightly on concrete instances.

I shall first mention, without laying too much stress on them, some of the more obvious mental characteristics of the intermediate conditions.

Womanish men are usually extremely anxious to marry, at least (I mention this to prevent misconception) if a sufficiently brilliant opportunity offers itself. When it is possible, they nearly always marry whilst they are still quite young. It is especially gratifying to them to get as wives famous women, artists or poets, or singers and actresses.

Womanish men are physically lazier than other men in proportion to the degree of their womanishness. There are “men” who go out walking with the sole object of displaying their faces like the faces of women, hoping that they will be admired, after which they return contentedly home. The ancient “Narcissus” was a prototype of such persons. These people are naturally fastidious about the dressing of their hair, their apparel, shoes, and linen; they are concerned as to their personal appearance at all times, and about the minutest details of their toilet. They are conscious of every glance thrown on them by other men, and because of the female element in them, they are coquettish in gait and demeanour. Viragoes, on the other hand, frequently are careless about their toilet, and even about the personal care of their bodies; they take less time in dressing than many womanish men. The dandyism of men on the one hand, and much of what is called the emancipation of women, are due to the increase in the numbers of these epicene creatures, and not merely to a passing fashion.

Indeed, if one inquires why anything becomes the fashion it will be found that there is a true cause for it.

The more femaleness a woman possesses the less will she understand a man, and the sexual characters of a man will have the greater influence on her. This is more than a mere application of the law of sexual attraction, as I have already stated it. So also the more manly a man is the less will he understand women, but the more readily be influenced by them as women. Those men who claim to understand women are themselves very nearly women. Womanish men often know how to treat women much better than manly men. Manly men, except in most rare cases, learn how to deal with women only after long experience, and even then most imperfectly.

Although I have been touching here in a most superficial way on what are no more than tertiary sexual characters, I wish to point out an application of my conclusions to pedagogy. I am convinced that the more these views are understood the more certainly will they lead to an individual treatment in education. At the present time shoemakers, who make shoes to measure, deal more rationally with individuals than our teachers and schoolmasters in their application of moral principles. At present the sexually intermediate forms of individuals (especially on the female side) are treated exactly as if they were good examples of the ideal male or female types. There is wanted an “orthopÆdic” treatment of the soul instead of the torture caused by the application of ready-made conventional shapes. The present system stamps out much that is original, uproots much that is truly natural, and distorts much into artificial and unnatural forms.

From time immemorial there have been only two systems of education; one for those who come into the world designated by one set of characters as males, and another for those who are similarly assumed to be females. Almost at once the “boys” and the “girls” are dressed differently, learn to play different games, go through different courses of instruction, the girls being put to stitching and so forth. The intermediate individuals are placed at a great disadvantage. And yet the instincts natural to their condition reveal themselves quickly enough, often even before puberty. There are boys who like to play with dolls, who learn to knit and sew with their sisters, and who are pleased to be given girls’ names. There are girls who delight in the noisier sports of their brothers, and who make chums and playmates of them. After puberty, there is a still stronger display of the innate differences. Manlike women wear their hair short, affect manly dress, study, drink, smoke, are fond of mountaineering, or devote themselves passionately to sport. Womanish men grow their hair long, wear corsets, are experts in the toilet devices of women, and show the greatest readiness to become friendly and intimate with them, preferring their society to that of men.

Later on, the different laws and customs to which the so-called sexes are subjected press them as by a vice into distinctive moulds. The proposals which should follow from my conclusions will encounter more passive resistance, I fear, in the case of girls than in that of boys. I must here contradict, in the most positive fashion, a dogma that is authoritatively and widely maintained at the present time, the idea that all women are alike, that no individuals exist amongst women. It is true that amongst those individuals whose constitutions lie nearer the female side than the male side, the differences and possibilities are not so great as amongst those on the male side; the greater variability of males is true not only for the human race but for the living world, and is related to the principles established by Darwin. None the less, there are plenty of differences amongst women. The psychological origin of this common error depends chiefly on a fact that I explained in chap. iii., the fact that every man in his life becomes intimate only with a group of women defined by his own constitution, and so naturally he finds them much alike. For the same reason, and in the same way, one may often hear a woman say that all men are alike. And the narrow uniform view about men, displayed by most of the leaders of the women’s rights movement depends on precisely the same cause.

It is clear that the principle of the existence of innumerable individual proportions of the male and female principles is a basis of the study of character which must be applied in any rational scheme of pedagogy.

The science of character must be associated with some form of psychology that takes into account some theory of the real existence of mental phenomena in the same fashion that anatomy is related to physiology. And so it is necessary, quite apart from theoretical reasons, to attempt to pursue a psychology of individual differences. This attempt will be readily enough followed by those who believe in the parallelism between mind and matter, for they will see in psychology no more than the physiology of the central nervous system, and will readily admit that the science of character must be a sister of morphology. As a matter of fact there is great hope that in future characterology and morphology will each greatly help the other. The principle of sexually intermediate forms, and still more the parallelism between characterology and morphology in the widest application, make us look forward to the time when physiognomy will take its honourable place amongst the sciences, a place which so many have attempted to gain for it but as yet unsuccessfully.

The problem of physiognomy is the problem of the relation between the static mental forces and the static bodily forces, just as the problem of physiological psychology deals with the dynamic aspect of the same relations. It is a great error in method, and in fact, to treat the study of physiognomy, because of its difficulty, as impracticable. And yet this is the attitude of contemporary scientific circles, unconsciously perhaps rather than consciously, but occasionally becoming obvious as for instance in the case of the attempt of von MÖbius to pursue the work of Gall with regard to the physiognomy of those with a natural aptitude for mathematics. If it be possible, and many have shown that it is possible, to judge correctly much of the character of an individual merely from the examination of his external appearance, without the aid of cross-examination or guessing, it cannot be impossible to reduce such modes of observation to an exact method. There is little more required than an exact study of the expression of the characteristic emotions and the tracking (to use a rough analogy) of the routes of the cables passing to the speech centres.

None the less it will be long before official science ceases to regard the study of physiognomy as illegitimate. Although people will still believe in the parallelism of mind and body, they will continue to treat the physiognomist as as much of a charlatan as until quite recently the hypnotist was thought to be. None the less, all mankind at least unconsciously, and intelligent persons consciously, will continue to be physiognomists, people will continue to judge character from the nose, although they will not admit the existence of a science of physiognomy, and the portraits of celebrated men and of murderers will continue to interest every one.

I am inclined to believe that the assumption of a universally acquired correspondence between mind and body may be a hitherto neglected fundamental function of our mind. It is certainly the case that every one believes in physiognomy and actually practises it. The principle of the existence of a definite relation between mind and body must be accepted as an illuminating axiom for psychological research, and it will be for religion and metaphysics to work out the details of a relationship which must be accepted as existing.

Whether or no the science of character can be linked with morphology, it will be valuable not only to these sciences but to physiognomy if we can penetrate a little deeper into the confusion that now reigns in order to find if wrong methods have not been responsible for it. I hope that the attempt I am about to make will lead some little way into the labyrinth, and will prove to be of general application.

Some men are fond of dogs and detest cats; others are devoted to cats and dislike dogs. Inquiring minds have delighted to ask in such cases, Why are cats attractive to one person, dogs to another? Why?

I do not think that this is the most fruitful way of stating the problem. I believe it to be more important to ask in what other respects lovers of dogs and of cats differ from one another. The habit, where one difference has been detected, of seeking for the associated differences, will prove extremely useful not only to pure morphology and to the science of character, but ultimately to physiognomy, the meeting-point of the two sciences. Aristotle pointed out long ago that many characteristics of animals do not vary independently of each other. Later on Cuvier, in particular, but also Geoffrey St. Hilaire and Darwin made a special study of these “correlations.” Occasionally the association of the characters is easy to understand on obvious utilitarian principles; where for instance the alimentary canal is adapted to the digestion of flesh, the jaws and body must be adapted for the capture of the prey. But association such as that between ruminant stomachs and the presence of cloven hoofs and of horns in the male, or of immunity to certain poisons with particular colouring of the hair, or among domestic pigeons of short bills with small feet, of long bills with large feet, or in cats of deafness with white fur and blue eyes—such are extremely difficult to refer to a single purpose.

I do not in the least mean to assert that science must be content with no more than the mere discovery of correlations. Such a position would be little better than that of a person who was satisfied by finding out that the placing of a penny in the slot of a particular automatic machine always was followed by the release of a box of matches. It would be making resignation the leading principle of metaphysics. We shall get a good deal further by such correlations, as, for instance, that of long hair and normal ovaries; but these are within the sphere of physiology, not of morphology. Probably the goal of an ideal morphology could be reached best not by deductions from an attempted synthesis of observations on all the animals that creep on the land or swim in the sea (in the fashion of collectors of postage stamps), but by a complete study of a few organisms. Cuvier by a kind of guess-work used to reconstruct an entire animal from a single bone: full knowledge would enable us to do this in a complete, definite, qualitative and quantitative fashion. When such a knowledge has been attained, each single character will at once define and limit for us the possibilities of the other characters. Such a true and logical extension of the principle of correlation in morphology is really an application of the theory of functions to the living world. It would not exclude the study of causation, but limit it to its proper sphere. No doubt the “causes” of the correlations of organisms must be sought for in the idioplasm.

The possibility of applying the principle of correlated variation to psychology depends on differential psychology, the study of psychological variation. I believe, moreover, that a combination of study of the anatomical “habit,” and the mental characteristics will lead to a statical psycho-physics, a true science of physiognomy. The rule of investigation in all the three sciences will have to be that the question is posed as follows; given that two organisms are known to differ in one respect, in what other respects are they different? This will be the golden rule of discovery, and, following it, we shall no longer lose ourselves hopelessly in the dark maze that surrounds the answer to the question “Why?” As soon as we are informed as to one difference, we must diligently seek out the others, and the mere putting of the question in this form will directly bring about many discoveries.

The conscious pursuit of this rule of investigation will be particularly valuable in dealing with problems of the mind. Mental actions are not co-existent in the sense of physical characters, and it has been only by accidental and fortunate chances, when the phenomena have presented themselves in rapid succession in an individual, that discoveries of correlation in mental phenomena have been noticed. The correlated mental phenomena may be very different in kind, and it is only when we know what we are after and deliberately seek for them that we shall be able to transcend the special difficulties of the kind of material we are investigating, and so secure for psychology what is comparatively simple in anatomy.

As an immediate application of the attempt to establish the principle of intermediate sexual forms by means of a differential psychology, we must now come to the question which it is the special object of this book to answer, theoretically and practically, I mean the woman question, theoretically so far as it is not a matter of ethnology and national economics, and practically in so far as it is not merely a matter of law and domestic economy, that is to say, of social science in the widest sense. The answer which this chapter is about to give must not be considered as final or as exhaustive. It is rather a necessary preliminary investigation, and does not go beyond deductions from the principles that I have established. It will deal with the exploration of individual cases and will not attempt to found on these any laws of general significance. The practical indications that it will give are not moral maxims that could or would guide the future; they are no more than technical rules abstracted from past cases. The idea of male and female types will not be discussed here; that is reserved for the second part of my book. This preliminary investigation will deal with only those charactero-logical conclusions from the principle of sexually intermediate forms that are of significance in the woman question.

The general direction of the investigation is easy to understand from what has already been stated. A woman’s demand for emancipation and her qualification for it are in direct proportion to the amount of maleness in her. The idea of emancipation, however, is many-sided, and its indefiniteness is increased by its association with many practical customs which have nothing to do with the theory of emancipation. By the term emancipation of a woman I imply neither her mastery at home nor her subjection of her husband. I have not in mind the courage which enables her to go freely by night or by day unaccompanied in public places, or the disregard of social rules which prohibit bachelor women from receiving visits from men, or discussing or listening to discussions of sexual matters. I exclude from my view the desire for economic independence, the becoming fit for positions in technical schools, universities and conservatoires or teachers’ institutes. And there may be many other similar movements associated with the word emancipation which I do not intend to deal with. Emancipation, as I mean to discuss it, is not the wish for an outward equality with man, but what is of real importance in the woman question, the deep-seated craving to acquire man’s character, to attain his mental and moral freedom, to reach his real interests and his creative power. I maintain that the real female element has neither the desire nor the capacity for emancipation in this sense. All those who are striving for this real emancipation, all women who are truly famous and are of conspicuous mental ability, to the first glance of an expert reveal some of the anatomical characters of the male, some external bodily resemblance to a man. Those so-called “women” who have been held up to admiration in the past and present, by the advocates of woman’s rights, as examples of what women can do, have almost invariably been what I have described as sexually intermediate forms. The very first of the historical examples, Sappho herself, has been handed down to us as an example of the sexual invert, and from her name has been derived the accepted terms for perverted sexual relations between women. The contents of the second and third chapter thus at once become important with regard to the woman question. The characterological material at our disposal with regard to celebrated and emancipated women is too vague to serve as the foundation of any satisfactory theory. What is wanted is some principle which would enable us to determine at what point between male and female such individuals were placed. My law of sexual affinity is such a principle. Its application to the facts of homo-sexuality showed that the woman who attracts and is attracted by other women is herself half male. Interpreting the historical evidence at our disposal in the light of this principle, we find that the degree of emancipation and the proportion of maleness in the composition of a woman are practically identical. Sappho was only the forerunner of a long line of famous women who were either homo-sexually or bisexually inclined. Classical scholars have defended Sappho warmly against the implication that there was anything more than mere friendship in her relations with her own sex, as if the accusation were necessarily degrading. In the second part of my book, however, I shall show reasons in favour of the possibility that homo-sexuality is a higher form than hetero-sexuality. For the present, it is enough to say that homo-sexuality in a woman is the outcome of her masculinity and presupposes a higher degree of development. Catherine II. of Russia, and Queen Christina of Sweden, the highly gifted although deaf, dumb and blind, Laura Bridgman, George Sand, and a very large number of highly gifted women and girls concerning whom I myself have been able to collect information, were partly bisexual, partly homo-sexual.

I shall now turn to other indications in the case of the large number of emancipated women regarding whom there is no evidence as to homo-sexuality, and I shall show that my attribution of maleness is no caprice, no egotistical wish of a man to associate all the higher manifestations of intelligence with the male sex. Just as homo-sexual or bisexual women reveal their maleness by their preference either for women or for womanish men, so hetero-sexual women display maleness in their choice of a male partner who is not preponderatingly male. The most famous of George Sand’s many affairs were those with de Musset, the most effeminate and sentimental poet, and with Chopin, who might be described almost as the only female musician, so effeminate are his compositions.[5] Vittoria Colonna is less known because of her own poetic compositions than because of the infatuation for her shown by Michael Angelo, whose earlier friendships had been with youths. The authoress, Daniel Stern, was the mistress of Franz Liszt, whose life and compositions were extremely effeminate, and who had a dubious friendship with Wagner, the interpretation of which was made plain by his later devotion to King Ludwig II. of Bavaria. Madame de Staal, whose work on Germany is probably the greatest book ever produced by a woman, is supposed to have been intimate with August Wilhelm Schlegel, who was a homo-sexualist, and who had been tutor to her children. At certain periods of his life, the face of the husband of Clara Schumann might have been taken as that of a woman, and a good deal of his music, although certainly not all, was effeminate.

When there is no evidence as to the sexual relations of famous women, we can still obtain important conclusions from the details of their personal appearance. Such data support my general proposition.

George Eliot had a broad, massive forehead; her movements, like her expression, were quick and decided, and lacked all womanly grace. The face of Lavinia Fontana was intellectual and decided, very rarely charming; whilst that of Rachel Ruysch was almost wholly masculine. The biography of that original poetess, Annette von Droste-HÜlshoff, speaks of her wiry, unwomanly frame, and of her face as being masculine, and recalling that of Dante. The authoress and mathematician, Sonia Kowalevska, like Sappho, had an abnormally scanty growth of hair, still less than is the fashion amongst the poetesses and female students of the present day. It would be a serious omission to forget Rosa Bonheur, the very distinguished painter; and it would be difficult to point to a single female trait in her appearance or character. The notorious Madame Blavatsky is extremely masculine in her appearance.

I might refer to many other emancipated women at present well known to the public, consideration of whom has provided me with much material for the support of my proposition that the true female element, the abstract “woman,” has nothing to do with emancipation. There is some historical justification for the saying “the longer the hair the smaller the brain,” but the reservations made in chap. ii. must be taken into account.

It is only the male element in emancipated women that craves for emancipation.

There is, then, a stronger reason than has generally been supposed for the familiar assumption of male pseudonyms by women writers. Their choice is a mode of giving expression to the inherent maleness they feel; and this is still more marked in the case of those who, like George Sand, have a preference for male attire and masculine pursuits. The motive for choosing a man’s name springs from the feeling that it corresponds with their own character much more than from any desire for increased notice from the public. As a matter of fact, up to the present, partly owing to interest in the sex question, women’s writings have aroused more interest, ceteris paribus, than those of men; and, owing to the issues involved, have always received a fuller consideration and, if there were any justification, a greater meed of praise than has been accorded to a man’s work of equal merit. At the present time especially many women have attained celebrity by work which, if it had been produced by a man, would have passed almost unnoticed. Let us pause and examine this more closely.

If we attempt to apply a standard taken from the names of men who are of acknowledged value in philosophy, science, literature and art, to the long list of women who have achieved some kind of fame, there will at once be a miserable collapse. Judged in this way, it is difficult to grant any real degree of merit to women like Angelica Kaufmann or Madame Lebrun, Fernan Caballero or Hroswitha von Gandersheim, Mary Somerville or George Egerton, Elizabeth Barrett Browning or Sophie Germain, Anna Maria Schurmann or Sybilla Merian. I will not speak of names (such as that of Droste-HÜlshoff) formerly so over-rated in the annals of feminism, nor will I refer to the measure of fame claimed for or by living women. It is enough to make the general statement that there is not a single woman in the history of thought, not even the most manlike, who can be truthfully compared with men of fifth or sixth-rate genius, for instance with RÜckert as a poet, Van Dyck as a painter, or Scheirmacher as a philosopher. If we eliminate hysterical visionaries,[6] such as the Sybils, the Priestesses of Delphi, Bourignon, Kettenberg, Jeanne de la Mothe Guyon, Joanna Southcote, Beate Sturmin, St. Teresa, there still remain cases like that of Marie Bashkirtseff. So far as I can remember from her portrait, she at least seemed to be quite womanly in face and figure, although her forehead was rather masculine. But to any one who studies her pictures in the Salle des Etrangers in the Luxemburg Gallery in Paris, and compares them with those of her adored master, Bastien Lepage, it is plain that she simply had assimilated the style of the latter, as in Goethe’s “Elective Affinities” Ottilie acquired the handwriting of Eduard.

There remain the interesting and not infrequent cases where the talent of a clever family seems to reach its maximum in a female member of the family. But it is only talent that is transmitted in this way, not genius. Margarethe van Eyck and Sabina von Steinbach form the best illustrations of the kind of artists who, according to Ernst Guhl, an author with a great admiration for women-workers, “have been undoubtedly influenced in their choice of an artistic calling by their fathers, mothers, or brothers. In other words, they found their incentive in their own families. There are two or three hundred of such cases on record, and probably many hundreds more could be added without exhausting the numbers of similar instances.” In order to give due weight to these statistics it may be mentioned that Guhl had just been speaking of “roughly, a thousand names of women artists known to us.”

This concludes my historical review of the emancipated women. It has justified the assertion that real desire for emancipation and real fitness for it are the outcome of a woman’s maleness.

The vast majority of women have never paid special attention to art or to science, and regard such occupations merely as higher branches of manual labour, or if they profess a certain devotion to such subjects, it is chiefly as a mode of attracting a particular person or group of persons of the opposite sex. Apart from these, a close investigation shows that women really interested in intellectual matters are sexually intermediate forms.

If it be the case that the desire for freedom and equality with man occurs only in masculine women, the inductive conclusion follows that the female principle is not conscious of a necessity for emancipation; and the argument becomes stronger if we remember that it is based on an examination of the accounts of individual cases and not on psychical investigation of an “abstract woman.”

If we now look at the question of emancipation from the point of view of hygiene (not morality) there is no doubt as to the harm in it. The undesirability of emancipation lies in the excitement and agitation involved. It induces women who have no real original capacity but undoubted imitative powers to attempt to study or write, from various motives, such as vanity or the desire to attract admirers. Whilst it cannot be denied that there are a good many women with a real craving for emancipation and for higher education, these set the fashion and are followed by a host of others who get up a ridiculous agitation to convince themselves of the reality of their views. And many otherwise estimable and worthy wives use the cry to assert themselves against their husbands, whilst daughters take it as a method of rebelling against maternal authority. The practical outcome of the whole matter would be as follows; it being remembered that the issues are too mutable for the establishment of uniform rules or laws. Let there be the freest scope given to, and the fewest hindrances put in the way of all women with masculine dispositions who feel a psychical necessity to devote themselves to masculine occupations and are physically fit to undertake them. But the idea of making an emancipation party, of aiming at a social revolution, must be abandoned. Away with the whole “woman’s movement,” with its unnaturalness and artificiality and its fundamental errors.

It is most important to have done with the senseless cry for “full equality,” for even the malest woman is scarcely more than 50 per cent. male, and it is only to that male part of her that she owes her special capacity or whatever importance she may eventually gain. It is absurd to make comparisons between the few really intellectual women and one’s average experience of men, and to deduce, as has been done, even the superiority of the female sex. As Darwin pointed out, the proper comparison is between the most highly developed individuals of two stocks. “If two lists,” Darwin wrote in the “Descent of Man,” “were made of the most eminent men and women in poetry, painting, sculpture, music—comprising composition and performance, history, science, and philosophy, with half a dozen names under each subject, the two lists would not bear comparison.” Moreover, if these lists were carefully examined it would be seen that the women’s list would prove the soundness of my theory of the maleness of their genius, and the comparison would be still less pleasing to the champions of woman’s rights.

It is frequently urged that it is necessary to create a public feeling in favour of the full and unchecked mental development of women. Such an argument overlooks the fact that “emancipation,” the “woman question,” “women’s rights movements,” are no new things in history, but have always been with us, although with varying prominence at different times in history. It also largely exaggerates the difficulties men place in the way of the mental development of women, especially at the present time.[7] Furthermore it neglects the fact that at the present time it is not the true woman who clamours for emancipation, but only the masculine type of woman, who misconstrues her own character and the motives that actuate her when she formulates her demands in the name of woman.

As has been the case with every other movement in history, so also it has been with the contemporary woman’s movement. Its originators were convinced that it was being put forward for the first time, and that such a thing had never been thought of before. They maintained that women had hitherto been held in bondage and enveloped in darkness by man, and that it was high time for her to assert herself and claim her natural rights.

But the prototype of this movement, as of other movements, occurred in the earliest times. Ancient history and mediÆval times alike give us instances of women who, in social relations and intellectual matters, fought for such emancipation, and of male and female apologists of the female sex. It is totally erroneous to suggest that hitherto women have had no opportunity for the undisturbed development of their mental powers.

Jacob Burckhardt, speaking of the Renaissance, says: “The greatest possible praise which could be given to the Italian women-celebrities of the time was to say that they were like men in brains and disposition!” The virile deeds of women recorded in the epics, especially those of Boiardo and Ariosto, show the ideal of the time. To call a woman a “virago” nowadays would be a doubtful compliment, but it originally meant an honour.

Women were first allowed on the stage in the sixteenth century, and actresses date from that time. “At that period it was admitted that women were just as capable as men of embodying the highest possible artistic ideals.” It was the period when panegyrics on the female sex were rife; Sir Thomas More claimed for it full equality with the male sex, and Agrippa von Nettesheim goes so far as to represent women as superior to men! And yet this was all lost for the fair sex, and the whole question sank into the oblivion from which the nineteenth century recalled it.

Is it not very remarkable that the agitation for the emancipation of women seems to repeat itself at certain intervals in the world’s history, and lasts for a definite period?

It has been noticed that in the tenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth, and now again in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the agitation for the emancipation of women has been more marked, and the woman’s movement more vigorous than in the intervening periods. It would be premature to found a hypothesis on the data at our disposal, but the possibility of a vastly important periodicity must be borne in mind, of regularly recurring periods in which it may be that there is an excess of production of hermaphrodite and sexually intermediate forms. Such a state of affairs is not unknown in the animal kingdom.

According to my interpretation, such a period would be one of minimum “gonochorism,” cleavage of the sexes; and it would be marked, on the one hand, by an increased production of male women, and on the other, by a similar increase in female men. There is strong evidence in favour of such a periodicity; if it occurs it may be associated with the “secessionist taste,” which idealised tall, lanky women with flat chests and narrow hips. The enormous recent increase in a kind of dandified homo-sexuality may be due to the increasing effeminacy of the age, and the peculiarities of the Pre-Raphaelite movement may have a similar explanation.

The existence of such periods in organic life, comparable with stages in individual life, but extending over several generations, would, if proved, throw much light on many obscure points in human history, concerning which the so-called “historical solutions,” and especially the economic-materialistic views now in vogue have proved so futile. The history of the world from the biological standpoint has still to be written; it lies in the future. Here I can do little more than indicate the direction which future work should take.

Were it proved that at certain periods fewer hermaphrodite beings were produced, and at certain other periods more, it would appear that the rising and falling, the periodic occurrence and disappearance of the woman movement in an unfailing rhythm of ebb and flow, was one of the expressions of the preponderance of masculine and feminine women with the concomitant greater or lesser desire for emancipation.

Obviously I do not take into account in relation to the woman question the large number of womanly women, the wives of the prolific artisan class whom economic pressure forces to factory or field labour. The connection between industrial progress and the woman question is much less close than is usually realised, especially by the Social Democratic Group. The relation between the mental energy required for intellectual and for industrial pursuits is even less. France, for instance, although it can boast three of the most famous women, has never had a successful woman’s movement, and yet in no other European country are there so many really businesslike, capable women. The struggle for the material necessities of life has nothing to do with the struggle for intellectual development, and a sharp distinction must be made between the two.

The prospects of the movement for intellectual advance on the part of women are not very promising; but still less promising is another view, sometimes discussed in the same connection, the view that the human race is moving towards a complete sexual differentiation, a definite sexual dimorphism.

The latter view seems to me fundamentally untenable, because in the higher groups of the animal kingdom there is no evidence for the increase of sexual dimorphism. Worms and rotifers, many birds and the mandrills amongst the apes, have more advanced sexual dimorphism than man. On the view that such an increased sexual dimorphism were to be expected, the necessity for emancipation would gradually disappear as mankind became separated into the completely male and the completely female. On the other hand, the view that there will be periodical resurrections of the woman’s movement would reduce the whole affair to ridiculous impotence, making it only an ephemeral phase in the history of mankind.

A complete obliteration will be the fate of any emancipation movement which attempts to place the whole sex in a new relation to society, and to see in man its perpetual oppressor. A corps of Amazons might be formed, but as time went on the material for the corps would cease to occur. The history of the woman movement during the Renaissance and its complete disappearance contains a lesson for the advocates of women’s rights. Real intellectual freedom cannot be attained by an agitated mass; it must be fought for by the individual. Who is the enemy? What are the retarding influences?

The greatest, the one enemy of the emancipation of women is woman herself. It is left to the second part of my work to prove this.