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

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

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

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