| Male and Female Psychology. |
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Male and Female Psychology #1
It is now time to return to the actual subject of this investigation in order
to see how far its explanation has been helped by the lengthy digressions,
which must often have seemed wide of the mark.
The consequence of the fundamental principles that have been developed are of
such radical importance to the psychology of the sexes that, even if the
former deductions have been assented to, the present conclusions may find no
acceptance. This is not the place to analyse such a possibility; but in order
to protect the theory I am now going to set up, from all objections, I shall
fully substantiate it in the fullest possible manner by convincing arguments.
Shortly speaking the matter stands as follows: I have shown that logical and
ethical phenomena come together in the conception of truth as the ultimate
good, and posit the existence of an intelligible ego or a soul, as a form of
being of the highest super-empirical reality. In such a being as the absolute
female there are no logical and ethical phenomena, and, therefore, the ground
for the assumption of a soul is absent. The absolute female knows neither the
logical nor the moral imperative, and the words law and duty, duty towards
herself, are words which are least familiar to her. The inference that she is
wanting in super-sensual personality is fully justified. The absolute female
has no ego.
In a certain sense this is an end of the investigation, a final conclusion to
which all analysis of the female leads. And although this conclusion, put thus
concisely, seems harsh and intolerant, paradoxical and too abrupt in its
novelty, it must be remembered that the author is not the first who has taken
such a view; he is more in the position of one who has discovered the
philosophical grounds for an opinion of long standing.
The Chinese from time immemorial have denied that women possess a personal
soul. If a Chinaman is asked how many children he has, he counts only the
boys, and will say none if he has only daughters. Mahomet excluded women from
Paradise for the same reason, and on this view depends the degraded position
of women in Oriental countries.
Amongst the philosophers, the opinions of Aristotle must first be considered.
He held that in procreation the male principle was the formative active agent,
the "logos," whilst the female was the passive material. When we remember that
Aristotle used the word "soul" for the active, formative, causative principle,
it is plain that his idea was akin to mine, although, as he actually expressed
it, it related only to the reproductive process; it is clear, moreover, that
he, like all the Greek philosophers except Euripides, paid no heed to women,
and did not consider her qualities from any other point of view than that of
her share in reproduction.
Amongst the fathers of the Church, Tertullian and Origen certainly had a very
low opinion of woman, and St. Augustine, except for his relations with his
mother, seems to have shared their view. At the Renaissance the Aristotelian
conceptions gained many new adherents, amongst whom Jean Wier (1518-1588) may
be cited specially. At that period there was general, more sensible and
intuitive understanding on the subject, which is now treated as merely
curious, contemporary science having bowed the knee to other than Aristotelian
gods.
In recent years Henrik Ibsen (in the characters of Anitra, Rita, and Irene)
and August Strindberg have given utterance to this view. But the popularity of
the idea of the soullessness of woman has been most attained by the wonderful
fairy tales of Fouqu,, who obtained the material for them from Paracelsus,
after deep study, and which have been set to music by E.T.A. Hoffman,
Girschner, and Albert Lorzing.
Undine, the soulless Undine, is the platonic idea of woman. In spite of all
bisexuality she most really resembles the actuality. The well-known phrase,
"Women have no character," really means the same thing. Personality and
individuality (intelligible), ego and soul, will and (intelligible) character,
all these are different expressions of the same actuality, an actuality the
male of mankind attains, the female lacks.
But since the soul of man is the microcosm, and great men are those who live
entirely in and through their souls, the whole universe thus having its being
in them, the female must be described as absolutely without the quality of
genius. The male has everything within him, and, as Pico of Mirandola put it,
only specialises in this or that part of himself. It is possible for him to
attain to the loftiest heights, or to sink to the lowest depths; he can become
like animals, or plants, or even like women, and so there exist woman-like
female men.
The woman, on the other hand, can never become a man. In this consists the
most important limitation to the assertions in the first part of this work.
Whilst I know of many men who are practically completely psychically female,
not merely half so, and have seen a considerable number of women with
masculine traits, I have never yet seen a single woman who was not
fundamentally female, even when this femaleness has been concealed by various
accessories from the person herself, not to speak of others. One must be
(chap. i. part I.) either man or woman, however many peculiarities of both
sexes one may have, and this "being," the problem of this work from the start,
is determined by one's relation to ethics and logic; but whilst there are
people who are anatomically men and psychically women, there is no such thing
as a person who is physically female and psychically male, notwithstanding the
extreme maleness of their outward appearance and the unwomanliness of their
expression.
We may now give, with certainty, a conclusive answer to the question as to the
giftedness of the sexes: there are women with undoubted traits of genius, but
there is no female genius, and there never has been one (not even amongst
those masculine women of history which were dealt with in the first part), and
there never can be one. Those who are in favour of laxity in these matters,
and are anxious to extend and enlarge the idea of genius in order to make it
possible to include women, would simply by such action destroy the concept of
genius. If it is in any way possible to frame a definition of genius that
would thoroughly cover the ground, I believe that my definition succeeds. And
how, then, could a soulless being possess genius? The possession of genius is
identical with profundity; and if any one were to try to combine woman and
profundity as subject and predicate, he would be contradicted on all sides. A
female genius is a contradiction in terms, for genius is simply intensified,
perfectly developed, universally conscious maleness.
The man of genius possesses, like everything else, the complete female in
himself; but woman herself is only a part of the Universe, and the part can
never be the whole; femaleness can never include genius. This lack of genius
on the part of woman is inevitable because woman is not a monad, and cannot
reflect the Universe.
(It would be a simple matter to introduce at this point a list of the works of
the most famous women, and show by a few examples how little they deserve the
title of genius. But it would be a wearisome task, and any one who would make
use of such a list can easily procure it for himself, so that I shall not do
so.)
The proof of the soullessness of woman is closely connected with much of what
was contained in the earlier chapters. The third chapter explained that woman
has her experiences in the form of henids, whilst those of men are in an
organised form, so that the consciousness of the female is lower in grade than
that of the male. Consciousness, however, is psychologically a fundamental
part of the theory of knowledge. From the point of view of the theory of
knowledge, consciousness and the possession of a continuous ego, of a
transcendental subjective soul, are identical conceptions. Every ego exists
only so far as it is self-conscious, conscious of the contents of its own
thoughts; all real existence is conscious existence. I can now make an
important contribution to the theory of henids. The organised contents of the
thoughts of the male are not merely those of the female articulated and
formed, they are not what was potential in the female becoming actual; from
the very first there is a qualitative difference. The psychical contents of
the male, even whilst they are still in the henid stage that they always try
to emerge from, are already partly conceptual, and it is probable that even
perceptions in the male have a direct tendency towards conceptions. In the
female, on the other hand, there is no trace of conception either in
recognition or in thinking.
The logical axioms are the foundation of all formation of mental conceptions,
and women are devoid of these; the principle of identity is not for them an
inevitable standard, nor do they fence off all other possibilities from their
conception by using the principle of contradictories. This want of
definiteness in the ideas of women is the source of that "sensitiveness" which
gives the widest scope to vague associations and allows the most radically
different things to be grouped together. And even women with the best and
least limited memories never free themselves from this kind of association by
feelings. For instance, if they "feel reminded" by a word of some definite
colour, or by a human being of some definite thing to eat - forms of
association common with women - they rest content with the subjective
association, and do not try to find out the source of the comparison, and if
there is any relation in it to actual fact. The complacency and
self-satisfaction of women corresponds with what has been called their
intellectual unscrupulousnesss, and will be referred to again in connection
with their want of the power to form concepts. This subjection to waves of
feeling, this want of respect for conceptions, this self-appreciation without
any attempt to avoid shallowness, characterise as essentially female the
changeable styles of many modern painters and novelists. Male thought is
fundamentally different from female thought in its craving for definite form,
and all art that consists of moods is essentially a formless art.
The psychical contents of man's thoughts, therefore, are more than the
explicit realisation of what women think in henids. Woman's thought is a
sliding and gliding through subjects, a superficial tasting of things that a
man, who studies the depths, would scarcely notice; it is an extravagant and
dainty method of skimming which has no grasp of accuracy. A woman's thought is
superficial, and touch is the most highly developed of the female senses, the
most notable characteristic of the woman which she can bring to a high state
by her unaided efforts. Touch necessitates a limiting of the interest to
superficialities, it is a vague effect of the whole and does not depend on
definite details. When a woman "understands" a man (of the possibility or
impossibility of any real understanding I shall speak later), she is simply,
so to speak tasting (however wanting in taste the comparison may be) what he
has thought about her. Since, on her own part, there is no sharp
differentiation, it is plain that she will often think that she herself has
been understood when there is no more present than a vague similarity of
perceptions. The incongruity between the man and woman depends, in a special
measure, on the fact that the contents of the thoughts of the man are not
merely those of the woman in a higher state of differentiation, but that the
two have totally distinct sequences of thought applied to the same object,
conceptual thought in the one and indistinct sensing in the other; and when
what is called "understanding" in the two cases is compared, the comparison is
not between a fully organised integrated thought and a lower stage of the same
process; but in the understanding of man and woman there is on the one side a
conceptual thought, on the other side an unconceptual "feeling," a henid.
The unconceptual nature of the thinking of a woman is simply the result of her
less perfect consciousness, of her want of an ego. It is the conception that
unites the mere complex of perceptions into an object, and this it does
independently of the presence of an actual perception. The existence of the
complex of perceptions is dependent on the will; the will can shut the eyes
and stop the ears so that the person no longer sees nor hears, but may get
drunk or go to sleep and forget. It is the conception which brings freedom
from the eternally subjective, eternally psychological relativity of the
actual perceptions, and which creates the things in themselves. By its power
of forming conceptions the intellect can spontaneously separate itself from
the object; conversely, it is only when there is a comprehending function that
subject and object can be separated and so distinguished; in all other cases
there is only a mass of like and unlike images present mingling together
without law and order. The conception creates definite realities from the
floating images, the object from the perception, the object which stands like
an enemy opposite the subject that the subject may measure its strength upon
it. The conception is thus the creator of reality; it is the "transcendental
object" of Kant's "Critique of Reason," but it always involves a
transcendental "subject."
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