_Die Wage._--“The author is a brilliant stylist. On every page I find aphorisms, in which the form fits the thought like a veil of silver. And these thoughts are no ordinary ones. The writer goes his own way, he knows secret paths which no man has yet trodden, and he shrinks from no obstacles. He lets himself down cautiously into the abyss, for he has determined to sound the deepest depths; from time to time, however, he looks up from the pit and rejoices in the light of the eternal stars, even though they lie hid from his mortal vision. He carries his arguments to their ultimate conclusion. We rebel against these conclusions, but we admire the uncompromising logic of the thinker.” SEX & CHARACTER BY OTTO WEININGER AUTHORISED TRANSLATION FROM THE SIXTH GERMAN EDITION [Illustration] LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN NEW YORK: G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS 1906 _All rights reserved_ _Copyright, London: William Heinemann, 1906_ _Copyright, New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1906_ PUBLISHER’S NOTE On October 4, 1903, Otto Weininger died by his own hand, at the age of twenty-three and a half years. There is perhaps in all history no other instance of a man who had produced a work so mature in its scientific character, and so original in its philosophical aspect as “Sex and Character” when he was no more than twenty-one years old. We will not attempt to decide whether this was the case of a genius, who, instead of developing his intellectual powers gradually in the course of a lifetime, concentrated them in one mighty achievement, and then cast off the worn-out husk of the flesh, or of an unhappy youth, who could no longer bear the burden of his own ghastly knowledge.