Sex & Character: Authorised Translation from the Sixth German EditionWeininger, Otto
Philosophy
Sex & Character: Authorised Translation from the Sixth German Edition
Weininger, Otto
Character; Sex; Sex (Psychology); Sexual ethics
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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