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
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.
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