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 think that this is the most fruitful way of stating the
problem. I believe it to be more important to ask in what other respects
lovers of dogs and of cats differ from one another. The habit, where one
difference has been detected, of seeking for the associated differences,
will prove extremely useful not only to pure morphology and to the
science of character, but ultimately to physiognomy, the meeting-point
of the two sciences. Aristotle pointed out long ago that many
characteristics of animals do not vary independently of each other.
Later on Cuvier, in particular, but also Geoffrey St. Hilaire and Darwin
made a special study of these “correlations.” Occasionally the
association of the characters is easy to understand on obvious
utilitarian principles; where for instance the alimentary canal is
adapted to the digestion of flesh, the jaws and body must be adapted for
the capture of the prey. But association such as that between ruminant
stomachs and the presence of cloven hoofs and of horns in the male, or
of immunity to certain poisons with particular colouring of the hair, or
among domestic pigeons of short bills with small feet, of long bills
with large feet, or in cats of deafness with white fur and blue
eyes--such are extremely difficult to refer to a single purpose.
I do not in the least mean to assert that science must be content with
no more than the mere discovery of correlations. Such a position would
be little better than that of a person who was satisfied by finding out
that the placing of a penny in the slot of a particular automatic
machine always was followed by the release of a box of matches. It would
be making resignation the leading principle of metaphysics. We shall get
a good deal further by such correlations, as, for instance, that of long
hair and normal ovaries; but these are within the sphere of physiology,
not of morphology. Probably the goal of an ideal morphology could be
reached best not by deductions from an attempted synthesis of
observations on all the animals that creep on the land or swim in the
sea (in the fashion of collectors of postage stamps), but by a complete
study of a few organisms. Cuvier by a kind of guess-work used to
reconstruct an entire animal from a single bone: full knowledge would
enable us to do this in a complete, definite, qualitative and
quantitative fashion. When such a knowledge has been attained, each
single character will at once define and limit for us the possibilities
of the other characters. Such a true and logical extension of the
principle of correlation in morphology is really an application of the
theory of functions to the living world. It would not exclude the study
of causation, but limit it to its proper sphere. No doubt the “causes”
of the correlations of organisms must be sought for in the idioplasm.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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