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 made a note, half mechanically, of a page in a botanical work from
which later on I was going to make an extract. Something was in my mind
in henid form. What I thought, how I thought it, what was then knocking
at the door of my consciousness, I could not remember a minute
afterwards, in spite of the hardest effort. I take this case as a
typical example of the henid.
The more deeply impressed, the more detailed a complex perception may be
the more easily does it reproduce itself. Clearness of the consciousness
is the preliminary condition for remembering, and the memory of the
mental stimulation is proportional to the intensity of the
consciousness. “I shall not forget that”; “I shall remember that all my
life”; “That will never escape my memory again.” Such phrases men use
when things have made a deep impression on them, of moments in which
they have gained wisdom or have become richer by an important
experience. As the power of being reproduced is directly proportionate
to the organisation of a mental impression, it is clear that there can
be no recollection of an absolute henid.
As the mental endowment of a man varies with the organisation of his
accumulated experiences, the better endowed he is, the more readily will
he be able to remember his whole past, everything that he has ever
thought or heard, seen or done, perceived or felt, the more completely
in fact will he be able to reproduce his whole life. Universal
remembrance of all its experiences, therefore, is the sure, most
general, and most easily proved mark of a genius. If a common theory,
especially popular with the philosophers of the coffee-house, be true,
that productive men (because they are always covering new ground) have
no memory, it is often because they are productive only from being on
new ground.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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