In a certain sense the antipodes of the Marquis de Sade is a remarkable sexual philosopher of our own time, the author of “Sex and Character,” Dr. Otto Weininger. His whole circle of thought also revolves exclusively round the sexual. It forms the basis, the starting-point of his exposition; though, indeed, it does so in a purely negative sense. For Weininger is the apostle of =asexuality=; to him the highest type of human being is the non-sexual, the one who renounces all sexuality. And woman, as the incorporation of sexuality, is to him “nothingness,” the “radically evil” which must be annihilated. A positive sexual philosopher of a nobler kind than these two anomalous spirits is Max Zeiss, whose book, “Ragnarök, a Philosophico-Social Study,” was published at Strasburg in 1904. He regards work, effort, creation, the strife for material position, for honour and renown, only as subordinate aims for the attainment of one aim--=love=. The ever more intimate association of love with the spiritual life, its increasing depth, the inclusion within its sphere of influence of all feelings and thoughts, necessarily give rise to a stronger development of the =feeling of individual personality=, which, in contrast with the earlier instinctive impulse, came more and more to dominate the amatory life. Now love gained at least an =equal= importance for the individual that in former conditions it had for the purposes of reproduction, and therewith subjectively the reproductive idea was unquestionably thrust into the background, in comparison with the idea of personal living, of personal enrichment and development, by means of love. Hegel says aptly (“Æsthetics,” Berlin, 1837, vol. ii., p. 186): “The sorrows of love, these frustrate hopes, the very state of being in love, the never-ending pains which the lover actually experiences, this never-ending happiness and joy to which he looks forward in imagination--these are matters devoid of all general interest; =they concern only the lover himself=.” Schleiermacher also insists, in his letters concerning “Lucinde,” on the great importance of love for the spiritual development of the individual. The individualization of love has certainly resulted in a great decline in the predominance of the reproductive idea, of the subjective sense of race, without it ever being possible for it to lose its eminent =objective= significance. Nietzsche, therefore, declares a “reproductive impulse” to be pure “mythology;”[38] and Carpenter, also, in his book, “Love’s Coming of Age,” says that human love is mainly a desire for complete union, and only in much less degree a wish for the reproduction of the race. The profound significance of individual love in the =promotion of civilization= is exceedingly well described by him when he says: