Sex & character / by Otto Weininger. Authorised translation from the 6th German ed.

  • Otto Weininger
Date:
1906
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Sex & character / by Otto Weininger. Authorised translation from the 6th German ed. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    36/388 page 8
    The fact is that males and females are like two sub- stances combined in different proportions, but with either element never wholly missing. We find, so to speak, never either a man or a woman, but only the male con- dition and the female condition. Any individual, “ A or “ B,” is never to be designated merely as a man or a woman, but by a formula showing that it is a composite of male and female characters in different proportions, for mstance, as follows : always remembering that each of the factors a, d, ß, ß' must be greater than o and less than unity. Further proofs of the validity of this conception are numerous, and I have already given, in the preface, a few of the most general. We may recall the existence of “ men ” with female pelves and female breasts, with narrow waists, overgrowth of the hair of the head; or of “ women ” with small hips and flat breasts, with deep bass voices and beards (the presence of hair on the chin is more common than is supposed, as women naturally are at pains to remove it; I am not speaking of the special growth that often appears on the faces of women who have reached middle age). All such peculiarities, many of them coin- ciding in the same individuals, are well known to doctors and anatomists, although their general significance has not been understood. One of the most striking proofs of the view that I have been unfolding is presented by the great ränge of numerical Variation to be found where sexual characters have been measured either by the same or by different anthropological or anatomical workers. The figures obtained by measuring female characters do not begin where those got from males leave off, but the two sets overlap. The more obvious this uncertainty in the theory of sexual intermediate forins may be, the more is it to be deplored in the interests of true science. Anatomists and anthropologists of the ordinary
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3