Page:B20442294.djvu/10

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PUBLISHER'S NOTE

been sought. In the science of characterology, here formulated for the first time, we have a strenuous scientific achievement of the first importance. All former psychologies have been the psychology of the male, written by men, and more or less consciously applicable only to man as distinguished from humanity. "Woman does not betray her secret," said Kant, and this has been true till now. But now she has revealed it—by the voice of a man. The things women say about themselves have been suggested by men; they repeat the discoveries, more or less real, which men have made about them. By a highly original method of analysis, a man has succeeded for the first time in giving scientific and abstract utterance to that which only some few great artists have suggested by concrete images hitherto. Weininger, working out an original system of characterology (psychological typology) rich in prospective possibilities, undertook the construction of a universal psychology of woman which penetrates to the nethermost depths, and is based not only on a vast systematic mastery of scientific knowledge, but on what can only be described as an appalling comprehension of the feminine soul in its most secret recesses. This newly created method embraces the whole domain of human consciousness; research must be carried out on the lines laid down by Nature—in three stages, and from three distinct points of view: the biologico-physiological, the psychologically descriptive, and the philosophically appreciative. I will not dwell here on the equipment essential for such a task, the necessary combination of a comprehensive knowledge of natural history with a minute and exhaustive mastery of psychological and philosophical science—a combination destined, perhaps, to prove unique.

The general characterisation of the ideal woman, "W," is followed by the construction of individual types, which are finally resolved into two elemental figures (Platonic conceptions to some extent), the Courtesan and the Mother. These are differentiated by their pre-occupation with the