Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/860

 844 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

convictions in a man, and appropriates them; she has no understanding of indecision in a man. She always expects a man to talk, and a man's speech is to her a sign of his manliness. It is true that woman has the gift of speech, but she has not the art of talking; she converses (flirts) or chatters, but she does not talk. She is most dangerous, however, when she is dumb, for men are only too inclined to take her quiescence for silence. (P. 195.)

The absolute female, then, is devoid not only of the logical rules, but of the function of making concepts and judgments which depend on them. As the very nature of the conceptual faculty consists in posing subject against object, and as the subject takes its fullest and deepest meaning from its power of forming judgments on its objects, it is clear that woman cannot be recognized as possessing even the subject. (P. 195.)

I must add to the exposition of the non-logical nature of the female some statements as to her non-moral nature. The profound falseness of woman, the result of the want in her of a permanent relation to the idea of truth or the idea of value, would prove a subject of discussion so exhaustive that I must go to work another way. There are such endless imitations of ethics, such confusing copies of morality, that women are often said to be on a moral plane higher than man. I have already pointed out the need to dis- tinguish between the non-moral and immoral, and I now repeat that with regard to women we can talk only of the non-mora', or the complete absence

of a moral sense I am not arguing that woman is evil and anti-moral ; I

state that she cannot be really evil; she is merely non-moral. (Pp. I9S-97-)

A mother makes no difference in arranging a marriage for her own daughter and for any other girl, and is just as gJad to do it for the latter if it does not interfere with the interests of her own family; it is the same thing, match-making throughout, and there is no psychological difference in making a match for her own daughter and doing the same thing for a stranger. I would even go so far as to say that a mother is not inconsolable if a stranger, however common and undesirable, desires and seduces her daughter. (P. 255.)

We may now give with certainty a conclusive answer to the question as to the giftedness of the sexes : there are women with undoubted traits of genius, but there is no female genius, and there never has been one (not even amongst the masculine women of history which were dealt with in the first

part) and there never can be one How could a soulless being possess

genius? The possession of genius is identical with profundity; and if anyone were to try to combine woman and profundity as subject and predicate, he would be contradicted on all sides. A female genius is a contradiction in terms, for genius is simply intensified, perfectly developed, universally con- scious maleness. (P. 189.)

Mr. Weininger's serious and ambitious study is the most remark- able jumble of insane babble and brilliant suggestion that it has been