Page:B20442294.djvu/214

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CHAPTER IX

MALE AND FEMALE PSYCHOLOGY

It is now time to return to the actual subject of this investigation in order to see how far its explanation has been helped by the lengthy digressions, which must often have seemed wide of the mark.

The consequences of the fundamental principles that have been developed are of such radical importance to the psychology of the sexes that, even if the formerdeductions have been assented to, the present conclusions may find no acceptance. This is not the place to analyse such a possibility; but in order to protect the theory I am now going to set up, from all objections, I shall fully substantiate it in the fullest possible manner by convincing arguments.

Shortly speaking the matter stands as follows: I have shown that logical and ethical phenomena come together in the conception of truth as the ultimate good, and posit the existence of an intelligible ego or a soul, as a form of being of the highest super-empirical reality. In such a being as the absolute female there are no logical and ethical phenomena, and, therefore, the ground for the assumption of a soul is absent. The absolute female knows neither the logical nor the moral imperative, and the words law and duty, duty towards herself, are words which are least familiar to her. The inference that she is wanting in supersensual personality is fully justified. The absolute female has no ego.

In a certain sense this is an end of the investigation, a final conclusion to which all analysis of the female leads. And although this conclusion, put thus concisely, seems