The Distinction of Sex

THE DISTINCTION OF SEX.
Sec. VI.

If the contrarieties of male and female, or rather the contra-
rieties which lay at the foundation of the separation of male
and female, prior to their independence of one another, were
united in the man, we ask, Wherein did they consist? And
the answer is at hand. The male principle in man was the
spirit, and the female was the soul. There would indeed be .
little ground for this assertion, if it were based simply in the
grammatical distinction of genders of the two German appella-
tions, although it is always worthy of remark, that this distinction
of genders is impressed also on the Latin (animus and anima),

¹ We cannot form to ourselves any representation of the body of Adam before the creation of the woman, without falling into a monstrosity (as e.g. is shown by the eccentricities of the Bourignon). "Man is, by virtue of the power given to him, only made capable of the thought to repeat iu hiniBelf, to imitate, and to acknowledge the thoughts, expressed and visible, in the universe: he can create nothing originally—no atom, no reflection, no thought."—P. Jessen, Psychologie (1855), p. 70. When therefore J\oack refers scornfully to the form of the embryo prior to the fourth month of pregnancy (Psyche, 1860, p. 330), this scorn affects us not; and when he asks whether the brutes of that obscure primeval period are in like manner to be represented as sexless, we are ready with an answer, that, for the above reasons, it is evidently only man who, according to the biblical history of creation, was not at once created in pairs.

and in some measure on the Greek (irvfvfia, X07o?, vo!k, and

"tyx/Xrf)' ^anc^ *h^{at a}^^{so m} H^eDrew> ^only ^once occurs in the masculine gender by means of a constructio ad sensum, while, on the contrary, rn"¹ is not less usual as a masculine than as a feminine word (e.g. 1 Kings xix. 11, Ps. li. 12, and especially Gen. vi. 3, "My Spirit shall not always strive," i.e. the spirit granted to him, in man always; for that he, man, is flesh). The substantial proof of our assertion consists herein, that the distinction of the woman from the man in all its characteristics coincides with the distinction of the soul from the spirit. If we compare the external form of the ma"n and of the woman, the appearance of the man is beautiful in proportion as it bears the stamp of a noble spirit; and the appearance of the woman, in proportion as a beautiful soul becomes visible therein. Genuine masculine beauty is like the nature of the spirit itself become transparent, and genuine feminine beauty like the nature of the soul itself become transparent; wherefore the significant Greek myth personified the soul in conformity with its profoundest and most delicate features in the female form of Psyche. The relation of the woman to the man is the impression of the secondary receptive relation of the soul to the spirit. Man and woman are distinguished, as are spirit and soul, by self-conscious energy on the one hand, and resigned passiveness on the other. Those faculties of the soul which correspond to the will, and thought, and experience of the spirit, scil. the desire and longing, the fancy and imagination, the feeling and foreboding, and those properties which correspond to the relation of external and internal in which the soul stands to the spirit, scil. of sensitive excitability, of variable vivacity, of a delicate power of observation, and of direction to the individual and the special;¹ these are predominant in the woman. And as the spirit is connected with nature only through the soul, while the soul is interwoven with the harmony of nature with all its powers, the life of the woman is more manifoldly and more closely linked with the whole life of the creature, and, moreover, more instinctively and more necessarily dependent upon the natural basis of its own kind, than that of the man.

¹ See v. Thramer, Grundzuge, p. 67. Besides the distinctions here given of the nature of the man and woman, we find in this arrogant production nothing worthy of reference.

We say this without in any way being led to these thoughts by the Jewish Cabbala. But that this latter has glanced with extraordinary profundity into the relation of the woman to the man, has been proved by Molitor. According to it (the Cabbala), man forms the principle which is positive, independent, operating productively, and expanding from within outwards, corresponding to the TOE'3, i.e. to the spirit. The woman, on the other hand, is the man inverted: in her, preponderates the principle negatively active, turned from without inwards, from the circumference to the centre, living itself forth in adopting and receiving, which corresponds to the E'W, i.e. to the soul. Man, independent of nature, presents the spiritual, ideal, sunlike aspect; and woman the psychic, real, moonlike aspect: in the former lies hid the mystery of the spirit; in the latter, the mystery of nature. These are only the most external sketches of the considerations on the distinction of the two sexes¹ recorded in the Cabbala, and admirably reproduced by Molitor. One confirmation of this distribution of the spiritual and the psychical principle respectively to man and woman is found among others also, in the fact that when, in the Holy Scripture, soliloquies occur, the spirit is nowhere addressed. Everywhere the spirit speaks as the stronger manly part of the man, to the soul as the <r«euo? dadevearepov (Ps. xliii., xliv., ciii., civ., cxvi. 7; Jer. iv. 19; Luke xii. 19; comp. Ps. xi. 1, xvi. 2, cxxxi. 2). Even when David, in Ps. Ivii. 8, says, "Awake up, my glory," it is his soul that he thus names ^S?.² In consideration of this, we say, without any need of appealing to the Cabbala, with Tertullian (de anima, ch. xli.), that the relation of spirit and soul resembles a connubium, in that

¹ See the epitomized communications from the 3d vol. (1839) of Molitor's Philosophy of History, in v. Rudloff, Lehre vom Menschen, pp. 122-126. ⁸ As TI33, so also nTIT, Ps. xxii. 20, xxxv. 17, is a name of t?D3. It

t t ": vv

signifies not merely the soul of the rejected or tempted one as abandoned of God, but, as the parallel word '£'d3 and the analogy of "1133 show, the

soul in general, as the only one, i.e. not twofold, present, and this invaluable because incapable of being replaced. The denomination is not to be explained according to Ps. xxv. 16, but according to Gen. xxii. 2, Judg. xi. 34. Thus LXX. Ti)» /iotoytvii ftov, and Vulg. unicam meam. Isychius on Lev. xix. 29 says: Anima nostra nobis iilia unigenita est. The translation fMvoyfrii is significant. MonoyfMjc, according to Wisd. vii. 22, is a surname of the Sophia. As it is related to God, so is the soul to the spirit.

the spirit of man (to speak with Augustine, lxxxiii. qucest. qu. 64) is quodanimodo animce quasi inaritus,¹ and conclude further, that the internal reciprocal relation of the spirit and the soul, this mother of life,, received a representation external to man by the creation of woman. Whether this externalization was necessary for man to propagate himself, is a dogmatic question with which here we have nothing to do. This only is psychologically important to us, that the bodily distinction of sex is the sensible representation of an inward one, which subsists in the fact that man as such has his definite character from the prevalence of the spirit, and woman as such has her definite character from the prevalence of the soul.² Observation and Scripture confirm this. Observation confirms it; for, apart from what has been already remarked, the creatively established dependence of the woman on the man, as probably nobody denies, is founded on the fact that the man is constituted preeminently spiritual. Scripture confirms it still more directly than in the hints that we have mentioned, by the history of the origination of the woman, for the woman was formed from the lowest rib of Adam; thus from the bone and flesh of that region of the body where, as we shall see further on, the most important organs of the life of the soul are situated. And the tempter approaches her, for the reason that he hopes to arouse in her, rather than in the man, on account of the predominant life of the soul, a selfishly inflamed craving for sensual gratification, whereby the divine prohibition should be superseded. She, moreover, is not without the spirit in the divine image; but she has it not immediately from God, but mediately from God through man.³ Her flame of life is kindled at the E^K of man, whose name is allied to VS. She is absolutely and wholly e£ avSpb<;, as she is Sik rbv dvSpa. The man is, as Paul says

¹ The principle often asserted by the fathers, anima sexum non habet, remains true none the less in the sense in which they mean it.

^a This is what Joannes Scotus means when he says, de divisione naturse, ir. 18 : Nature humans e vir est intellectus, qui a Grsecis vocatur »oCf, mulier sensus, qui feminino genere x"oiw/; exprimitur; for, according to his doctrine, man consists ex corpore h. e. formata materia visibili, et anima h. e. sensu et ratione, et intelkctu, et vitali motu (ibid. sec. ii.); and all this is found literally in Philo.

* V. Dietrich., Abhandlungen fur Semitisclie Wortforschung (1844), p. 248.

(1 Cor. xi. 7), immediately elKwv real Sofja &eov, but the woman is Sofa :whereupon Grotius admirably observes, minus

ciliquid viro, rit luna lumen minus sole. As the soul is originated from the spirit (anima ex animo), so the woman is originated from the man; and as the soul is the likeness of the image of God, so the woman is the glory of the doxa of the man. And as, according to 1 Cor. xi. 3, Eph. v. 23, God is the head of Christ, and Christ is the head of the man, so is the man the head of the woman; and the right relation of the woman to the man is, as is the right relation of the soul to the spirit, viroraytj. Man, says Saint Martin, is the spirit of the woman, the woman is the soul of the man, and the two are one under the common Lord.

In these statements we have everywhere assumed that the woman, not only in respect of her bodily external nature, but also in respect of her spiritual, psychical, internal nature, is from the man. We have now to justify this assumption. This justification is inseparable from the question which from the ancient times has been discussed in the church: Whether the spiritual psychical nature of man is propagated, as we are accustomed to express it, per traducem? or, Whether in every act of begetting there is the product of a superadded divine act of creation?