This book is an attempt to place the relations of Sex in a new and decisive light. It is an attempt not to collect the greatest possible number of distinguishing characters, or to arrange into a system all the results of scientific measuring and experiment, but to refer to a single principle the whole contrast between man and woman. In this respect the book differs from all other works on the same subject. It does not linger over this or that detail, but presses on to its ultimate goal; it does not heap investigation on investigation, but combines the psychical differences between the sexes into a system; it deals not with women, but with woman. It sets out, indeed, from the most common and obvious facts, but intends to reach a single, concrete principle. This is not “inductive metaphysics”; it is a gradual approach to the heart of psychology.
The investigation is not of details, but of principles; it does not despise the laboratory, although the help of the laboratory, with regard to the deeper problems, is limited as compared with the results of introspective analysis. An artist who wishes to represent the female form can construct a type without actually giving formal proof by a series of measurements. The artist does not despise experimental results; on the contrary, he regards it as a duty to gain experience; but for him the collection of experimental knowledge is merely a starting-point for self-exploration, and in art self-exploration is exploration of the world.
The psychology used in this exposition is purely philosophical, although its characteristic method, justified by the subject, is to set out from the most trivial details of experience. The task of the philosopher differs from that of the artist in one important respect. The one deals in symbols, the other in ideas. Art and philosophy stand to one another as expression and meaning. The artist has breathed in the world to breathe it out again; the philosopher has the world outside him and he has to absorb it.
There is always something pretentious in theory; and the real meaning--which in a work of art is Nature herself and in a philosophical system is a much condensed generalisation, a thesis going to the root of the matter and proving itself--appears to strike against us harshly, almost offensively. Where my exposition is anti-feminine, and that is nearly everywhere, men themselves will receive it with little heartiness or conviction; their sexual egoism makes them prefer to see woman as they would like to have her, as they would like her to be.