Otto Weininger on the character of man

generals and politicians, live essentially in the present. They are determined in their action by the circumstances which surround then at the time and by their own personal ambition, neither of which are of universal human significance.

We have already seen that memory is a distinguishing mark of mankind, since it is only through memory that I am aware of my identity through all my changing experiences. And also it is only through memory that we can hold a concept, since the concept is beyond time. The timeless quality of genius is in no way accidental. A person remembers best that in which he takes a real interest, because he relates it to other experiences and holds it more clearly in his consciousness. The genius, who has the widest span of interest, is able to relate a greater variety of things to his own experience. He sees nature and all existence as a whole, and so he is able to experience them more intensely and articulate them more clearly and in greater detail. Since his concepts are more clearly defined than those of ordinary people and his identity is both stronger and more all-embracing, his memory is correspondingly more enduring. Discrimination, the making of comparisons, detecting resemblances and differences, depends on memory, for it is most acute in those whose present is permeated by remembrance of the past. And imagination, which is another quality remarkably strong in genius, also depends on the degree of consciousness with which the past and present are united into one whole.

To Weininger there is one respect in which the qualities of talent and genius are opposite to those usually attributed to them. It is usually assumed that whereas everyone has some sort of talent, if it can be discovered, genius is a gift from the gods which is given only to rare individuals. Weininger, on the other hand, considered talent as a gift from the gods or from one’s parents, but maintains that some degree of genius can be acquired by anyone who truly desires it. He believed that there is probably some degree of genius in most men and that the separation between the ordinary man and genius is one of degree rather than kind. ‘Genius’ he wrote, ‘is, in its essence nothing but the full completion of the idea of man, and therefore every man ought to have some quality of it.’ Since genius resides in the fullest consciousness, the strongest memory and the widest span

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