necessity of elevating the condition of women (see remarkable passage
in his letters to M. Valat, pp. 84-87). His friendship with Madame de
Vaux had deepened the impression, and in the reconstructed society
women are to play a highly important part. They are to be carefully
excluded from public action, but they are to do many more important
things than things political. To fit them for their functions, they
are to be raised above material cares, and they are to be thoroughly
educated. The family, which is so important an element of the Comtist
scheme of things, exists to carry the influence of woman over man to
the highest point of cultivation. Through affection she purifies the
activity of man. 'Superior in power of affection, more able to keep
both the intellectual and the active powers in continual subordination
to feeling, women are formed as the natural intermediaries between
Humanity and man. The Great Being confides specially to them its moral
Providence, maintaining through them the direct and constant
cultivation of universal affection, in the midst of all the
distractions of thought or action, which are for ever withdrawing men
from its influence.... Beside the uniform influence of every woman on
every man, to attach him to Humanity, such is the importance and the
difficulty of this ministry that each of us should be placed under the
special guidance of one of these angels, to answer for him, as it
were, to the Great Being. This moral guardianship may assume three
types,--the mother, the wife, and the daughter; each having several
modifications, as shown in the concluding volume. Together they
form the three simple modes of solidarity, or unity with
contemporaries,--obedience, union, and protection,--as well as the
three degrees of continuity between ages, by uniting us with the past,
the present, and the future. In accordance with my theory of the
brain, each corresponds with one of our three altruistic
instincts,--veneration, attachment, and benevolence.
How the positive method of observation and verification of real facts
has landed us in this, and much else of the same kind, is extremely
hard to guess. Seriously to examine an encyclopaedic system, that
touches life, society, and knowledge at every point, is evidently
beyond the compass of such an article as this. There is in every
chapter a whole group of speculative suggestions, each of which would
need a long chapter to itself to elaborate or to discuss. There is at
least one biological speculation of astounding audacity that could be
examined in nothing less than a treatise. Perhaps we have said enough
to show that after performing a great and real service to thought,
Comte almost sacrificed his claims to gratitude by the invention of a
system that, as such, and independently of detached suggestions, is
markedly retrograde. But the world has strong self-protecting
qualities. It will take what is available in Comte, while forgetting
that in his work which is as irrational in one way as Hegel is in
another.
THE END.
_Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, _Edinburgh_.
* * * * *
Transcriber's Notes:
The transcriber made the following changes to the text to correct
obvious errors:
1. p. 347, "delighful" changed to "delightful"
2. p. 382, "'Superior in power of ..." no ending single quote
End of Project Gutenberg's Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3), by John Morley