A weapon is anything which is used for the purpose of wounding. From
this point of view, some sentiments prove to be the most cruel weapons
which man can employ against his fellow man. The genius of Schiller,
lucid as it was comprehensive, seems to have revealed all the phenomena
which certain ideas bring to light in the human organization by their
keen and penetrating action. A man may be put to death by a thought.
Such is the moral of those heartrending scenes, when in _The Brigands_
the poet shows a young man, with the aid of certain ideas, making such
powerful assaults on the heart of an old man, that he ends by causing
the latter’s death. The time is not far distant when science will
be able to observe the complicated mechanism of our thoughts and to
apprehend the transmission of our feelings. Some developer of the occult
sciences will prove that our intellectual organization constitutes
nothing more than a kind of interior man, who projects himself with less
violence than the exterior man, and that the struggle which may take
place between two such powers as these, although invisible to our feeble
eyes, is not a less mortal struggle than that in which our external man
compels us to engage.
But these considerations belong to a different department of study from
that in which we are now engaged; these subjects we intend to deal with
in a future publication; some of our friends are already acquainted with
one of the most important,--that, namely, entitled “THE PATHOLOGY
OF SOCIAL LIFE, _or Meditations mathematical, physical, chemical and
transcendental on the manifestations of thought, taken under all the
forms which are produced by the state of society, whether by living,
marriage, conduct, veterinary medicine, or by speech and action, etc._,”
in which all these great questions are fully discussed. The aim of this
brief metaphysical observation is only to remind you that the higher
classes of society reason too well to admit of their being attacked by
any other than intellectual arms.
Although it is true that tender and delicate souls are found enveloped
in a body of metallic hardness, at the same time there are souls of
bronze enveloped in bodies so supple and capricious that their grace
attracts the friendship of others, and their beauty calls for a caress.
But if you flatter the exterior man with your hand, the _Homo duplex_,
the interior man, to use an expression of Buffon, immediately rouses
himself and rends you with his keen points of contact.
This description of a special class of human creatures, which we hope
you will not run up against during your earthly journey, presents a
picture of what your wife may be to you. Every one of the sentiments
which nature has endowed your heart with, in their gentlest form, will
become a dagger in the hand of your wife. You will be stabbed every
moment, and you will necessarily succumb; for your love will flow like
blood from every wound.
This is the last struggle, but for her it also means victory.
In order to carry out the distinction which we think we have established
among three sorts of feminine temperament, we will divide this
Meditation into three parts, under the following titles:
1. OF HEADACHES.
2. OF NERVOUS AFFECTATIONS.
3. OF MODESTY, IN ITS CONNECTION WITH MARRIAGE.