What thought Auguste Comte, who died in September, 1857.

To solve this question, it is necessary first to divide the man into two parts; not as the wise king Solomon designed to divide the child disputed for by two mothers, but in thought, by making of him two distinct men; a philosopher and a revealer.

M. Comte, who denied and insulted his master, Saint Simon, is only the popularizer of his recently edited works: so much for the rational phase.

What belongs to him exclusively is a socio-religious organization, which cannot be the work of a healthy mind.

What belongs to him exclusively, is a heavy, dry, insulting style, arrogant to the point of being revolting, loaded and overloaded with adjectives and adverbs.

What belongs to him exclusively, are a few ideas that he has submerged in volumes, containing not less than from seven hundred and fifty to eight hundred pages, in small type. I do not advise you to peruse them, readers, unless in your heart and soul you believe yourself deserving of many years of purgatory, which you prefer to expiate on the earth ... I do not know whether I ought to say above or below, since astronomy has reversed the positions of the material and spiritual worlds.

The disciples of Comte are divided into two schools: that of the Positivist Philosophers, and that of the Priesthood.

The first reject the religious organization of Comte, and are in reality nothing but the children of modern Philosophy, and very estimable adversaries of that nebulous thing which is called Metaphysics. We could not therefore have them in sight in this article; so, let not M. LittrÉ and his honorable friends frown in reading us: we are about to find fault only with the high priest and his priesthood.

The doctrine of Comte concerning woman being connected with the whole of his religious system, let us first say a word about this system.

There is no God; there is no soul: the object of our adoration should be Humanity, represented by the best of our species....

There are three social elements: woman, priest, and man.

Woman is the moral providence, the guardian of morals.

Had it not been for the wholly mystical love, I willingly believe, that Comte had for Madame Clotilde de Vaux, it is probable that woman would not have been the moral Providence; thanks to this love, she is nothing less than this. We will see that neither is she anything more.

Of a nature superior to that of man (in the opinion of Comte), she is nevertheless subject to him, in consequence of a philosophical paradox which we need not refute here.

The function of woman is to render man moral; a task which she can perform well only in private life; all social and sacerdotal functions are therefore interdicted her.

She should be preserved from labor, should renounce dowry and inheritance; man is charged with maintaining her; daughter, she is supported by her father or her brothers; wife, by her husband; widow, by her sons. In default of her natural maintainers, the state, on the requisition of the priesthood, provides for her wants.

Marriage is instituted for the perfecting of the married couple, above all, for that of the man: the reproduction of the species has so little to do with its end, that the progress of science permits us to hope that, some day, woman will be able alone to reproduce humanity, so as to realize and to generalize the hypothesis of the Virgin Mother. Then it will be possible to regulate human production, by entrusting to none but the most deserving women the task of conceiving children and bringing them into the world, especially members of the priesthood.

Divorce is not permitted, and widowhood is eternal for both sexes.

Such, in brief, is the Comtist doctrine concerning woman, marriage and procreation. As the reader might suspect us of malicious exaggeration, we entreat him to read attentively the following pages, emanating from the pen of the originator of the system.

According to him, women have never demanded their emancipation; the men who claim it for them are, after Comte's usual courteous style, nothing but utopists corrupted by retrogression. "All transitional ages,' he says, "have given rise, like our own, to sophistical aberrations concerning the social condition of woman. But the natural law which assigns to the effective sex an existence essentially domestic, has never been materially altered.... Women were then (in antiquity) too low to reject worthily, even by their silence, the doctoral aberrations of their pretended defenders.... But among the moderns, the happy liberty of the western women permits them to manifest a decisive repugnance which is sufficient, in default of rational ratification, to neutralize these wanderings of the mind, inspired by the intemperance of the heart.

"Without discussing unreal retrograde utopias, it is of importance to feel, the better to appreciate real order, that if women should ever obtain this temporal equality demanded, without their consent, by their pretended defenders, their social guaranties would suffer thereby as much as their moral character. For they would find themselves thus subjected, in the majority of occupations, to an active daily competition which they could not sustain, while at the same time the practical rivalry would corrupt the principal sources of mutual affection. Man should support woman, such is the natural law of our species."—Politique Positive, t. I.

"It is necessary to consider the just independence of the affective sex as founded upon two connected conditions, its universal affranchisement from labor outside the household, and its free renunciation of all wealth....

"Domestic priestesses of humanity, born to modify by affection the necessary reign of force, they should shun, as radically degrading, all participation in command."—Id. t. IV. "The moral degradation appears to me still greater when woman enriches herself by her own labor. The continued eagerness of gain makes her then lose even that spontaneous kindness which preserves the other type in the midst of its dissipations.

"No worse industrial chiefs can exist than women."—CatÉ. Pos.

So ladies, ye who prefer labor to prostitution, who pass days and nights in providing for the wants of your family, it is understood of course that you are degraded; a woman ought not to do anything; respect and honor belong to idleness.

You, Victoria of England, Isabella of Spain,—you command, therefore you are radically degraded.

M. Comte pretends that masculine superiority is incontestable in all that concerns the properly called "source of command ... that the intellect of man is stronger, more extended than that of woman.

"A healthy appreciation of the universal order will make the affective sex comprehend how important submission is to dignity.

"The priesthood will make women feel the merit of submission, by developing this admirable maxim of Aristotle: the chief strength of woman consists in surmounting the difficulty of obeying; their education will have prepared them to comprehend that all dominion, far from really elevating, necessarily degrades them, by depreciating their chief worth so as to expect from strength the ascendancy which is due to love alone."—Ibid.

Here are a few pages from the system of Politique Positive, t. IV., which are too curious not to interest the reader. "The better to characterize feminine independence, I think it best to introduce a bold hypothesis, which human progress perhaps will realize, although it is my business neither to examine when nor how.

"If the masculine apparatus contributes to our generation only after a simple excitement, derived from its organic destination, the possibility may be conceived of replacing this stimulant by another or several others, of which the woman would dispose at will. The absence of such a faculty among the neighboring species cannot be sufficient to interdict it to the most eminent and most modifiable race....

"If feminine independence can ever reach this limit, in accordance with the sum total of moral, intellectual, and even material progress, the social function of the affective sex will be found notably improved. Then all fluctuation between the animal appreciation which still prevails, and the noble doctrine systematized by positivism, would cease. The most essential production (that of our species) would become independent of the caprices of a perturbating instinct, the normal repression of which has hitherto constituted the principal obstacle to human discipline. Such a privilege would be naturally found transferred, with full responsibility, to the organs best fitted to its use, alone capable of guarding themselves from vicious impulses, so as to realize all the advantages that it permits."

Which means in good English, my female readers, that perhaps the time will come when you will create children without the co-operation of these gentlemen; that this function will be confided to those among you who shall be most worthy of it, and that they will be held responsible for the imperfection of the product. "Thenceforth," resumes the author, "the utopia of the Virgin Mother will become to the purest and most eminent an ideal goal, directly suited to sum up human perfection, thus carried even to systematizing procreation, while ennobling it.... Success depends most of all on the general development of the relations between the soul and the body, its continued search (that of the problem of fruitful virginity) will worthily institute the systematic study of vital harmony, by procuring to it at once the noblest aim and the best organs."—Ibid.

Translated: the study of the relations of the brain with the body will lead us to discover the means of procreating children without the co-operation of man; this is the noblest aim of this study, as the faculty of being a virgin mother should be the ideal which the purest and most eminent women should seek to attain.

"Thus," continues M. Comte, "I am led to represent the utopia of the Virgin Mother as the synthetic rÉsume of positive religion, all the phases of which it combines."—Ibid.

Translation: To procreate children without the concurrence of man, sums up positive religion, and combines all its phases.

This may be very fine, but as to being rational and positive—what do you think, readers?

"The rationality of the problem," adds the author, "is founded upon the determination of the true office of the masculine apparatus, designed especially to supply to the blood an excitative fluid, capable of strengthening all the vital operations, whether animal or organic. In comparison with this general service, the special use of the fecundative stimulus becomes more and more secondary in proportion as the organism is elevated. It may thus be conceived that in the noblest species, this liquid ceases to be indispensable to the awakening of the germ, which may result artificially from several other, and even from material sources, especially from a better reaction of the nervous upon the vascular system."—Ibid.

All this would be possible, I grant, if the fluid of which you speak, High Priest, had, above all, the general function which you attribute to it;

If the reproduction of our species by the co-operation of the two sexes were not a law;

If we could preserve a species while destroying its law;

If facts did not contradict the possibility of the hypothesis.

Now, to place an if before a natural law and the phenomena which are its expression, is only a gross absurdity: we explain laws, we do not reform them without profoundly modifying the being that they govern; we do not destroy without destroying this being: for the individual being is the law in form.

The author dwells as follows on the consequences of the absurd hypothesis.

"Thence it may be conceived that civilization not only disposes man better to appreciate woman, but augments the participation of this sex in human reproduction, which ought, finally, to emanate from it alone.

"Regarded individually, such a modification ought to improve the cerebral and corporal constitution of both sexes, by developing therein continued chastity, the importance of which has been felt more and more by universal instinct, even during irregularities.—p. 277.

"Considered domestically, this transformation would render the constitution of the human family more in conformity with the general spirit of sociocracy, by completing the just emancipation of woman, thus made, even physically, independent of man. The normal ascendancy of the affective sex would be no longer contestable with respect to children emanated from it exclusively.

"But the principal result would consist in perfecting the fundamental institution of marriage (the improvement of the married couple without sexual motive), the positive theory of which would then become unexceptionable. Thus purified, the conjugal tie would experience an amelioration as marked as when Polygamy was replaced by Monogamy: for we should generalize the utopia of the Middle Age, in which Maternity was reconciled with Virginity.

"Regarded civilly, this institution alone permits the regulation of the most important of productions, which can never become sufficiently susceptible of systematization, so long as it shall be accomplished in delirium and without responsibility.

"Reserved to its best organs, this function would perfect the human race by better determining the transmission of ameliorations due to external influences, both social and personal.... Systematic procreation coming to remain more or less concentrated among the better types, the comparison of the two cases would give rise not only to valuable enlightenment, but also to an important institution which would procure to sociocracy the principal advantage of theocracy. For the development of the new mode would soon cause a non-hereditary caste to spring up, better adapted than the common populace for the recruital of spiritual and even temporal chiefs, whose authority would then rest on a truly superior origin, which would not shun investigation.

All these indications will suffice to show the value of the utopia of the Virgin Mother, destined to procure to Positivism a synthetic rÉsume, equivalent to that which the institution of the Eucharist furnishes to Catholicism."—Ibid.

It is much to be feared, alas! that the disciples of this great man, however ardent seekers of vital harmony they may be, will never find the synthetic rÉsume of Positivism, the equivalent of the Eucharist: and it will be a great pity: to order children as we order shoes, and leave them on the mother's hands when they do not suit, would be very convenient.

And what, I ask you, will the future leaders of humanity do, if they can only obtain respect and obedience on the condition of proving that they are sons of virgins?

But we will not jest with so grave a personage as the High Priest of Humanity: we will only say in passing, that never was atheist seen to show himself more profoundly a Christian through contempt for works of the flesh. Hear what he says on page 286 of the work before cited:

"Useless to individual conservation, the sexual instinct co-operates only in an accessory and even equivocal manner to the propagation of the species. Philosophers truly freed from superstition should regard it more and more as tending above all to disturb the principal design of the vivifying fluid. But without waiting for the feminine utopia to be realized, we may determine, if not the atrophy, at least the inertia of this cerebral superfoetation, with more facility than is indicated by the insufficient efforts of theologism. While positive education will make the vices of such an instinct everywhere felt, and will raise up the continued hope of its desuetude, the whole final system ought naturally to institute a revulsive treatment with respect to it, more efficacious than Catholic austerities. For the universal aspiration of domestic existence and of public life will develop the sympathetic faculties to such a degree, that sentiment, intellect, and activity will always concur to stigmatize and repress the most perturbing of selfish propensities."

Despite all this aspiration, and all these stigmas, do not trust to it, High Priest! Be advised by me, use camphor, and plenty of it; scatter it everywhere as a certain Amphitryon scattered nutmeg.

It is in prevision of the excommunications hurled by you against this vile, this useless instinct, that Nature has been prodigal of camphor.

Upon the whole, you see, my female readers, that if M. Comte believes us weaker than man in body, mind, and character, in return, he believes us better.

We are moral providence, guardian angels: he dreams of affranchisement for us through the subversion of a natural law.

But meanwhile he places us under the yoke of man by exempting us from labor;

He rivets our chains by persuading us cajolingly to despoil ourselves of our property;

He says to us in the gentlest voice imaginable: never command: it would degrade you;

Your great strength is in obeying him whom it is your destiny to direct.

You will be naught in the temple, naught in the state. In the family, you are domestic priestesses, the auxiliaries of the priesthood.

Three sacraments out of nine are refused you: that of destiny, because, for you, it is confounded with that of marriage; that of retirement, because you have no profession; lastly, that of incorporation, because a woman cannot, in herself, merit a personal and public apotheosis.

If you have been worthy auxiliaries, you shall be interred near those whom you shall have influenced, like their other useful auxiliaries: the horse, the dog, the cow, and the ass; and mention shall be made of you when honors shall be paid to the member of humanity to whom you shall have belonged.

Shall we refute such doctrines? No. Our answer to them finds a fitter place in the article devoted to M. Proudhon, who has drawn largely from the doctrine of M. Comte.

As to the priests who continue the teachings of their master, it suffices to refer them to what I said to M. Comte in the Revue Philosophique of December, 1855.

The women of the present time are in general intelligent, because they receive an education superior to that of their mothers. The majority of them devote themselves to an active life either in the arts or the trades; men acknowledge them as their competitors in these, and even confess that they are superior in management. No man, worthy of the name, would dare contest that woman is his equal, and that the day of her civil emancipation is close at hand.

Women, on their side, more independent and more deserving, without having lost anything of their grace and gentleness, no longer accept the famous axiom: man should support woman; still less do they accept the admirable maxim of Aristotle, fit for the slaves of the gyneceum. Be sure that every true woman will laugh at the raiment of clouds which you pretend to give her, at the incense with which you wish to asphyxiate her; for she cares no longer for adoration. She wishes to carry her intellect and activity unfettered into spheres suited to her aptitudes; she wishes to aid her brother, man, in clearing up the field of theory, the domain of practice; she claims that every human being is the judge of his own aptitudes; she does not recognize in any man or in any doctrine the right of fixing her place, and of marking out her road. Through the labor of war was the patriciate constituted; through peaceful labor was servitude emancipated; through labor, also, does woman claim to conquer her civil rights.

Such is what many women are, what they wish to be to-day; see if it is not madness to seek to revive the gyneceum and the atrium for these women, impregnated with the ideas of the eighteenth century, wrought upon by the ideas of '89 and of the modern reformers. To say to such women that they shall have no place in the state, nor in marriage, nor in science, nor in art, nor in the trades, nor even in your subjective paradise, is something so monstrous that I cannot conceive, for my part, how aberration could go so far.

You will no longer find an interlocutress to say: "that a woman can scarcely ever deserve a personal and public apotheosis ... that views involving the fullest experience and the profoundest reflection are naturally interdicted to the sex whose contemplations can scarcely go beyond the circle of private life with success ... that the moral degradation of woman is still greater when she enriches herself by her own labor ... that there are no worse industrial chiefs than women...." And if any woman behind the times should be so imbecile and immodest as to hold such language, all men of any worth whatever would regard her only with disdain.

But you, who wish to annihilate woman, from what principle do you draw such a consequence? That she is an affective power, you say ... yes, but, as to that, man is such, likewise; and is not woman, as well as he, alike intellect and activity? By reason of a purely accidental predominance, can one half of the human species be banished beyond the clouds of sentimentality? And ought not all serious discipline to tend to develop, not one phase of the being, but the ponderation, the harmony of all its phases? Want of harmony is the source of disorder and deformity. The woman who is solely sentimental commits irreparable errors; the man who is solely rational is a species of monster, and the person in whom activity predominates is but a brute. Since you believe in Gall and Spurzheim, you know that the encephalon of the two sexes is alike, that it is modifiable in both, that all education is founded on this modificability; why has it never occurred to you that if man en masse is more rational than woman, it is because education, laws and custom have developed in him the anterior lobes of the brain; while in woman, education, laws and custom develop especially the posterior lobes of this organ; and why, having established these facts, have you not been led to conclude that, since organs are developed only in consequence of the excitants applied to them, it is probable that man and woman, subjected to the same cerebral excitants, would be developed in the same manner, with the shades of difference peculiar to each individuality; and that for woman to be developed harmoniously under her three aspects, she must manifest herself socially under three aspects? Be sure, sir, your principle is thrice false, thrice in contradiction to science and reason; in the presence of the physiology of the brain, all theories of classification fall to the ground: before the nervous system, women are the equals of men: they can be their inferiors only before muscular supremacy, attacked by the invention of powder, and about to be reduced to dust by the triumph of mechanism.

I should say many more things to you, sir, were not this critical sketch too long already; but imperfect though it may be, having to my mind only the meaning of a woman's protest against your doctrines, I shall pause here.