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.