He says that if the women regret the age of chivalry, it is not for the external homage then paid to them, but because “l’élément le plus moral de l’humanité” (woman, to wit), “doit préférer à tout autre le seul régime qui érigea directement en principe la préponderance de la morale sur la politique. Si elles regrettent leur douce influence antérieure, c’est surtout comme s’effaçant aujourd’hui sous un grossier égoïsme. “Leurs vœux spontanés seconderont toujours les efforts directes des philosophes et des prolétaires pour transformer enfin les débats politiques en transactions sociales en faisant prévaloir les _dévoirs_ sur les _droits_.” This is admirable; for we are all inclined to think more about our _rights_ (and our wrongs too) than about our _duties_. 81. “Si donc aimer nous satisfait mieux que d’être aimé, cela constate la supériorité naturelle des affections désintéressées.” Meaning—what is true—that the love we bear to another, much more fills the whole soul and is more a possession of an actuating principle, than the love of another for us:—but both are necessary to the complement of our moral life. The first is as the air we breathe; the last is as our daily bread. 82. He says that the only true and firm friendship is that between man and woman, because it is the only affection “exempte de toute concurrence actuelle ou possible.” In this I am inclined to agree with him, and to regret that our conventional morality or immorality, and the too early severance of the two sexes in education, place men and women in such a relation to each other, socially, as to render such friendships difficult and rare. 83. “En vérité l’amour ne saurait être profond, s’il n’est pas pur.” Christianity, he says, “a favorisé l’essor de la véritable passion, tandisque le polythéisme consacrait surtout les appétits.” He is speaking here as teacher, philosopher, and legislator, not as poet or sentimentalist. Perhaps it will come to be recognised sooner or later, that what people are pleased to call the _romance_ of life is founded on the deepest and most immutable laws of our being, and that any system of ecclesiastical polity, or civil legislation, or moral philosophy, which takes no account of the primal instincts and affections, which are the springs of life and on which God made the continuation of his world to depend, _must_ of necessity fail. I have just read a volume of Psychological Essays by one of the most celebrated of living surgeons, and closed the book with a feeling of amazement: a long life spent in physiological experiences, dissecting dead bodies, and mending broken bones, has then led him, at last, to some of the most obvious, most commonly known facts in mental philosophy? So some of our profound politicians, after a long life spent in governing and reforming men, may arrive, _at last_, at some of the commonest facts in social morals. 84.