There would be much to say upon all this, if it were worth while to discuss a theory which it is not possible to reduce to general practice. We cannot imagine the possibility of a second marriage where the first, though perhaps unhappy or early ruptured, has been, not a personal relation only, but an interfusion of our moral being,—of the deepest impulses of life—with those of another; _these_ we cannot have a second time to surrender to a second object;—but this might be left to Nature and her holy instincts to settle. However, he goes on in a strain of eloquence and dignity, quite unusual with him, to this effect:—“Ce n’est que par l’assurance d’une inaltérable perpetuité que les liens intimes peuvent acquérir la consistance et la plénitude indispensable à leur efficacité morale. La plus méprisable des sectes éphémères que suscita l’anarchie moderne (the Mormons, for instance?) me parait être celle qui voulut ériger l’inconstance en condition de bonheur.”.... “Entre deux êtres aussi complexes et aussi divers que l’homme et la femme, ce n’est pas trop de toute la vie pour se bien connaître et s’aimer dignement. Loin de taxer d’illusion la haute idée que deux vrais époux se forment souvent l’un de l’autre, je l’ai presque toujours attribuée à l’appréciation plus profonde que procure seule une pleine intimité, que d’ailleurs développe des qualités inconnues aux indifférents. On doit même regarder comme très-honorable pour notre espèce, cette grande estime que ses membres s’inspirent mutuellement quand ils s’étudient beaucoup. _Car la haine et l’indifférence mériteraient seules le reproche d’aveuglement qu’une appréciation superficielle applique à l’amour._ Il faut donc juger pleinement conforme à la nature humaine l’institution qui prolonge au-delà du tombeau l’indentification de deux dignes époux.” He lays down as one of the primal instincts of human kind “_l’homme doit nourrir la femme_.” This may have been, as he says, a universal _instinct_; perhaps it ought to be one of our social ordinations; perhaps it may be so at some future time; but we know that it is not a present fact; that the woman must in many cases maintain herself or perish, and she asks nothing more than to be allowed to do so. However, I agree with Comte that the position of a woman, enriched and independent by her own labour, is anomalous and seldom happy. It is a remark I have heard somewhere, and it appears to me true, that there exists no being so hard, so keen, so calculating, so unscrupulous, so merciless in money matters as the wife of a Parisian shopkeeper, where she holds the purse and manages the concern, as is generally the case. 85. Here is a passage wherein he attacks that egotism which with many good people enters so largely into the notion of another world:—which Paley inculcated, and which Coleridge ridiculed, when he spoke of “_this_ worldliness,” and the “_other_ worldliness.”