In both books, the household must be isolated; the wife must have no intimate friendship; mother, brothers and sisters prevent her from becoming absorbed as she ought to be in her husband. What we think of this absorption is already known; we will only say here that if the friends and relatives of the wife should be expelled, those of the husband should be none the less so; the mother and friends of the husband have more power to injure the wife than those of the wife to injure the husband; numerous sad facts prove this. In "Love," woman is a receptive power, incapable of comprehending conscientious works; she must receive everything from her husband in the intellectual and moral point of view. In "Woman," she is half of the couple, in the same ratio as man is capable of the most lofty speculations, and thoroughly understands administration. She gives the child the education that before all else will influence the rest of his life. "So long as woman is not the partner of labor and of _action_," says the author, "we are serfs, we can do nothing--she may even be the equal of man in medical science; she is a school, she is sole educatress, etc." Very well, thus far; and doubtless Michelet would have been consistent, had he not got into his head a masculine and a feminine ideal which spoils everything; he reasoned to himself: "Man is a creator, woman a harmony whose end and destination is love;" and, consequently, he marks out for the latter a plan of education different from that by which man should be developed; the natural sciences are suited to woman, history should only be taught her to form in her a firm moral and religious faith. As love is her vocation, to each season of the life of woman should correspond an object of love; flowers, the doll, poor children, next the lover, then the husband and children, then the care of young orphans, prisoners, etc. In "Love," the wife alone seems bound to confess to the husband. In "Woman," the obligation is mutual. The widow, in "Love," should not marry again, in "Woman," she may espouse a friend of the husband, or still better, the one whom he may choose on his deathbed; if she is too old, she may watch over a young man; but she will do better to protect young girls, to make peace in families, to facilitate marriages, to superintend prisons, etc. We will carry the analysis no further; our objections to the author's doctrine will be found in the article on Proudhon, and in the sequel of the work. CHAPTER II. PROUDHON. The tenth and eleventh studies of the last work of M. Proudhon, "Justice in the Revolution and in the Church," comprise the author's whole doctrine concerning Woman, Love, and Marriage.