Examining next the origin of the dower, the transferral of the dowry, the betrothal and the marriage, he shows the _mundium_ paid at first to the father or the brother; then later, to the maiden, becoming, with the rest of the nuptial gifts, the origin of the dower, which he wishes to see made obligatory in modern times. Passing to the dowry, he proves that, becoming by degrees a custom among the Romans, it was at first the property of the husband; then, as the world progressed, it became the property of the wife. Our code fully protects the dowry; but the law should oblige wealthy parents to endow their daughters so that they can marry. In olden times, a maiden was betrothed by pledges exchanged by the father and the man who asked her in marriage; at a later date the pledge was given to the maiden instead of the father, and the law intervened to render obligatory promises of marriage. At the present day, in France, there are no longer betrothed, but future spouses. In his second book, the author distinguishes the beloved one from the mistress, the adoration of pure from that of sensual love; the first produces goodness, patriotism, and respect for woman; the second regards her only as an object of pleasure and of disdain. Antiquity had no knowledge of pure love; the Middle Age, which comprehended it, was divided equally between it and sensual love; to-day, we have learned to comprehend that the two loves should be united; that the beloved and the mistress should make one in the person of the wife. The third book, "The Wife," is divided into seven chapters. The subordination of woman in marriage, with contempt for the mother, arose from two erroneous ideas: the inferiority of her nature; her passivity in the reproduction of the species, in which she performed the part of the earth with respect to the reception of germs. Modern science has destroyed these bases of inferiority by demonstrating: 1st, that the human germ, before taking its definitive form, passes, in the bosom of its mother, through progressive degrees of animal life; 2d, that in all species, both animal and vegetable, the females are the conservers of the race, which they bring to their own type.