Legitimate maternity is happiness to the rich woman; want, often grief, to the poor woman. Illegitimate maternity is to women of all ranks a source of sorrow, shame and crime. To the rich girl it is dishonor, an eternal bar to marriage; to the poor girl it is poverty, shame if she keeps her child; crime, if she destroys it. Yet the law dares grant impunity to the corrupter, to the seducer, to the man who has not hesitated to sacrifice to a moment of passion the whole future of a woman, the whole future of a child! The State ought to come to the aid of all poor mothers, because it is for its interest that the race should be strong and vigorous, and because mothers are the preservers of the race. Let the genius of women be set to work; let infant schools and infant asylums be founded in every quarter of France. The Hindoo widow was burned; the Jewish widow was bound to re-marry certain men designated by the law; the Grecian and the Gothic widow passed under the guardianship of her son, and the latter could not even re-marry without his permission; the Christian widow was condemned to seclusion; none of these women had any rights over their children. The French code restores full liberty to the widow, renders to her the right of majority, appoints her the guardian and directress of her children; it is a preliminary step to liberty in marriage. The fifth book, _Woman_, is divided into five chapters. All antiquity oppressed woman, although it recognized in her something superior, and made her a priestess or a prophetess. The Christian woman of the early ages, who alone could dethrone the Pagan woman, not only endured martyrdom as courageously as man, but was distinguished for her great charity, for the purity and lucidity of doctrine which rendered her the counsellor of learned men. We do not know, in reality, to what heights woman can attain; we cannot judge her by what she is to-day, since she is the work of the eternal oppression of man. "Who can say whether many of the ills that rend society, and of the insoluble problems that trouble it, may not be caused in part by the annihilation of one of the two forces of creation, the ban placed on female genius? Have we a right to say to half the human kind: you shall not have your share in life and in the state? Is it not to deny to them (to women) their title of human beings? Is it not to disinherit the state itself? Yes, woman should have her place in civil life," concludes Legouvé. Woman and man are equal, but different. To man, belong synthesis, superiority in all that demands comprehensive views, genius, muscular force; to woman, belong the spirit of analysis, the comprehension of details, imagination, tenderness, grace. Man has more strength of reason and body, woman more strength of heart, with a marvelous perspicacity to which man will never attain. The division thus fixed, what ought woman to do?