Woman resembles man as man resembles God. Man is created in the image of God, but is not because of this his equal. Woman is made of the flesh and blood of man, but is his inferior. Bonald's theory chimes in with Milton's: "He for God only, she for God in him." (_Paradise Lost_, Book IV.) He says: "The society of the family is a society to which the man contributes the protecting power of strength, the woman the necessities of weakness; he _le pouvoir_, she _le devoir_." Thus does the French philosopher caricature the doctrine of St. Paul, which, in its day, was a great and noble advance in the direction of the emancipation of woman. What, then, is Bonald's definition of marriage? Marriage is the engagement entered into by two persons of opposite sexes to found a society--the society which is called a family. It is this engagement which distinguishes marriage from every other species of cohabitation of man and woman. Bonald refers with the utmost indignation to Condorcet's witty saying, that if men have any duty towards the beings who do not yet exist, it cannot be that of endowing them with existence. "Indeed it is!" he exclaims. "Marriage exists for the express purpose of continuing the race." But we are not therefore to conclude, maintains Bonald, that a childless marriage, that is to say, a marriage which appears to have failed in accomplishing its purpose, may be dissolved; for, by annulling the first marriage in order to legalise a second, the production of children in the first is made impossible, without their production in the second being positively ensured. Though a husband and wife have no children, there is always a possibility that children may come; and since marriage is only instituted for the sake of the possible children, the fact that they as yet have none is no reason for annulling it. To Bonald marriage is the possible society, to which the family, as the real society, corresponds. "_The object of marriage_" he teaches, "_is not the happiness of the wedded pair._" What, then, is its object? "_Marriage_" he answers, "_exists for the sake of society._" In marriage religion and the state see only the duties which it imposes. But if marriage exists only for the sake of society, what, we eagerly ask, is the aim of society? True to his theological dogma, that society by preserving its tradition, _i.e._ itself, preserves nothing less than God, Bonald answers (as indeed he must) with the empty formula: _The aim of society is its own preservation_.[2] Not a word does he waste upon the vain supposition that institutions exist for man's sake; not a thought does he bestow on human happiness, on the development of the race, or the evolution of human greatness.