The affectation and falsity, therefore, respecting woman, tends to a fundamental error in the relation of the sexes and the ordering of the family. It is a strange and almost fatal error to give this exaltation to woman. No doubt, a real trust and respect tend to secure, in some degree, the virtues accorded; and this true respect of an honest man, who places his wife, or his relative, before himself in purity, challenges the best of nature in the female. But man has reversed the true order, and run counter to the true instinct of the race (quite as strong in the female as in himself), when he thus puts woman before him, in anything. What authority is there for this reversal of the natural order? Why is woman more moral, more chaste? There is nothing in the nature of things, why the man, here, as in all things, should not be, as he is, the superior--the master. In morals he should be her guide, her teacher, her best support. That Society is, indeed, unsound, wherein the man may be low and sensual, and fancy, or pretend to fancy, that the woman is better than himself--it is a delusion. Man gives the real character to any Society--the woman will not be, cannot be better than the man. The English Barbarians, in spite of the absurd falsity of their customs, must have some tolerably happy families. The innate perception of the eternal fitness of things will cause many couples to arrive at a proper method. The wife, without exactly admitting it, even to herself, submits to her husband; and the husband, without exactly commanding (except in rare instances), feels that he is really the head of the house--and the family gets on pretty smoothly, because living in the natural order. But, in general, the struggle for mastery destroys either the existence of the family, or all attempts at affectionate ways of living. To avoid public scandal, the members do not actually separate; but all harmony and true domestic life are lost--and life is a dismal and disorderly rout.