Harmony of thought between the sexes ought to spring from the agreement of the unlike, and in such a way that no pride should be offended, and each one be satisfied to make a sum instead of a subtraction. A scientific man and a female artist can form a delightful harmony upon two notes; a naturalist also and a woman who adores music; a psychologist, an inexorable analyst, and a woman who sees the comic side of things at once; and thus there are a hundred other combinations of different intellectual values, which, summed up, leave each one contented with his own. Besides special fitness, there is a sexual character which impresses itself upon the thought of the man and woman. Man discovers, finds, creates; woman divines, distinguishes, analyses. Man reaps, woman gleans. Man with too great haste, often with too great pride, grasps too much and lets it fall from its hands; woman walks behind and gathers up what he has lost. Man has less tact in judging his surroundings, and often gives a cuff when he means a caress; woman, on the contrary, like a delicate galvanometer, feels the slightest electric or magnetic oscillation in the air which surrounds her, and for this reason she is a most valuable instrument to a politician, a writer, or an artist who attempts new roads to beauty, and must conquer the resistance of the majority. Unhappy the man who before printing a book, exhibiting a picture, or making a speech in parliament has no loved woman from whom to draw life and warmth. If a sailor never leaves port without consulting the barometer, so man never ought to prepare himself for any undertaking without having first consulted that barometer of all barometers, the woman who loves him. How many ships have been wrecked from want of this precaution, neglecting to take it, through pride or inattention! You may be the greatest man of genius and your work the fruit of long and profound meditation; and yet you may rest assured that in the great polyhedron of truth some plane has escaped your sight which will be seen by the woman who loves you, because she is a woman, and sees many little things a man does not see; and because she loves you she has a magnifying lens before the eyes of her heart which makes all that may injure or benefit you appear gigantic. ⁂ It is very rare when a woman has conquered our moral and physical sympathies that we love her less for some discord of thought; but if we want ideal perfection we must marry bodies, hearts, and intellects. In this case we must seek in our companion a discreet culture, an exquisite taste for the beautiful, a delicate spirit of observation, a divination of human character. If you find all this in one woman, and if she is beautiful and good, you may deem yourself the most fortunate man in the world, and may declare to the whole earth that you have not one but three wives, having married intellect, heart, and thought. CHAPTER VII. THE FINANCIAL QUESTION IN MARRIAGE.