The Physiology of Marriage, part 2 | Page 5

see that when the
government is running smoothly the Whigs are rarely in power. A long
Tory ministry has always succeeded an ephemeral Liberal cabinet. The
orators of a national party resemble the rats which wear their teeth
away in gnawing the rotten panel; they close up the hole as soon as
they smell the nuts and the lard locked up in the royal cupboard. The
woman is the Whig of our government. Occupying the situation in
which we have left her she might naturally aspire to the conquest of
more than one privilege. Shut your eyes to the intrigues, allow her to
waste her strength in mounting half the steps of your throne; and when
she is on the point of touching your sceptre, fling her back to the
ground, quite gently and with infinite grace, saying to her: "Bravo!"
and leaving her to expect success in the hereafter. The craftiness of this
manoeuvre will prove a fine support to you in the employment of any
means which it may please you to choose from your arsenal, for the
object of subduing your wife.
Such are the general principles which a husband should put into

practice, if he wishes to escape mistakes in ruling his little kingdom.
Nevertheless, in spite of what was decided by the minority at the
council of Macon (Montesquieu, who had perhaps foreseen the coming
of constitutional government has remarked, I forget in what part of his
writings, that good sense in public assemblies is always found on the
side of the minority), we discern in a woman a soul and a body, and we
commence by investigating the means to gain control of her moral
nature. The exercise of thought, whatever people may say, is more
noble than the exercise of bodily organs, and we give precedence to
science over cookery and to intellectual training over hygiene.

MEDITATION XI.
INSTRUCTION IN THE HOME.
Whether wives should or should not be put under instruction--such is
the question before us. Of all those which we have discussed this is the
only one which has two extremes and admits of no compromise.
Knowledge and ignorance, such are the two irreconcilable terms of this
problem. Between these two abysses we seem to see Louis XVIII
reckoning up the felicities of the eighteenth century, and the
unhappiness of the nineteenth. Seated in the centre of the seesaw,
which he knew so well how to balance by his own weight, he
contemplates at one end of it the fanatic ignorance of a lay brother, the
apathy of a serf, the shining armor on the horses of a banneret; he
thinks he hears the cry, "France and Montjoie-Saint-Denis!" But he
turns round, he smiles as he sees the haughty look of a manufacturer,
who is captain in the national guard; the elegant carriage of a stock
broker; the simple costume of a peer of France turned journalist and
sending his son to the Polytechnique; then he notices the costly stuffs,
the newspapers, the steam engines; and he drinks his coffee from a cup
of Sevres, at the bottom of which still glitters the "N" surmounted by a
crown.
"Away with civilization! Away with thought!"--That is your cry. You
ought to hold in horror the education of women for the reason so well
realized in Spain, that it is easier to govern a nation of idiots than a
nation of scholars. A nation degraded is happy: if she has not the
sentiment of liberty, neither has she the storms and disturbances which
it begets; she lives as polyps live; she can be cut up into two or three

pieces and each piece is still a nation, complete and living, and ready to
be governed by the first blind man who arms himself with the pastoral
staff.
What is it that produces this wonderful characteristic of humanity?
Ignorance; ignorance is the sole support of despotism, which lives on
darkness and silence. Now happiness in the domestic establishment as
in a political state is a negative happiness. The affection of a people for
a king, in an absolute monarchy, is perhaps less contrary to nature than
the fidelity of a wife towards her husband, when love between them no
longer exists. Now we know that, in your house, love at this moment
has one foot on the window-sill. It is necessary for you, therefore, to
put into practice that salutary rigor by which M. de Metternich prolongs
his /statu quo/; but we would advise you to do so with more tact and
with still more tenderness; for your wife is more crafty than all the
Germans put together, and as voluptuous as the Italians.
You should, therefore, try to put off as long as possible the fatal
moment when your wife asks you for a