The Physiology of Marriage, part 2 | Page 8

make
this book an arsenal from which each one, in accordance with his wife's
character and his own, may choose weapons fit to employ against the
terrible genius of evil, which is always ready to rise up in the soul of a
wife; and since it may fairly be considered that the ignorant are the
most cruel opponents of feminine education, this Meditation will serve
as a breviary for the majority of husbands.
If a woman has received a man's education, she possesses in very truth
the most brilliant and most fertile sources of happiness both to herself
and to her husband; but this kind of woman is as rare as happiness itself;
and if you do not possess her for your wife, your best course is to
confine the one you do possess, for the sake of your common felicity,
to the region of ideas she was born in, for you must not forget that one
moment of pride in her might destroy you, by setting on the throne a
slave who would immediately be tempted to abuse her power.
After all, by following the system prescribed in this Meditation, a man
of superiority will be relieved from the necessity of putting his thoughts
into small change, when he wishes to be understood by his wife, if
indeed this man of superiority has been guilty of the folly of marrying
one of those poor creatures who cannot understand him, instead of
choosing for his wife a young girl whose mind and heart he has tested
and studied for a considerable time.
Our aim in this last matrimonial observation has not been to advise all
men of superiority to seek for women of superiority and we do not wish
each one to expound our principles after the manner of Madame de
Stael, who attempted in the most indelicate manner to effect a union
between herself and Napoleon. These two beings would have been very
unhappy in their domestic life; and Josephine was a wife accomplished
in a very different sense from this virago of the nineteenth century.
And, indeed, when we praise those undiscoverable girls so happily
educated by chance, so well endowed by nature, whose delicate souls
endure so well the rude contact of the great soul of him we call /a man/,

we mean to speak of those rare and noble creatures of whom Goethe
has given us a model in his Claire of /Egmont/; we are thinking of those
women who seek no other glory than that of playing their part well;
who adapt themselves with amazing pliancy to the will and pleasure of
those whom nature has given them for masters; soaring at one time into
the boundless sphere of their thought and in turn stooping to the simple
task of amusing them as if they were children; understanding well the
inconsistencies of masculine and violent souls, understanding also their
slightest word, their most puzzling looks; happy in silence, happy also
in the midst of loquacity; and well aware that the pleasures, the ideas
and the moral instincts of a Lord Byron cannot be those of a
bonnet-maker. But we must stop; this fair picture has led us too far
from our subject; we are treating of marriage and not of love.

MEDITATION XII.
THE HYGIENE OF MARRIAGE.
The aim of this Meditation is to call to your attention a new method of
defence, by which you may reduce the will of your new wife to a
condition of utter and abject submission. This is brought about by the
reaction upon her moral nature of physical changes, and the wise
lowering of her physical condition by a diet skillfully controlled.
This great and philosophical question of conjugal medicine will
doubtless be regarded favorably by all who are gouty, are impotent, or
suffer from catarrh; and by that legion of old men whose dullness we
have quickened by our article on the predestined. But it principally
concerns those husbands who have courage enough to enter into those
paths of machiavelism, such as would not have been unworthy of that
great king of France who endeavored to secure the happiness of the
nation at the expense of certain noble heads. Here, the subject is the
same. The amputation or the weakening of certain members is always
to the advantage of the whole body.
Do you think seriously that a celibate who has been subject to a diet
consisting of the herb hanea, of cucumbers, of purslane and the
applications of leeches to his ears, as recommended by Sterne, would
be able to carry by storm the honor of your wife? Suppose that a
diplomat had been clever enough to affix a permanent linen plaster to
the head of Napoleon, or to purge him every morning: Do you think

that