ial type of all society,
the separation of the two powers commences there. The spiritual, or
moral and religious power, in a family, is the women of it. The
positivist family is composed of the "fundamental couple," their
children, and the parents of the man, if alive. The whole government of
the household, except as regards the education of the children, resides
in the man; and even over that he has complete power, but should forbear
to exert it. The part assigned to the women is to improve the man
through his affections, and to bring up the children, who, until the age
of fourteen, at which scientific instruction begins, are to be educated
wholly by their mother. That women may be better fitted for these
functions, they are peremptorily excluded from all others. No woman is
to work for her living. Every woman is to be supported by her husband or
her male relations, and if she has none of these, by the State. She is
to have no powers of government, even domestic, and no property. Her
legal rights of inheritance are preserved to her, that her feelings of
duty may make her voluntarily forego them. There are to be no marriage
portions, that women may no longer be sought in marriage from interested
motives. Marriages are to be rigidly indissoluble, except for a single
cause. It is remarkable that the bitterest enemy of divorce among all
philosophers, nevertheless allows it, in a case which the laws of
England, and of other countries reproached by him with tolerating
divorce, do not admit: namely, when one of the parties has been
sentenced to an infamizing punishment, involving loss of civil rights.
It is monstrous that condemnation, even for life, to a felon's
punishment, should leave an unhappy victim bound to, and in the wife's
case under the legal authority of, the culprit. M. Comte could feel for
the injustice in this special case, because it chanced to be the
unfortunate situation of his Clotilde. Minor degrees of unworthiness may
entitle the innocent party to a legal separation, but without the power
of re-marriage. Second marriages, indeed, are not permitted by the
Positive Religion. There is to be no impediment to them by law, but
morality is to condemn them, and every couple who are married
religiously as well as civilly are to make a vow of eternal widowhood,
"le veuvage eternel." This absolute monogamy is, in M. Comte's opinion,
essential to the complete fusion between two beings, which is the
essence of marriage