femininity much better than do
the great ones. Traveling salesmen, with checkered vests, gauge women as
Herbert Spencer never could.

Comte's wife was pretty and she was astute--as most pretty women are.
John Fiske, in his lecture on "Communal Life," says that astute persons
add nothing of value to the community in which they live--their mission
being to be the admired glass of fashion for the non-cogitabund. The
value of astuteness is that it protects us from the astute.

Samuel Johnson and his wife had their first quarrel on the way from the
church, and Auguste Comte and his wife tiffed going down the steps from
the notary's. Comte had no use for ecclesiastical forms, and the lady
agreed with him until after the notary had earned his fee. Then she
suddenly had qualms, like those peculiar ladies told of by Robert Louis
Stevenson, who turn the Madonna's face to the wall.

The couple went to Montpelier on their wedding-tour, to visit Comte's
parents. The new wife agreed with the old folks on but one point--the
marriage should be solemnized by a priest. Having won them on this
point, they stood a solid phalanx against the husband; but the lady took
exceptions to Montpelier on all other grounds--she hated it thoroughly
and said so.

Instead of molding her to his liking, Comte was being kneaded into
animal crackers for her amusement.

Then we find him writing to a friend, confessing that his hopes were
ashes; but in his misery he grows philosophical and says, "It is all
good, for now I am driven back to my work, and from now on my life is
dedicated to science."

No doubt the lady was as much disappointed in the venture as was the
husband, but he, being literary, eased his grief by working it up into
art, while her side of the story lies buried deep in silence glum.

In choosing the names of philosophers for this series, no thought was
given in the selection beyond the achievements of the men. But it now
comes to me with a slight surprise that seven out of the twelve were
unmarried, and probably it would have been as well--certainly for the
wives--if the other five had remained bachelors, too. Xantippe would
have been the gainer, even if Socrates did miss his discipline.

To center on science and devote one's thought to philosophy produces a
being more or less deformed. There is great danger in specialization:
Nature sacrifices the man in order to get the thing done. Abstract
thought unfits one for domestic life; f