easonableness by logic. I
am going to give you what I remember of his argument, because I believe
still, as I did when I heard it, that it is the only philosophical
explanation of the instinctive reverence of man for woman which we
have been talking about to-night. It was given to me, of course, as
a doctrine peculiar to Positivism; but I don't know of any form of
religious belief, inconsistent with the recognition of the sacred
quality of womanhood on the grounds given by Regnier. Indeed, I am by no
means sure whether the doctrine as I received it is orthodox Positivism
at all. I have reason to think that Regnier was quite too original a
character for a very good interpreter, and should be interested to know
how far his ideas were his own and how far his master's.

"First he pointed out to me as matter of fact that there was no more
striking feature of the modern and humane as compared with the ancient
and barbaric world than the constantly growing tendency of the most
civilized races to apotheosize womanhood. The virgin ideal had been set
up by the larger part of Christendom as the object of divine honors. The
age of chivalry had translated for all time the language of love into
that of worship. Art had personified under the feminine form every noble
and affecting ideal of the race, till now it was in the name of woman
that man's better part adjured his baser in every sort of strife towards
the divine. Is it alleged that it is man's passion for woman that has
moved him thus in a sort to deify the sex? Passion is no teacher of
reverence. Moreover, it is as the race outgrows the dominion of passion
that it recognizes the worshipfulness of woman. The gross and sensual
recognize in her no element of sacredness. It is the clear soul of the
boy, the poet, and the seer which is most surely aware of it. Equally
vain is it to seek the explanation in any general superiority of woman
to man, either moral or mental. Her qualities are indeed in engaging
contrast with his, but on the whole no such superiority has ever been
maintained. How, then, were we to account for a phenomenon so great in
its proportions that either it indicates a world-wide madness infecting
the noblest nations while sparing the basest, or else must be the
outcome of some profound monition of nature, which, in proportion as
man's upward evolution progresses, he becomes capable of apprehending?
Why this impassioned exaltation by him of his tender companion? What