establish this understanding between an inert matter and
himself. He did not discover, at the first touch, the resources, the
caprices, the deficiencies, the excellencies of his instrument. It did
not become a living soul for him, a source of incomparable melody until
he had studied for a long time; man and instrument did not come to
understand each other like two friends, until both of them had been
skillfully questioned and tested by frequent intercourse.

Can a man ever learn woman and know how to decipher this wondrous strain
of music, by remaining through life like a seminarian in his cell? Is
it possible that a man who makes it his business to think for others,
to judge others, to rule others, to steal money from others, to feed, to
heal, to wound others--that, in fact, any of our predestined, can spare
time to study a woman? They sell their time for money, how can they give
it away for happiness? Money is their god. No one can serve two masters
at the same time. Is not the world, moreover, full of young women who
drag along pale and weak, sickly and suffering? Some of them are the
prey of feverish inflammations more or less serious, others lie under
the cruel tyranny of nervous attacks more or less violent. All the
husbands of these women belong to the class of the ignorant and the
predestined. They have caused their own misfortune and expended as
much pains in producing it as the husband artist would have bestowed in
bringing to flower the late and delightful blooms of pleasure. The time
which an ignorant man passes to consummate his own ruin is precisely
that which a man of knowledge employs in the education of his happiness.

XXVI.
Do not begin marriage by a violation of law.

In the preceding meditations we have indicated the extent of the evil
with the reckless audacity of those surgeons, who boldly induce the
formation of false tissues under which a shameful wound is concealed.
Public virtue, transferred to the table of our amphitheatre, has lost
even its carcass under the strokes of the scalpel. Lover or husband,
have you smiled, or have you trembled at this evil? Well, it is with
malicious delight that we lay this huge social burden on the conscience
of the predestined. Harlequin, when he tried to find out whether his
horse could be accustomed to go without food, was not more ridiculous
than the men who wish to find happiness in their home and yet refuse