to
cultivate it with all the pains which it demands. The errors of women
are so many indictments of egotism, neglect and worthlessness in
husbands.

Yet it is yours, reader, it pertains to you, who have often condemned
in another the crime which you yourself commit, it is yours to hold the
balance. One of the scales is quite loaded, take care what you are going
to put in the other. Reckon up the number of predestined ones who may be
found among the total number of married people, weigh them, and you will
then know where the evil is seated.

Let us try to penetrate more deeply into the causes of this conjugal
sickliness.

The word love, when applied to the reproduction of the species, is the
most hateful blasphemy which modern manners have taught us to utter.
Nature, in raising us above the beasts by the divine gift of thought,
had rendered us very sensitive to bodily sensations, emotional
sentiment, cravings of appetite and passions. This double nature of ours
makes of man both an animal and a lover. This distinction gives the key
to the social problem which we are considering.

Marriage may be considered in three ways, politically, as well as from
a civil and moral point of view: as a law, as a contract and as an
institution. As a law, its object is a reproduction of the species; as a
contract, it relates to the transmission of property; as an institution,
it is a guarantee which all men give and by which all are bound:
they have father and mother, and they will have children. Marriage,
therefore, ought to be the object of universal respect. Society can
only take into consideration those cardinal points, which, from a social
point of view, dominate the conjugal question.

Most men have no other views in marrying, than reproduction, property or
children; but neither reproduction nor property nor children constitutes
happiness. The command, "Increase and multiply," does not imply love. To
ask of a young girl whom we have seen fourteen times in fifteen days, to
give you love in the name of law, the king and justice, is an absurdity
worthy of the majority of the predestined.

Love is the union between natural craving and sentiment; happiness in
marriage results in perfect union of soul between a married pair. Hence
it follows that in order to be happy a man must feel himself bound by
certain rules of honor and delicacy. After having enjoyed the benefit of
the social law which consecrates the natural craving, he must