higher conjugal philosophy, on which are based
the means of defence outlined in this second part of our book, are
derived from the nature of human sentiments, and we have found them in
different places in the great book of the world. Just as persons of
intellect instinctively apply the laws of taste whose principles they
would find difficulty in formulating, so we have seen numberless
people of deep feeling employing with singular felicity the precepts
which we are about to unfold, yet none of them consciously acted on a
definite system. The sentiments which this situation inspired only
revealed to them incomplete fragments of a vast system; just as the
scientific men of the sixteenth century found that their imperfect
microscopes did not enable them to see all the living organisms, whose
existence had yet been proved to them by the logic of their patient
genius.

We hope that the observations already made in this book, and in those
which follow, will be of a nature to destroy the opinion which
frivolous men maintain, namely that marriage is a sinecure. According
to our view, a husband who gives way to ennui is a heretic, and more
than that, he is a man who lives quite out of sympathy with the
marriage state, of whose importance he has no conception. In this
connection, these Meditations perhaps will reveal to very many
ignorant men the mysteries of a world before which they stand with
open eyes, yet without seeing it.

We hope, moreover, that these principles when well applied will
produce many conversions, and that among the pages that separate this
second part from that entitled _Civil War_ many tears will be shed and
many vows of repentance breathed.

Yes, among the four hundred thousand honest women whom we have so
carefully sifted out from all the European nations, we indulge the
belief that there are a certain number, say three hundred thousand,
who will be sufficiently self-willed, charming, adorable, and
bellicose to raise the standard of _Civil War_.

To arms then, to arms!

THIRD PART

RELATING TO CIVIL WAR.

"Lovely as the seraphs of Klopstock,
Terrible as the devils of Milton."
--DIDEROT.

MEDITATION XXIII.

OF MANIFESTOES.

The Preliminary precepts, by which science has been enabled at this
po