with which he kept watch over the importation
of Western books.

From his earliest manhood Comte had been powerfully impressed by the
necessity of elevating the condition of women (see remarkable passage
in his letters to M. Valat, pp. 84-87). His friendship with Madame de
Vaux had deepened the impression, and in the reconstructed society
women are to play a highly important part. They are to be carefully
excluded from public action, but they are to do many more important
things than things political. To fit them for their functions, they
are to be raised above material cares, and they are to be thoroughly
educated. The family, which is so important an element of the Comtist
scheme of things, exists to carry the influence of woman over man to
the highest point of cultivation. Through affection she purifies the
activity of man. 'Superior in power of affection, more able to keep
both the intellectual and the active powers in continual subordination
to feeling, women are formed as the natural intermediaries between
Humanity and man. The Great Being confides specially to them its moral
Providence, maintaining through them the direct and constant
cultivation of universal affection, in the midst of all the
distractions of thought or action, which are for ever withdrawing men
from its influence.... Beside the uniform influence of every woman on
every man, to attach him to Humanity, such is the importance and the
difficulty of this ministry that each of us should be placed under the
special guidance of one of these angels, to answer for him, as it
were, to the Great Being. This moral guardianship may assume three
types,--the mother, the wife, and the daughter; each having several
modifications, as shown in the concluding volume. Together they
form the three simple modes of solidarity, or unity with
contemporaries,--obedience, union, and protection,--as well as the
three degrees of continuity between ages, by uniting us with the past,
the present, and the future. In accordance with my theory of the
brain, each corresponds with one of our three altruistic
instincts,--veneration, attachment, and benevolence.

How the positive method of observation and verification of real facts
has landed us in this, and much else of the same kind, is extremely
hard to guess. Seriously to examine an encyclopaedic system, that
touches life, society, and knowledge at every point, is evidently
beyond the compass of such an article as this. There i