perhaps foreseen the coming of
constitutional government has remarked, I forget in what part of his
writings, that good sense in public assemblies is always found on the
side of the minority), we discern in a woman a soul and a body, and we
commence by investigating the means to gain control of her moral nature.
The exercise of thought, whatever people may say, is more noble than
the exercise of bodily organs, and we give precedence to science over
cookery and to intellectual training over hygiene.

MEDITATION XI. INSTRUCTION IN THE HOME.

Whether wives should or should not be put under instruction--such is
the question before us. Of all those which we have discussed this is the
only one which has two extremes and admits of no compromise. Knowledge
and ignorance, such are the two irreconcilable terms of this problem.
Between these two abysses we seem to see Louis XVIII reckoning up
the felicities of the eighteenth century, and the unhappiness of the
nineteenth. Seated in the centre of the seesaw, which he knew so well
how to balance by his own weight, he contemplates at one end of it the
fanatic ignorance of a lay brother, the apathy of a serf, the shining
armor on the horses of a banneret; he thinks he hears the cry, "France
and Montjoie-Saint-Denis!" But he turns round, he smiles as he sees the
haughty look of a manufacturer, who is captain in the national guard;
the elegant carriage of a stock broker; the simple costume of a peer of
France turned journalist and sending his son to the Polytechnique; then
he notices the costly stuffs, the newspapers, the steam engines; and
he drinks his coffee from a cup of Sevres, at the bottom of which still
glitters the "N" surmounted by a crown.

"Away with civilization! Away with thought!"--That is your cry. You
ought to hold in horror the education of women for the reason so well
realized in Spain, that it is easier to govern a nation of idiots than
a nation of scholars. A nation degraded is happy: if she has not the
sentiment of liberty, neither has she the storms and disturbances which
it begets; she lives as polyps live; she can be cut up into two or three
pieces and each piece is still a nation, complete and living, and ready
to be governed by the first blind man who arms himself with the pastoral
staff.

What is it that produces this wonderful characteristic of humanity?
Ignorance; ignorance is the sole support of despotism, which lives on
darkness and silence. No